Victoria Battery (one of two identically named batteries named after

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 21 ...

) was an

artillery battery In military organizations, an artillery battery is a unit or multiple systems of artillery, mortar systems, rocket artillery, multiple rocket launchers, surface-to-surface missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, etc., so grouped to fac ...

in the

British Overseas Territory The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen dependent territory, territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remna ...

Gibraltar ) , anthem = " God Save the King" , song = " Gibraltar Anthem" , image_map = Gibraltar location in Europe.svg , map_alt = Location of Gibraltar in Europe , map_caption = United Kingdom shown in pale green , mapsize = , image_map2 = Gib ...

. It was notable for being one of the two batteries in Gibraltar to mount a

100-ton gun The 100-ton gun (also known as the Armstrong 100-ton gun) was a rifled muzzle-loading (RML) gun made by Elswick Ordnance Company, the armaments division of the British manufacturing company Armstrong Whitworth, owned by William Armstrong. T ...

History

Construction of the battery began in December 1878 on the right flank of an earlier battery, also called

Victoria Battery Victoria Battery (one of two identically-named batteries named after Queen Victoria) was an artillery battery in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. It was built in the 1840s on top of the earlier Princess of Wales Batteries following a r ...

. It was constructed at the same time as Napier of Magdala Battery, both having been among the improvements to the fortifications recommended in January 1868 by Colonel William Jervois. The two batteries cost the British Government £35,707 to build. It was not until March 1883 that the guns arrived at Gibraltar, aboard the SS ''Stanley'', and it took from 12 July to 1 September to move the gun to the battery. The gun was finally mounted on its

barbette Barbettes are several types of gun emplacement in terrestrial fortifications or on naval ships. In recent naval usage, a barbette is a protective circular armour support for a heavy gun turret. This evolved from earlier forms of gun protection ...

on 12 September 1883. The battery's design was similar to that of the 100 ton gun batteries on the British-ruled island of

Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...

. The gun and its barbette stood in the centre of a rampart of compacted earth standing high over a concrete apron which acted as a

glacis A glacis (; ) in military engineering is an artificial slope as part of a medieval castle or in bastion fort, early modern fortresses. They may be constructed of earth as a temporary structure or of stone in more permanent structure. More genera ...

and captured rainwater for use in the gun's pneumatic system. The battery's elaborate substructure concealed a series of passageways and magazines capable of holding 87 shells and 107 cartridge canisters. The huge shells could be transported on underground rail tracks to the twin hoists. The gun was reloaded using pneumatic machinery which moved the gun, plunged the barrel, loaded the cartridge and shell through the muzzle and rammed them into place. This was powered by a donkey engine fed by a pump-chamber and boiler room, which were also concealed within the glacis. Compared to the original Maltese positions, Victoria Battery was much less strongly defended from a ground assault. It lacked a defended ditch or defensible barracks to keep out attackers, instead relying on a barbed wire fence which encircled the battery. The first firings of the new

100 ton gun The 100-ton gun (also known as the Armstrong 100-ton gun) was a rifled muzzle-loading (RML) gun made by Elswick Ordnance Company, the armaments division of the British manufacturing company Armstrong Whitworth, owned by William Armstrong. ...

s in Gibraltar took place in 1884, but the weapons were not considered ready until 1889 due to hydraulic problems. The crew at Napier managed to fire a shot every 2.5 minutes, but this ended up cracking the barrel. The wrecked gun was not repairable so the British moved the gun from Victoria to Napier, which was a higher site. The 100-ton guns were the heaviest built and the last gun was considered obsolete sixteen years after the guns' first operations. In 1900, a proposal was made to reuse the battery to mount four 9-inch rifled muzzle loader (RML) HAF guns to supplement the 10-inch RML HAF guns already installed at Spy Glass and Middle Hill Batteries. They would have had a longer range as they lay closer to the coast. However, the proposal was not acted upon. The Gibraltar Fire Station was built on the battery's right flank in 1937. Parts of the battery's underground works still survive.

References

{{Fortifications of Gibraltar Batteries in Gibraltar