Imperial fortress

Imperial fortress was the designation given in the British Empire to four colonies that were located in strategic positions from each of which Royal Navy squadrons could control the surrounding regions and, between them, much of the planet. The Imperial fortresses provided not only safe harbours and (with the advent of steam propulsion) coal stores within the area of operation, but also Royal Naval Dockyards where ships of the squadrons could be repaired or maintained without requiring their return to a dockyard in the British Isles. The Imperial fortresses were also locations where military stores were stockpiled and numbers of soldiers sufficient not only for local defence, but also to provide expeditionary forces to work with the Royal Navy in amphibious campaigns and raids on coasts throughout the regions, could be garrisoned. These Imperial fortresses originally included: Halifax, in Nova Scotia Bermuda Gibraltar Malta They were the lynch pins in Britain's domination of the oceans and the Mediterranean and Caribbean seas, including its ability to deny safe passage to enemy naval and merchant vessels while protecting its own merchant trade, as well as to its projection of superior naval and military force anywhere on the planet. Halifax and Bermuda controlled the transatlantic sea lanes between North America and Europe, and were placed to dominate the Atlantic seaboard of the United States (as demonstrated during the American War of 1812 when the squadron of the Royal Navy's North America Station maintained a blockade of the Atlantic coast of the United States and launched the Chesapeake Campaign from Bermuda, defeating American forces at Bladensburg, burning Washington, DC, and raiding Alexandria, Virginia, before ultimately being defeated at Baltimore and forced to withdrawn back to Bermuda), as well as to control the western Atlantic Ocean from the Arctic to the West Indies (in the twentieth century, the Bermuda-based North America and West Indies Station of the Royal Navy would become the 'America and West Indies Station', its area growing to include the western South Atlantic and the Atlantic coast of South America, as well the Pacific coast from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic).