Cape Coast Castle: Slave Fort on Ghana's Gold Coast

Cape Coast Castle, on the coast of Ghana, began as a small Swedish trading lodge in 1653 and became the headquarters of the British on the Gold Coast for more than two centuries. Its dungeons held enormous numbers of Africans before they were shipped into slavery in the Americas. Today it is a museum and one of the most powerful memorials to the Atlantic slave trade.

Origins: a contested lodge

The town of Cape Coast lay in the small Akan state of Fetu. The Portuguese called the headland Cabo Corso, the “short cape”, which English traders turned into Cape Coast. In 1653 Henrik Carloff, working for the Swedish Africa Company, built a timber lodge there named Carolusborg after King Charles X Gustav of Sweden.

The lodge changed hands several times in a confusing decade. Carloff himself later helped the Danes take it in 1658, and it passed between Swedish, Danish and Dutch control and local Fetu rulers. In 1664 an English expedition under Robert Holmes captured it, and despite Dutch counter-attacks during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the English kept it under the peace of 1667.

The British headquarters

Cape Coast Castle became the main West African base first of the Company of Royal Adventurers and then of the Royal African Company, founded in 1672. The company rebuilt it in brick and stone, and it was enlarged several times in the 18th century into a large fortress with bastions, cannon platforms, warehouses, offices, a chapel and quarters for officers and soldiers.

After 1752 the castle passed to the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, which ran the British forts until 1821. It was then the seat of British government on the Gold Coast until the capital moved to Accra in 1877. Its rival, Dutch-held Elmina Castle, stood about 13 kilometres to the west.

The castle was a small town in itself. Besides the governor and a garrison of European soldiers, it depended on many Africans: free workers, interpreters and traders from Cape Coast town, skilled canoemen who carried goods and people through the heavy surf, and enslaved “castle slaves” owned by the company, who did much of the building and heavy labour. The company paid ground rent and gifts to local Fante rulers, whose goodwill was needed for food, water and trade.

The castle was also drawn into regional politics. In the 18th century the powerful inland kingdom of Asante expanded towards the coast, and in 1807 its army reached the coast near Anomabu, forcing the British to negotiate. Relations between the British, the Fante states and Asante shaped the history of the region for the rest of the century.

The dungeons and the Door of No Return

Below the courtyard lie the castle’s slave dungeons, cut partly into the rock. The male dungeon consists of several vaulted chambers that could hold up to about 1,000 people at a time; a smaller dungeon held women. Captives, many taken in wars or raids in the interior and sold by African traders, could be held for weeks or months in darkness, heat and filth before a ship arrived. Many died there.

When a ship was ready, captives were led through a narrow passage to a sea gate, today called the Door of No Return, and rowed out in canoes to the vessel offshore. From there they faced the Middle Passage to the Caribbean and North America. Above the dungeons, officers lived in comfortable rooms, and the castle chapel stood directly over the male dungeon, a contrast many visitors find striking.

The castle’s role grew with the British slave trade as a whole. In the 18th century British ships carried more enslaved Africans across the Atlantic than those of any other nation, an estimated 3 million or more between the 1660s and 1807, and the Gold Coast was one of their main sources. Cape Coast Castle served as the administrative centre of this trade on the coast, where officials kept accounts, stored trade goods and organised the sale of captives to ship captains, both company and private.

Today the dungeons are bare, dim and silent. Small openings high in the walls let in a little light and air, and guides point out a channel cut into the floor for waste. Wreaths, flowers and other offerings left by visitors, many of them descendants of enslaved Africans from the Americas and the Caribbean, now turn the chambers into a place of mourning and prayer, and many visitors describe the experience of standing in them as deeply emotional and difficult.

After the slave trade

Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807 and slavery in its colonies in 1834. Cape Coast Castle remained an administrative and military centre. George Maclean, president of the merchants’ council from 1830, extended British influence among the coastal states. He and his wife, the poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon, who died at the castle in 1838, are buried in the courtyard.

In the 20th century the castle was used for government purposes before becoming a heritage site. Restoration in the 1990s, with international support, created a museum on the history of the Gold Coast and the slave trade. Some of the work, such as whitewashing the walls, was criticised by diaspora visitors who felt it made the place look too clean for what it represents.

Myths and facts

It is often assumed that all enslaved people from the Gold Coast passed through Cape Coast or Elmina. In fact captives were shipped from dozens of forts, lodges and open beaches along the coast, and many were embarked directly from smaller posts. The big castles were important, but they were only part of a much wider trade.

The name “Door of No Return” is also a modern one. Records from the period describe sea gates and passages, but the phrase became widespread in the late 20th century as the castle was reinterpreted as a memorial. The name expresses a historical truth: almost none of those who passed through ever came back.

Remembrance today

Since 1979 Cape Coast Castle has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site that covers the forts and castles of Ghana’s coast. It is a central venue for Emancipation Day and the PANAFEST festival, and the remains of two people of African descent from the Americas were carried back through the Door of No Return in 1998 for reburial in Ghana. In 2009 US President Barack Obama visited the castle with his family.

Timeline

• 1653: Henrik Carloff builds the Swedish lodge of Carolusborg.
• 1658: Danish forces, guided by Carloff, take the lodge.
• 1664: English forces under Robert Holmes capture Cape Coast.
• 1672: The Royal African Company makes it its West African headquarters.
• 1752: Control passes to the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa.
• 1807: Britain abolishes its slave trade.
• 1877: The British capital moves from Cape Coast to Accra.
• 1979: The castle is inscribed as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

Cape Coast Castle shows how European trading companies turned a stretch of West African coast into a machine for the slave trade. Its dungeons and sea gate make that history tangible, and for people of African descent around the world the castle has become a place of mourning, memory and reconnection.