Perim Island

​

The garrison engineer in Aden expected that the approved plan would be that of a fort with a low relief, providing accommodation for its garrison underneath the rampart. Waddington sent his deputy from India to make the final decision, but this officer’s report never seems to have arrived in Aden. Nothing was done for some years and in the meantime the local defence fort at the lighthouse was built.

 

The reel is now run fast-forward to the time of the Franco-Prussian war when France was deemed to again be a threat, especially to British ports, which resulted in the building of the ‘Palmerston follies’, to defend key naval bases such as Plymouth and Portsmouth. These were considered necessary to counter the building of ironclads and the considerable advances being made in the design and capabilities of guns and their munitions. The engineer officer who laid out these defences was Jervois. Having designed the forts in the UK, Jervois was sent off round the Empire to report on what defences were needed to defend harbours around the world. On his way to India in around 1875 he reported on Perim and Aden. The writer of this article has not yet found a copy of Jervois’s report on Perim but fortunately Lieutenant King gives a critique of Jervois’s recommendations in his booklet on Perim. King had been OC Outpost and on his return to India he transferred to the General Staff Corps. In this capacity he perhaps felt it was safe for him, in his booklet, to question the judgment of a much more senior officer as to how Perim might be defended. This is what King thought of Jervois’s ideas:

Colonel Sir William Jervois, Royal Engineers, in his memorandum respecting the defence of the harbour of Perim recommends the construction of a small circular casemated fort, with iron shields at the embrasures for 10 inch MLR guns, on the spit. Such a work he says could be manned by 150 men. ‘... It would bring a fire to bear on an enemy either outside the harbour or attempting to enter it, whilst if he got inside there would be no part of the anchorage which would not be under the fire of its guns. There is no other position on the island so favourable for a work to fulfil the required conditions as that to the westward of the entrance to the harbour.’

​

As a general rule, in fortification, any work has its defects as well as its advantages and the scheme proposed by Sir W Jervois is no exception to the rule. The advantages are stated above in his own words but the defects would be as follows: first, as there would be no room for the garrison to live in so small a fort, barracks would have to be built for them, either at a considerable distance from the fort or in a very exposed position near it. A glance at the map will show that the work would be practically isolated from the rest of the island, the only land approach to it being via a very circuitous route round the harbour where there is at present no road. The hill on which the present lighthouse stands must always be the chief military post on the island as this is the position from which the best command of observation is obtainable and from which one can most easily communicate by signals with passing steamers. Two separate detachments would therefore be required to be kept up,  ...etc.

 

King also commented that any enemy ship coming from the South East could perhaps anchor at the entrance to False Bay, and as it would be covered by Lee Point, the enemy might succeed in placing guns on the high ground opposite the spit, which would make the position there untenable. But from what one can find elsewhere about False Bay and the difficulties of landing there, especially during the South East monsoon, this was more of a hypothetical threat. None the less the promontory above Lee Point at 120 feet above sea level is 90 feet higher than the small knoll at the end of the spit. In King’s opinion:

 

A better position for a battery to defend the harbour would be either on Murray Point or on the headland on which the ruins of the old fort now stand. These would have none of the defects which I have pointed out in the spit position and would command the whole of the anchorage as well as the entrance to the harbour equally well. To command the approach from the shore and to prevent the access of an enemy to the harbour Sir W Jervois recommends the erection of four towers on the higher points, each tower being constructed for about three guns mounted on Moncrieff carriages. He gives no further details as to the position or construction of these towers, but I think if there were good roads made all over the island, some light field pieces, which could easily be moved, or readily moved from place to place, protected if necessary by gunpits, would, with the assistance of infantry be equally effective in preventing a landing by boats and would have the advantage of being very much less expensive. The approaches to the island can only be defended by turret ships and torpedoes.

​

No fort was ever built on Perim. Expense was a factor, besides which why build one there when there was a perfectly adequate defended harbour at Aden, 100 miles away?