St. George fort

Hello Readers, as you see this is my report about the museum at St. George fort. This fort in Chennai, built in 1639 AD, was also a very important Government head quarter. So, let’s start with coins. If you were Tamilian you might have heard of this colloquial term dhutu which means money. But the reality is this word is actually derived from the French occupied Pondicherry. I’m also very surprised that the French king was so kind that he allowed the Pondicherry right, “PUDCHERY” in Tamil letters. 

Also did you that modern day rupees cash in Tamil is called PANAM. Even that’s origin is from madras fanam. After that another very important thing displayed in the museum is bomb fragments dropped by the German Emden ship. Another one by Japanese fighter air craft.

After in the weaponry section, we have lots of guns and cannons. Few of those are belonged to the prince of Tanjore, as the Tanjore Marathas were having friendship with the British.  The others were just normal Britishers. If you are talking about cannons mostly cannons inside the museum was mini cannons at least 1feet tall. If you go to the Cannon balls things become interesting, there are many types of cannon balls. The first one in the images is called grapeshot, the second on the image is called chain shot which was used to capture animals, soldiers. The other balls in the panel are just the bigger ones, if you ask what in the bottom, they are used to break walls.            

 

Also, in the medals section they had a big gold coin about queen Victoria. I think it almost weighed 100 pounds almost the weight of a cannon ball. It proclaimed Ms Victoria as the empress of India. This coin was released at 1877 1st JAN.

After that I went to see the books panel in that I saw three books printed at the panel which was from the 16th century AD. Unfortunately, we didn’t take a photo picture of that.

Then we went out of the museum and went St. Mary’s church. But that day was Sunday, so it was closed by 12PM.

If you are in Chennai this is a must place to visit to learn history.


Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *