Cape Coast Castle

Today's fort is kind of intense. It's in Ghana, and it has kind of slave-y history. There are several pretty good forts on the Ghanaian coast, actually, but this one is probably the best-preserved. I was not aware of this, but apparently Scandinavian countries also had a thumb in the Africa pie, because Cape Coast Castle was originally a wooden fort named 'Carolusborg', built for the Sweidsh government by Henry Caerlof, a Swiss sea captain, in 1653. Swedes in Africa? Whaaat.


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Apparently Caerlof wasn't really providing a top quality product to his Swedish masters, because Carolusborg was captured by the Danes in 1657. The Danes too! I know! It's pretty weird, but remember; this was the 17th century. The bottom didn't fall out of the international salted codfish market until 1662, so the Hanseatic Leaguers still had some juice left. The English captured the fort and by extension, Ghana, in 1664, and got down to some serious slave trading until they knocked that shit off in 1807. This castle had some amazing throughput; at any time there were about 1500 people hanging out in the castle's basement waiting to be sold and loaded onto slave ships. Bummer! The castle did snag a UN World Heritage Site listing out of the deal, though. The castle looks pretty good and there are also two little auxiliary look-out forts on either flank that are as cute as buttons.


The town of Cape Coast is really into crabs. It is even the town's symbol. So I would recommend you bring my grandma to this fort because, bless her soul, that woman loves her the shit out of some crabs. Also bring some crab bibs.