Hobe Fort Audio Guide

Hobe Fort: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to The Hobe Fort

   Welcome to The Hobe Fort, a Qing dynasty military site in Tamsui District, in New Taipei City. Its local name is 滬尾砲台. Tamsui is famous for its riverside old street, but this fort stands on higher ground, close to where the Tamsui River meets the sea, and it feels a world away from the crowds. It is the largest and best preserved of Tamsui's old forts, and it was built in 1886 under Liu Mingchuan, who served as Taiwan's first governor. Above the entrance gate you can still see four large characters in his own handwriting: Beimen Suoyue, which means the lock and key of the northern gate. That is exactly what this place was meant to be. Over the next few minutes we will look at why the fort was built, who designed it, and how it came to survive almost intact. We will also look at what you can see and do here today. If you arrive by bus, you get off at the stop named for the fort and walk a short slope uphill. Take a moment on the way to look back at the river glinting below.

2. 02

   The Hobe Fort and the War That Made It

   To understand this fort, start with the Sino-French War of 1884. When the second Keelung campaign broke out in October, French ships attacked Keelung and also sent part of their fleet toward Tamsui. Qing commanders feared the French would steam up the Tamsui River and reach Taipei. So they gave up Keelung to hold Tamsui, a strategy remembered as abandoning Keelung to protect Tamsui. The old forts around the harbor mouth took a beating, and almost all of them were destroyed by the French. Even so, the commander Sun Kaihua led his troops and local volunteers in defending Tamsui, and the Qing side won a victory there against the French. That war showed how exposed Taiwan's coast was. Afterward, Liu Mingchuan pushed to rebuild the island's defenses in a new, modern style, and the fort you are visiting is one of the results. It was built in the aftermath of the fight for Tamsui, as an answer to what that fight had revealed.

3. 03

   Guns, German Design and a Tight Budget at The Hobe Fort

   The design came from a German engineer, Max Hecht, who was put in charge of building Western-style forts. He chose five harbors: Penghu, Keelung, Tamsui, Anping and Qijin. In total 10 new forts were planned, all to be armed with Armstrong guns from Britain, 31 of them in all, ordered through the British firm Jardine Matheson. At Tamsui, two new forts were planned. One was the fort you are standing in, the other was a small one at the torpedo camp, and nothing of that one remains. Building followed a clear order. First the site's boundaries were fixed, then the trenches, barracks and outer works were dug and raised. After that came the walls and bases for the guns. But the guns were late, and work on those parts stalled. Imported iron and cement were also expensive, so some corners were probably trimmed in sections that enemy fire would not directly strike. Once the guns were installed in May 1890, the fort was complete. The armament did not stay the same. During the Sino-Japanese War, two eight-inch Armstrong breech-loading guns were swapped for two Krupp guns of 21 centimeters, with their muzzles aimed straight at the river mouth.

4. 04

   A Fort That Never Fought: The Hobe Fort in 1895

   Here is the twist in this fort's story: after all that effort, it never actually took part in a battle. In June 1895, after Taiwan was ceded to Japan, the Japanese warships arrived at Tamsui. On the ninth of June, Togo Heihachiro brought his ships to the harbor and fired more than 10 shells at the fort. But the garrison had already fled, and Tamsui fell that same day. The guns did not last either. They were removed during the Japanese era, and today the north gun platform holds a full-scale replica of an eight-inch Armstrong gun, so you can picture the fort as it once looked. The fort was also damaged later, when some of its passageways were set alight by people who had slipped inside, causing an explosion and a partial collapse. Because it was never shelled into ruin, though, the fort remains remarkably complete. It is the only fort Liu Mingchuan built on the main island of Taiwan that survives. It was designated a national second-class historic site in 1985.

5. 05

   Walking Through The Hobe Fort Today

   Today the fort is run by the Tamsui Historic Sites Museum. Two layers of wall surround it. Inside, the old soldiers' quarters, storerooms and offices now hold old photographs of Tamsui and historical displays, along with interactive exhibits, including augmented reality and a gun-defense joystick game, that bring the Battle of Tamsui to life. Out on the gun platforms you get a view over the Tamsui River, and the shell bases, tunnels and long corridors make the place a joy to explore and photograph. One small curiosity is the character in the fort's Chinese name, which is sometimes written with an older form meaning gun. It is an ancient form of the everyday character, and in recent years it has been restored on many of Taiwan's historic fort sites. A single ticket, priced at 80 New Taiwan dollars, also covers Fort San Domingo and the former residence of the customs commissioner, known as the Little White House. Certain visitors, such as local residents and children, enter free. The fort is about a fifteen-minute walk from Fort San Domingo, and the Tamsui Martyrs' Shrine nearby, famous for its whispering pines, makes a pleasant add-on.