Delft Island Fort - Jaffna | AmazingLanka.com

The ruins of Dutch Fort at Delft island in Jaffna
Image courtesy of Dr. Ashan Geeganage

The Portuguese called the island Ilha das Vacas and constructed a fort there. The Dutch later named it Delft Island, while the Tamil name is Neduntheevu or Neduntivu. It is the largest island in the Palk Strait, in northern Sri Lanka.

Delft Island is a largely barren island with very little shade. The most common tree found on the island is the Palmyra tree, and Palmyra toddy has traditionally been one of the principal food items consumed by the island’s inhabitants.

In 1904, the Maniyagar of Delft reportedly said, “The health of people very good. All the people are fattened with toddy, and are quite drunk from morning till night, men, women, and children without exception.” This account was reportedly supported by a complaint from a parish priest, who requested that toddy tapping be restricted to male trees. Such a measure would have reduced the toddy supply to less than 50%. An alternative proposal was to impose a special toddy tax.

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To quote him:

” Unlike other places, here all the castes are climbers, and during the toddy season everybody drinks toddy-men, women, and even boys and girls before they set out for school in the morning.
It is, in fact, their food. The toddy drawing season lasts from January to September, and while it lasts the toddy-drinking makes the people most quarrelsome: husbands quarrel with wives, parents with children; in fact, everybody quarrels with everyone else, but when there is no toddy the people are well behaved and peaceful.”

This blissful period without toddy lasts for only three or four months of the year. The toddy produced on Delft is also said to be stronger than that found elsewhere, reportedly because it is collected in ola baskets rather than pots.

Various publications from the 19th and early 20th centuries report the remains of two forts on Delft Island. In addition to the main fort on the eastern coast, they describe the ruins of another small, fort-like structure in the northwestern corner of the island. Local inhabitants refer to this structure as Vediyarasan Fort, believing it to have been built by a local king named Vediyarasan.

However, detailed study has shown that the structure was not a fort. Instead, the remains are those of three ancient Buddhist stupas.

A description of these ruins is recorded by a writer who goes by the pen name “Penn” which he wrote in the Colombo Journal in 1832. This fort, he says,

“is situated on a gentle elevation about 200 yards from the rocky beach on the south-west side of the island. It is 60 yards in circumference, and about 20 feet high, having such parts of the outer surface as still remain coated with chunam, with mouldings of different devices. Two flights of steps to the east and west are still visible leading into the building, which has been floored about 12 feet above the level of the ground, and is so far different in style from any erection of the kind I ever saw, which were all solid, as are, I believe, the dagoba in the Kandyan territory. The foundations of four small temples are to be seen close to the larger one, and there have formerly been six’, two at the sides of each flight of steps, one at the north, and one at the south fronts, all circular and bell-shaped, with chunam ornaments and mouldings.”

Acting Government Agent JP Lewis (1897-1901) who visited the site wrote that “The building, of which they are the remains, was apparently originally a square fort, and about 3 or 4, yards square, but is now merely a mound of coral stones grown over with prickly pear and erukkalai (Calotropis Gingantea). It is probably, like the first fort, Portuguese, but they are both attributed to the traditional native kings, Vedi Arasan the Mnkkuvar king and Mikamam, the Karaiyar king.”

The more important and the larger of the forts lies close to the jetty of the island. This fort too has been built by the Portuguese. The fort is of odd shape and only the larger walls remain today.

A description of this fort is recorded by “Penn” in the Colombo Journal in 1832.

” A building of ‘strange structure and device’ was raised for the protection and habitation of the island lords. To call this a fort would be giving it too dignified a name; to designate it a house would be still less near the mark! Neither is it a tower, peel-house, or droog, square, round, oval or oblong; ‘it is like itself only,’ a fortified habitation, known to the natives of the ‘ old fort.’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The only way I can describe the shape of this edifices by supposing a square of 40 feet placed to the north of an oblong square of 90 feet by 45. The southern or principal front faces the small esplanade, and is 30 feet high, having two stories of two rooms each. The northern square facing the sea contains five upper rooms and four lower ones, or rather vaults, for they must have been extremely dark, from the total want of windows or doors, being only entered from above. There have been two entrances to the building, by flights of stone steps at the angles where the squares meet; an enemy is thus exposed to a flanking fire from the upper rooms, and also from the roof, which has been flat. The stone step of a flagstaff still remains in the floor of the principal room (the west one in the southern face), through the roof of which it has evidently been erected. Through the heart of one of the walls, which are of enormous thickness throughout, a stair leads to the roof from tho upper storey, the only way by which it appears to have been gained. A further appearance of strength, indeed, is given to the building by a solid buttress of stone smoothly coated with chunam, erected entirely round the southern square, and reaching from the ground at an angle of 45° to the upper storey (or half the height of the wall). This, as well as a great part of the building, is still strong and repairable, though built of uncut coral, from the excellent cement which has been used.”

