Coast & Islands
A sea fort was built to control a harbour, and the tide decides when you visit
The forts along India’s coasts exist because several powers were competing for the same trade at the same time, and their island sites make access a question of water rather than of opening hours.
By Nadia Haddad3 min read
A crowded coast produced a crowded shoreline of forts
From roughly the sixteenth century onwards, the western Indian coast had several powers operating on it at once — Portuguese, Dutch, English and French trading companies, the Marathas, the Siddis of Janjira, various coastal chiefs — and all of them needed the same things: safe anchorages, control of river mouths and the ability to tax what passed.
A fort at a harbour mouth does that job precisely. It doesn’t need to hold territory inland; it needs to make it impossible for a ship to enter or leave without an accommodation, and that is achievable with a relatively small garrison and a few guns.
This is why the Konkan and Malabar coasts carry so many fortifications at such short intervals. They were not a planned defensive line but the residue of a long competition, with the same sites changing hands repeatedly.
An island fort answers a different problem from a hill fort
A fort on a rock in the sea has no approach to defend, which removes most of the elaborate gateway architecture that inland fortification depends on. The water does that work, and the design concentrates instead on withstanding bombardment and on holding supplies.
The walls tend to be lower and thicker than inland walls of the same period, with rounded bastions carrying guns that command the channel. Sea forts also need what a hillside cannot supply: sweet water, which is why several of them contain freshwater tanks or wells that draw on a lens of rainwater sitting above the sea water beneath.
Janjira, off the Konkan coast, is the well-known demonstration that the arrangement worked. It sits on a rock in a bay, it was repeatedly attacked from the mainland, and it was never taken by assault.
The materials came from the site
Much of the Konkan coast is laterite, a red iron-rich rock that is soft when freshly cut and hardens on exposure to air. It could be quarried into blocks with hand tools on the spot, which made building on an island practical, and the quarry pits are often still visible inside the fort.
The mortar was frequently lime, burnt from shell and coral rubble available on the same shore, sometimes with additives that improved its behaviour in salt air. Where basalt was available it was used for the parts that had to take the worst of the sea.
That local sourcing is why forts a hundred kilometres apart look so different in colour and texture. It also affects how they have survived: laterite weathers into a pitted, honeycombed surface that looks far older than it is.
Access is a tidal question, and it is not the same every day
Some coastal forts stand on land that is an island only at high water. The fort at Alibag is the standard example: at low tide you can walk out to it across the sand, and a few hours later the same route is under water, so the visit has to be timed against the tide rather than against the clock.
Where a fort is reached by boat, the sea state governs everything. Ferries to island forts commonly stop altogether during the monsoon months and can be suspended at short notice in rough weather at any time of year, which is a reason not to build a tight itinerary around one.
Tide tables for Indian ports are published by the national hydrographic authority and are the right source for planning a walking approach. Boat operating seasons, landing arrangements and any charges are local and change, so confirm those on the ground.
What has survived, and what the sea has taken
Salt air is hard on masonry, and sea forts decay faster than inland ones. Walls that face the open sea are often the most damaged, iron fittings have long gone, and on several sites the outer defences have been undercut by wave action and have collapsed into the water.
What tends to survive is the plan: the outline of bastions, the gateways, the water tanks, sometimes a magazine or a small shrine. Walking a sea fort is largely a matter of reading a footprint, and the interest lies in working out what the guns were pointing at.
Many are protected monuments; many others are simply there, with fishing boats drawn up beside them and goats on the ramparts. Both are worth seeing, and the unmanaged ones require the ordinary caution of unfenced drops, loose stone and, on a laterite surface after rain, very little grip.
Common questions
Which sea forts are easiest to visit?
The ones connected to the shore or reached by a short established boat crossing, of which the Konkan coast south of Mumbai has several. Remoter island forts involve chartering a boat and settling a landing arrangement, which is straightforward locally but not something to organise from a distance.
Are these forts open in the monsoon?
The land-based ones generally are, though they can be slippery and exposed. Boat access to island forts is usually suspended for the rough months, and tidal walking approaches are best avoided entirely in heavy weather because the sea state changes the timing that a tide table implies.
Why were so many built so close together?
Because they were built by rivals rather than by one authority, and each anchorage was worth holding on its own account. A fort three headlands away frequently belonged to somebody else and had been built specifically to answer the first one.
Contributing editor, Traveology
Nadia writes about states, hills, coast & islands, mostly the parts other people skip and prefers a plain explanation to a clever one.
