Fort William at Anomabo: Ghana’s Forgotten Slave Trade Powerhouse - Cape Coast Castle: History, Tours & Slave Trade Legacy, Ghana Museum

The place before the fort

Fort William did not create Anomabo. Anomabo was already a powerful African trading community before the British built the great fort that still dominates its shoreline.

European traders had been trying to establish themselves here since the seventeenth century. The Dutch built a trading lodge at Anomabo in the 1640s, and the site subsequently became entangled in the rivalry between Dutch, English, Danish, Swedish and French interests on the Gold Coast.

The important point is what this rivalry reveals: Europeans did not simply arrive at an empty coast and build an economy from nothing. They came to existing African markets, political systems and trading communities, and they needed local permission, protection, supplies, brokers and commercial partners to operate.

Anomabo was controlled by the Fante. Its merchants connected the coast with inland markets, while European companies competed for the right to trade there. As the Atlantic demand for enslaved people expanded, the town's commercial importance expanded with it.

The fort was European. The trading town around it was African. The slave-trading system depended on both.

A distinction worth keeping. Anomabo, Anomabu and Annamaboe are variant forms found in historical and modern sources. This page uses Anomabo for the town and Fort William for the surviving British fort, while recognising that the present building was preceded by earlier Dutch and English establishments on or near the same site.

Why Fort William was built

The present fort dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1753 the British began constructing a new and much more substantial fortress at Anomabo, after French efforts to establish themselves there threatened British commercial interests.

The British Company of Merchants Trading to Africa backed the project, with substantial financial support from Britain. The engineer John Apperley designed the fort and became its first governor. After his death in 1756, Richard Brew continued the work. The fort was completed in the following years and became one of the major British positions on the Gold Coast.

It was not simply a coastal battery. Its location was commercial as much as military: Anomabo had a sheltered anchorage, access to inland trading routes, and an established Fante trading community. The fort allowed British merchants to protect their position while participating in the trade that flowed through the town.

A succession of forts

Fort William was not the first European structure here. An earlier Dutch lodge and the English Fort Charles had already occupied the Anomabo site. Fort Charles was abandoned and destroyed in the early eighteenth century, partly because the English wanted to concentrate resources elsewhere.

The French problem

By the 1740s and early 1750s, French interest in Anomabo increased the pressure on the British. Re-establishing a major British fort was therefore a commercial and strategic decision: lose Anomabo and Britain risked losing an important trading position.

Built with local materials

Ghana Museums and Monuments Board records that Fort William was constructed largely with local materials. Its surviving architecture is therefore not simply an imported European object placed on an African shore; it is also a product of local labour, materials, knowledge and supply networks.

The larger network

Fort William belonged to the same wider chain of coastal installations that included Cape Coast Castle, Fort William at Cape Coast, Fort Victoria and Komenda.

UNESCO's World Heritage documentation places Fort William within the larger group of Ghana's forts and castles associated with the history of trade, particularly the Atlantic slave trade. The property was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1979.

The slave trade

The uncomfortable fact is that Anomabo was not a minor outpost of the Atlantic slave trade. It was one of its major Gold Coast centres.

Long before the present Fort William was completed, Anomabo had become an important port for the export of enslaved people. The growth of the Atlantic trade transformed the town's commercial and political importance, bringing European merchants into increasingly intense competition for access to African captives.

One contemporary figure gives an indication of the scale. Ghana Museums and Monuments Board cites an English captain's report that between January 1702 and August 1708, at least 30,141 enslaved people were taken from Anomabo to Barbados and Jamaica. The same historical account makes clear that this figure did not include other voyages and destinations, meaning it cannot be treated as a complete total for Anomabo's trade.

Thirty thousand is not the story. It is one surviving number from a trade whose records are incomplete.

By the eighteenth century, Anomabo was particularly attractive to independent British traders known as "ten percenters". These merchants operated outside the Royal African Company's direct employment while paying for access to its trading system. Their presence demonstrates how commercial pressure could push the Atlantic trade beyond the formal structures of a single company.

Gold and other goods
Anomabo's trade was never exclusively about enslaved people. Gold, foodstuffs, ivory and other commodities were part of the wider commercial system.

Captives
People captured through warfare, political conflict, raiding and other forms of enslavement entered coastal markets in which European merchants purchased them for Atlantic shipment.

European goods
Firearms, gunpowder, textiles and other imported goods became part of the commercial relationships surrounding the trade.

The Atlantic connection
Captives purchased on the Gold Coast were shipped across the Atlantic to plantation societies in the Caribbean and the Americas, linking Anomabo directly to a global system of forced migration and labour.

Fort William therefore needs to be understood as more than a military building. Its importance lies in the economic system around it: merchants, ships, brokers, African political authorities, European companies, inland supply routes and the people who were forcibly moved through the system.

The Fante were not spectators

The history becomes distorted when the Europeans are made to appear as the only actors. Anomabo was a Fante political and commercial centre.

