St. David's Battery, Bermuda

St. David's Battery
Part of Bermuda Garrison
St. David's, Bermuda
A 9.2 inch gun at St. David's Battery (or the Examination Battery), in 2011. Two 6 inch guns are visible behind.
St. David's Battery
Coordinates	32°22′N 64°39′W / 32.37°N 64.65°W / 32.37; -64.65
Type	Artillery Battery
Site information
Owner	Government of Bermuda Ministry of the Environment, Telecommunications and E-Commerce, Department of Parks
Open to the public	yes
Site history
Built	1910
Built by	Royal Engineers
In use	1910-1953
Garrison information
Garrison	Bermuda Garrison

St. David's Battery, also known during wartime as the Examination Battery, was a fixed battery of rifled breech-loader (RBL) artillery guns, built and manned by the Royal Garrison Artillery and the Royal Engineers, and their part-time reserves, the Bermuda Militia Artillery and the Bermuda Volunteer Engineers, part of the Bermuda Garrison of the British Army.

One of the last of a large number of forts and fortified gun batteries built by the British Army primarily during the course of the 19th Century (many others had been built by the militia during the preceding centuries) to protect the British colony of Bermuda, and its Royal Naval Dockyard, the battery was completed in 1910.

Whereas the batteries and forts built prior to this, all of which housed coastal artillery, were originally designed to be equipped with cannon, or rifled muzzle-loading guns (although some were later redesigned to house RBL guns), St. David's Battery was the first designed specifically for rifled breech loaders.

The battery is equipped with two 9.2 inch Mk. X, and two BL 6 inch Mk VII guns, on Central Pivot Mk II mount, all with 360 degrees of traverse, and all built by Vickers. The battery is sited on top of Great Head (the larger of the two heads that together make up St. David's Head), at the East end of the Island of St. David's, itself at the East end of the archipelago of Bermuda. Bermuda sits just inside the southern perimeter of a circular barrier reef (the rim of the caldera of a submarine volcano). The reef parallels the South Shore at a distance of less than a quarter of a mile. To the North, it extends up to 18 miles from shore. There are no usable harbours on the South Shore, but large sheltered ones accessible from the lagoon within the reef to the North. This lagoon, however, can only be accessed by large vessels via a channel through the reefs which brings them near to the Eastern coast of St. David's Island. Passing St. David's, vessels can either enter into St. George's Harbour, or continue Northward, rounding the East end of St. George's Island, following through another channel that leads to the West, into the waters of the lagoon, from where they can reach the Great Sound, Hamilton Harbour, the Royal Naval Dockyard, and Murray's Anchorage.