The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

THE United States is investing $245,000 to restore Fort Montagu, including major conservation work on its historic cannons, as part of an effort to preserve one of The Bahamas’ oldest surviving military landmarks.

US Ambassador to The Bahamas Herschel Walker said the project, funded through the United States Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation and the Freedom 250 Initiative, represents the second-largest US investment in cultural preservation in The Bahamas.

American and Bahamian officials gathered at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas last night to mark the initiative.

Fort Montagu was built in 1741.

Mr Walker said the United States has invested more than $750,000 in Bahamian cultural preservation projects.

“Fort Montagu has stood there for nearly three centuries,” Mr Walker said, describing its preservation as an important part of the Bahamian story.

He said the project also demonstrates what can be achieved through cooperation between the two countries.

Dr Michael Pateman, executive chairman of the Antiquities, Monuments and Museums Corporation, said the restoration will include work on the fort’s roof and urgent conservation of its cannons.

“The cannons also require urgent attention,” Dr Pateman said. “Salt, moisture, and the coastal environment have caused serious corrosion.”

He said the proposed treatment will use electrolytic reduction, a specialised conservation technique intended to remove destructive chlorides and salts.

“This process will probably take about 12 months,” Dr Pateman said, “but it offers the best opportunity to preserve these cannons for future generations.”

Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage Leslia Miller-Brice said professionals and partners from The Bahamas, the United States and the Dominican Republic will contribute expertise to the restoration.

Mrs Miller-Brice said the project is intended to preserve not only the physical fort but the history and identity attached to it.

“Fort Montagu is still standing,” Mrs Miller-Brice said, “and tonight, The Bahamas and the United States are connected once again through this historic site, not through conflict, but through friendship, collaboration, and a shared commitment to preservation.”

“We are preserving memory,” she said. “We are preserving identity. We are preserving a place where history happened.”

Mrs Miller-Brice said she particularly wants young Bahamians to understand that the country’s history is not something confined to distant places.

“I want our young people, especially, to understand that history did not only happen in distant places in textbooks,” she said. “History happened here, on our shores, in this harbor, on Bahamian soil.”