Joseph Pearson’s Study of the Fort

Joseph Pearson, an Englishman, carried out a detailed study of the fort in 1912 and reconstructed a replica based on his findings. According to Pearson, the fort consists of a rectangle measuring 22.25 metres (73 feet) in length, excluding the buttresses, on the southern side, and a square measuring 12.2 metres (40 feet) on each side to the north.

The southern rectangle is strengthened by a continuous buttress that rises as high as the first floor. For most of its length, the buttress is 1.52 metres (5 feet) thick at ground level, while on the eastern side it reaches a thickness of as much as 3.05 metres (10 feet). Most of the walls are double in thickness up to the level of the first floor, but become single in the upper storey. This can be seen quite clearly by comparing the two plans.

Ground Floor

There are six rooms on the ground floor. The square room at the southwestern corner is filled with earth up to the level of the first floor. The six rooms are arranged in pairs, with each pair having a single entrance from outside.

Upper Storey

The upper storey contains another six rooms and two entrances. One entrance is reached by staircase A and leads to Room No. 12 (see plan of upper storey), while the other is reached by staircase B and provides access to the remaining five rooms. Staircase C leads from Room No. 12 to the roof, passing through the thickness of the walls in its upper section.

Pearson’s Corrections to Penn’s Description

Pearson identified several errors in the account given by “Penn” in the Colombo Journal in 1832. For example, Pearson identified only four rooms, rather than five, in the upper storey of the northern square.

Penn also described the lower rooms of the northern square as vaults, stating that “they must have been extremely dark, from the total want of windows or doors, being only entered from above.” Pearson, however, noted that although the rooms had no windows, they were all connected with the exterior either directly or indirectly through doors, as is clearly shown in the two plans. He further stated that there was no evidence to indicate that these rooms were entered from above.

Ground floor plan of Delft Fort published in 1923 on the FORTS OF THE JAFFNA ISLANDS by Joseph Pearson

Upper floor plan of Delft Fort published in 1923 on the FORTS OF THE JAFFNA ISLANDS by Joseph Pearson

“Romantic Ceylon: Its History, Legend, and Story” By Ralph Henry Bassett, published in 1929, has another detailed description of the fort and the island

” … Traces of the Portuguese administration of Delft remain in the ruins of a fort which was undoubtedly built by them, as Dutch military architecture was of a more modem type. It is a very strongly fortified two-storied dwelling, covering an area about fifty yards square, with a double centre wall of immense thickness. This wall completely cuts the fort in half at Ground-level, the only means of communication being on the first floor-a common precautionary measure in defensive structures of that period. As a result, it is a very complicated edifice, full of long narrow and little square rooms.
The stairs run in the double walls. and lead out on to what must have been a flat roof, judging from the marks of the rafter sockets in the masonry. In one corner is the dungeon, a small square room, with a floor below ground level. Without any door, and having only one small window about two feet square, leading into the interior of the fort. The unfortunate prisoners must have been pushed in through this little aperture, or let down through a trapdoor in the floor above, and could have got out only by means of a rope; a good many must have met their death in this little chamber. There is one large room which has the appearance of a mess-room, and a large number of small sleeping-rooms connected by corridors.
The Dutch built a barracks about a quarter of a mile from the fort, arid within their premises is a fine large Residency, now in use as the Government bungalow. The barracks were surrounded by a wall, a great part of which still stands, enclosing an area of about two hundred square yards. One of the barrack rooms is still in existence, although part of the wall has fallen almost to ground level. The most striking building is the Dutch dovecot, still in a state of perfect repair. It is made of coral stone, with a solid base about eight feet square….”

Today very little remains of this fort other than a few walls compared to the remains that the British saw in the early 1900s.

The coral walls of Dutch Fort at Delft island in Jaffna

References

NOTES ON DELFT. Lewis, J. (1909). The Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland, 21(62), 341-360.
NOTES ON THE FORTS OF THE JAFFNA ISLANDS. Pearson, J. (1923). The Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland, 29(76), 186-193.
Romantic Ceylon: Its History, Legend and Story. Ralph Henry Bassett (1929).

Also See

Guide to Delft Island (Neduntheevu) in Jaffna

Map of Delft Island Fort

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Driving Directions to Jaffna (Delft Island Fort)

Jaffna can be reached through two principal routes. The most commonly used approach is via Elephant Pass, which has long served as the traditional gateway to the Jaffna Peninsula.

An alternative route reaches Jaffna from the direction of Pooneryn by crossing the Sangupiddy Bridge. This crossing follows what was historically the ancient route to the peninsula before the construction of modern highways. The route provides a connection between Jaffna and the Mannar region.

Route 01 from Colombo to Jaffna Through Kurunegala (Popular Route)	Route 02 from Colombo to Jaffna Through Puttalam and Pooneryn (Lesser Traveled Route)
Through : Kurunegala – Dambulla – Anuradhapura – Vavuniya Distance: 410 km Travel Time: 7-8 hours Driving Directions: see on Google Maps.	Through: Puttalam – Thantirimale – Mannar – Poonaryn Distance: 408 km Travel Time: 8 hours Driving Directions: see on Google Maps.

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