An archaeological inventory and analysis of the 19th century gun emplacements for rifled muzzle-loading (RML) guns still to be found in the fortifications of Marsaxlokk, Malta

Abstract

The rifled muzzle loader (RML) gun played a vital role in the British naval and coastal defence strategy of the 19th century. This period of rapid technological change witnessed various innovations and accelerations in technologies that would ultimately redefine the nature of warfare as the world would know it. These heavy coastal guns would come to feature in multiple naval stations across the globe in the mid-19th century, and were a crucial component to the coastal defence of Malta during this time. This is demonstrated by the significance of the island’s southeasternmost harbour, Marsaxlokk, and the RML-armed defences of Fort St. Lucian, Fort Delimara, Fort Tas-Silġ, and St. Paul’s Battery (Xrobb l-Għaġin) therein. This technology would become the mainstay of the Victorian refortification and rearmament of the island’s coastal defences, and would remain so until the RML gun was superseded by advances in rifled breech-loading guns at the turn of the early 20th century in yet another series of rearmament schemes implemented by the British. The remaining material evidence in this study confirms how defensive military architecture was a direct product of these weapons and the equipment needed to work them and store their munitions, and that a maritime archaeology of such guns and their emplacements can and does in fact exist and can be studied. The effort to study these emplacements which housed this type of armament can also include a multidisciplinary involvement from the fields of coastal, landscape, conflict, battlefield, and experimental archaeology along with British military architecture, conservation/curation, and heritage management. Malta contains important examples of this typology of coastal defences, some of which can be found in the Marsaxlokk area, as has been documented and studied in this work through a modern maritime archaeological perspective.