European companies could build forts, but they could not simply command the entire coastal economy from behind their walls. They depended upon relationships with African rulers, merchants and communities. At Anomabo, Fante political authority and commercial bargaining power were central to the operation of the port.

This did not make the Fante a single, unified actor with one position on every transaction. Individuals, families, chiefs, merchants and European companies could have competing interests. Alliances changed, prices were negotiated, and political power was continually contested.

Some African political authorities and merchants participated directly in the trade in enslaved people. Others resisted European demands or attempted to control the terms under which trade took place. Still others were themselves caught up in wars and political struggles that generated captives.

African agency does not mean equal power. It means recognising that Africans made decisions inside a violent system — while also recognising that many Africans were its victims.

The town mattered

The European fort could not function without Anomabo. Food, labour, water, information, transport, trade and political relationships all came through the surrounding community.

The merchants mattered

Fante and other African merchants negotiated with European traders and helped connect the coast to inland markets. The Atlantic trade was therefore built through African-European commercial relationships, not simply European command.

The inland kingdoms mattered

The history of Anomabo cannot be separated from the political transformations of the interior, including the rise of the Denkyira and later Asante.

The record is incomplete

Much of the surviving documentation was created by European companies and officials. Reading those records critically matters because the people being traded often appear in them as numbers, cargoes or financial entries rather than as individuals.

For a deeper examination of African participation and agency in the coastal trade, see The Untold Role of Local Ghanaians on the Gold Coast and Ashanti, Fante and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

When the fort became a battlefield

Fort William was built to protect commerce. In the early nineteenth century, the political conflicts created by that commerce helped put it directly in the path of war.

In 1806–07, conflict between Asante and Fante forces spread towards the coast. The British position at Anomabo became entangled in the struggle, particularly after people fleeing the fighting sought refuge around the fort.

On 15 June 1806, according to the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board account, Fort William was besieged by Asante forces and capitulated the following day. Other historical accounts differ over the chronology and details of the fighting, but the broader point is secure: Anomabo had become strategically important enough that the fort was drawn into the conflict between the Asante state, Fante communities and British interests.

This episode also exposes how artificial it is to separate "the slave trade" from the political history of the Gold Coast. Trade, firearms, political alliances, warfare, territorial expansion and enslavement were interconnected.

The Asante factor

Asante expansion altered the balance of power across the interior. Coastal states and European companies had to respond to a major African state whose interests could not be ignored.

The Fante position

Fante states were not simply caught between Europeans and Asante. They pursued their own political interests and defended their autonomy, sometimes cooperating with Europeans and sometimes resisting them.

The British dilemma

British merchants wanted stable trade. But once political conflict reached Anomabo, the fort's military purpose and its commercial purpose collided.

A changing Gold Coast

The nineteenth century would bring a different political landscape, as the Atlantic slave trade was progressively suppressed and British colonial authority expanded.

Fort William was never merely a wall against the sea. It stood at the intersection of African politics, European commerce and Atlantic slavery.

After the slave trade

Britain's abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807 did not make Fort William irrelevant overnight. The fort remained part of Britain's wider presence on the Gold Coast, even as the commercial system around it changed.

Like many forts and castles along the coast, Fort William was repeatedly adapted to new purposes. It became a reminder of the remarkable durability of colonial infrastructure: buildings constructed for trade and military control could later become administrative buildings, prisons, residences or public institutions.

Fort William was used as a rest house and post office before becoming a state prison. Ghana Museums and Monuments Board records that its prison use continued until 2001.

The strangest part of the story may be that a building once used to confine people for Atlantic shipment later became a prison under a different political order.

Today the fort is in the custody of Ghana's heritage authorities and has been adapted for community use. The Ghana Museums and Monuments Board describes it as serving Anomabo as a community library.

From commerce to heritage

The building survived because it could be reused. Its continued existence allows visitors to encounter a physical structure whose original economic purpose has disappeared.

From prison to library

Its later history complicates the usual museum narrative. Fort William was not frozen in the eighteenth century; people continued to use, alter and reinterpret it.

World Heritage

Fort William forms part of Ghana's UNESCO-listed forts and castles, inscribed in 1979 for their testimony to the history of European-African trade and the Atlantic slave trade.

But listing is not enough

UNESCO's documentation has repeatedly identified conservation pressures affecting Ghana's coastal heritage, including environmental exposure, development pressure and limited resources for regular maintenance.

The fort beside the better-known castle

Cape Coast Castle receives far more visitors. That does not mean Fort William tells a smaller story.

Cape Coast Castle became the headquarters of British power on the Gold Coast and is now one of Ghana's best-known heritage sites. Fort William at Anomabo was smaller, but its position in the commercial network was extraordinarily important.

Anomabo's earlier slave-trading activity predates the present Fort William. This is crucial: the history of the port cannot be reduced to the date on the surviving building. The town had already become a major slave-trading centre before the 1753 fort was constructed.

