Fort Rinella; Home


Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Our last day in Malta, we had just one activity, a visit to Fort Rinella on the coast, the home of the world’s largest gun.  There was a small museum there also, but the gun is the featured attraction, and what a gun it is.

We were met by a man in a uniform:



When asked what kind of uniform it is, he waffled.  It seems it’s sort of created in the style of the uniforms used in the late 1800s which is when the fort and the gun were built by the British.  He led us across a moat/ditch and into the fort:



We visited the gun, called the Armstrong 100-ton gun, made in 1878:


 It’s a muzzle-loader and just the barrel weighs 100 tons.  It uses 204 kg. (450 lbs.) of black powder and a shell of 907 kg. (2000 lbs.), which it could hurl 6400 meters (4 miles) with surprising accuracy due to the rifling of the barrel. 



There’s loads of information available on the internet, and I bought a book about the fort and the gun.  There were two of them on Malta, and others in strategic places around the Mediterranean.  Interestingly, it worked as a deterrent, and was never fired at an opponent, only in practice.  We discussed among ourselves what it would be like to muzzle-load the 450 lbs. of powder.  None of us wanted to try.

We used the afternoon to pack, and had a lovely end-of-trip dinner in Mdina.  Up at 4 AM on Wednesday for the trip home, Malta-Amsterdam-Detroit-Rochester, arriving just before midnight in Rochester, or 5 AM the next day in Malta.  We had been traveling 25 hours, but all went as it should, and it was a good end to a great trip.

Comments

  1. Ralph LockeMarch 17, 2018 at 5:23 PM

    Thanks for taking us all on your trip with you! :) Amazing things, and very generous of you to share them. The photos were splendid and the descriptions very informative, linking specific locales and buildings, etc., to important historical events and trends (some of which were quite new to me--where have I been hiding?).
    --Fascinating that the gun was so big that it has acted as a deterrent, never needing to be fired at an enemy.
    --I love the thought of traveling to a country that has a unique history and that isn't overrun with tourists. Nobody much mentions that as a possibility when talking about trips that one could take.

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  2. xctravelerMarch 17, 2018 at 9:13 PM

    Fascinated with this last post. The cannon reminded me of another very large cannon (actually a Bombard or Mortar) found in the Kremlin. Here is link to my picture of it https://photos.google.com/search/moscow/photo/AF1QipOjBvBoJG3uP4Mr6fVlGh2JqN2TywPpFnwyr3m9 It is less than half the size but much older dating to 1585. For too much detail look up Tsar Cannon in wikipedia. Your pasts have been very interesting to read and I have enjoyed your pictures a lot as well. Glad your flights worked out well for you.

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