VIZAGAPATAM
of little service. It was observed that 'instead thereof if only a wall had been run from Martin's Point to the Mettah gate, another across the rock upon which Benyon's battery is built, and the platforms on each side the Mettah gate raised a proper heighth, the town would have been equally as secure.'
In 1744 the Marátha panic revived and estimates were submitted for 'building and repairing sundry fortifications' namely, 'the great battery by the seaside' (apparently the work the ruins of which still stand on the Dolphin's Nose and which is usually wrongly called 'the Dutch battery'), ' the small battery fronting the fort, the powder magazine and the guardhouse.' It was urged that the houses between the fort and the sea should be pulled down and a battery put there to command the roadstead; that a battery which had already been begun with guns sent the year before from Madras on the Black Rock should be completed so as to secure 'that part of the Mangoe Garden which lies behind a rising ground called the Sand Hill, which overlooks the town,and what the country government constantly possess themselves of upon the least Dispute with Us;' and that the magazine should be removed from the side of the backwater (or 'river,' as it was then called), which was too damp a site and too far from the fort.
The declaration of war with the French in this same year lent additional weight to these requests, and in 1745 it was ordered that a battery should be put up in front of the fort and that the 'small one near the bar' (? the 'Dutch' battery) should be repaired. Further work was stopped in 1750 on the ground that the well-known Engineer Mr. Benjamin Robins was being sent out by the Directors to examine all fortifications, and that it would be best to await his advice.
In 1753, as already narrated, the Circars were ceded to the French; and at the end of 1756 Bussy, free at last from other embarrassments, marched into them to restore his shaken authority, seized Bobbili, quieted Ganjam, captured Injaram and the other English factories in Gódávari and then marched in person against Vizagapatam. He reached that place on 24th June 1757, with the large force of 600 Europeans, 6,000 sepoys and 30 pieces of cannon.1[1]
Orme gives the following disparaging account of the then fortifications of the place, illustrated by the interesting map here
44
- ↑ 1 Cambridge's War in India (London, 1761), 103.
