Fort Cornwallis

This guide to Fort Cornwallis in George Town starts at the cannon on its ramparts, still visited today by women hoping its bronze will help them conceive. It traces the gun's four centuries changing hands, cast by Dutch traders around 1603, gifted to the Sultan of Johor, seized by raiders from Aceh, before it ever reached this fort. Along the way it follows Captain Francis Light, who built the first fort from palm trunks the day he landed in 1786, bracing for an attack that never came.