The comparison with Cape Coast therefore works in reverse to the usual tourist narrative. Cape Coast Castle is the place most visitors associate with the system. Anomabo helps reveal the much larger network that made such castles possible.

Cape Coast

The major British administrative and military centre, extensively preserved and now one of Ghana's principal historical destinations. See History of Cape Coast Castle.

Anomabo

A Fante-controlled commercial centre whose importance to the Atlantic trade was already established before the present British fort was built.

The wider chain

European forts did not operate independently. They formed a coastal network connected to inland markets, African political states and Atlantic shipping routes.

The missing memory

The public story often remembers the surviving European architecture more easily than the African towns, merchants, political systems and victims that made the trade possible.

See also Map and Context of the Gold Coast for the wider geography, and Tracing the Slave Routes of Ghana and West Africa for the movement of people and goods beyond the forts themselves.

Visiting Fort William today

Fort William is still standing. That makes it one of the most important surviving places from Anomabo's Atlantic history — and one that can be overlooked by visitors who stay only in Cape Coast and Elmina.

The fort sits at Anomabo on Ghana's Central Region coast, roughly 15–16 kilometres east of Cape Coast. Its position makes it a natural addition to a Cape Coast heritage itinerary.

Ghana Museums and Monuments Board currently records the fort as open from 9:00am to 4:30pm. The published entrance fees on the GMMB page were last identified as having been reviewed in February 2013, so visitors should confirm current arrangements before travelling.

The experience is different from Cape Coast Castle. Here, the surrounding town remains an important part of what you are seeing. The fort should not be treated as an isolated monument: Anomabo itself is part of the history.

Allow time for Anomabo

Do not arrive, photograph the fort and immediately leave. The town, coastline and relationship between the fort and settlement are essential to understanding the site.

Pair it with Cape Coast

The fort works particularly well alongside Cape Coast Castle, because the two sites illuminate different parts of the same coastal system.

Make it a fort circuit

A longer itinerary can include Fort Komenda, Fort William at Cape Coast and Fort Victoria.

Combine history and nature

For visitors staying in the Cape Coast area, the fort can be combined with Kakum National Park as part of a wider Central Region itinerary.

We recommend checking local opening arrangements before setting out. Heritage sites can have changing access conditions, staffing arrangements and conservation work.

A better way to see the forts

Fort William makes most sense when you see it as part of a network rather than as a single isolated building.

A driver or guide can make the difference between seeing several forts as unrelated ruins and understanding the coastline as a connected historical landscape.

See also our own Guided Tours of 6 Forts and Castles. We may earn a commission when you book a recommended tour, at no extra cost to you. No operator has paid to appear on this page.

Connected reading

Anomabo and the forts

Fort William at Anomabo — this page's main subject.
Fort William at Cape Coast · Fort Victoria
Fort Komenda · Fort Royal
Full List of Forts and Castles in Ghana · Map and Context of the Gold Coast

The slave trade and African agency

Memory, return and remembrance

Cape Coast and the wider story

Heritage, preservation and the present

Reviewed 31 August 2026. Published on CapeCoastCastleMuseum.com. Fort William at Anomabo is a surviving British fort in Ghana's Central Region. The present structure was begun in 1753 by the British Company of Merchants Trading to Africa after renewed French interest in Anomabo, and was designed by engineer John Apperley. Construction continued after Apperley's death under Richard Brew. Earlier European establishments had occupied the Anomabo area, including a Dutch trading lodge and an English fort known as Fort Charles. Anomabo was already an important African trading centre before the present Fort William was built. Its Fante political and commercial community was deeply involved in the coastal trade, while European merchants competed for access to the port. The town became a major centre in the Atlantic slave trade, and surviving historical evidence indicates substantial exports of enslaved people from Anomabo before and during the period of Fort William's operation. Ghana Museums and Monuments Board cites a historical report stating that from January 1702 to August 1708 at least 30,141 enslaved people were taken from Anomabo to Barbados and Jamaica; the same evidence indicates that this did not represent the total trade from the port because other destinations and transactions were excluded. The figure is therefore presented here as a documented historical report, not as a complete lifetime total for Anomabo. Fort William subsequently became involved in the political and military conflicts of the Gold Coast, including the Asante-Fante conflict of 1806–07. The exact chronology and details of the fighting differ between historical accounts, so this page does not present disputed casualty figures as settled fact. After the Atlantic slave trade was abolished by Britain in 1807, the fort continued in other roles. Ghana Museums and Monuments Board records its later use as a rest house, post office and state prison, with prison use continuing until 2001. It is now used as a community library. Fort William forms part of Ghana's UNESCO World Heritage property, the Forts and Castles of Ghana, inscribed in 1979. This page distinguishes documented evidence from interpretation and does not claim that surviving figures provide a complete measure of the human traffic through Anomabo. All photography © Remo Kurka. Usage strictly by prior authorisation only.