LIKE a preacher in the pulpit, the greatest fortress of St. Kitts rises above the congregation of the countryside below, ready to rain down fire and brimstone, as the priest would call down the wrath of God and visions of hell upon wrongdoers.

Brimstone, aka sulphur, is often associated with the greatest natural producer of fire, the volcano. No doubt the image of Hell the preacher of old wished to invoke in parishioners had some of its origins in the smelly and fiery eruptions of the earth. The rotten-egg odour of sulphur, as hydrogen sulphide, can be as suffocating to the nose as fire is consuming of the skin.

The metaphorically named Brimstone Hill Fortress underscores the use of sulphur as one of the main and essential ingredients of gunpowder, the first chemically explosive substance know to man. If at the wrong end, its guns would deliver a reality of hell, a deluge of fire and hot iron propelled by brimstone mixed with charcoal and saltpetre, that is sulphur plus carbon plus potassium nitrate equals boom.

Brimstone Hill is one of the finest fortifications in the West Indies and was designated by UNESCO in 1999 as a World Heritage Site, a singular honour for a singularly complex building and site. Without brimstone, forts like this would have remained the castles of older times, when boiling oil from the embattlements and the bow and arrow ruled supreme.

Often found in volcanic conditions, such as the hot springs of St. Lucia, sulphur is one of the most abundant elements on the planet and an essential material for life on earth. It comes in many forms and numerous compounds, including well-known substances such as sulphuric acid. Gypsum, pyrites, galena and cinnabar are but a few of the sulphides and sulphates that inhabit our world.

Without sulphur, war, as we know it, would have never become the explosive affair that now affects every corner of the globe. By our own inventions, we have delivered a continuous Hell on Earth by the use of brimstone as gunpowder.

The Chinese probably invented gunpowder and began to use it in warfare in the early 900s, though several hundred years would pass before it was used as a propellant in cannon. This new weaponry made its way to Europe, where it eventually provided the technology for the forceful colonisation of much of the world (including St. Kitts) by the new nation states bordering the northeastern Atlantic.

The English scholar and friar, Roger Bacon, wrote of gunpowder as capable of projecting a fire that can be launched over a long distance and by only using a very small quantity of this material much light can be created accompanied by a horrible fracas. It was to Bacon an artificial lightning and thunder and so it would have appeared to the French in the coastal plain below Brimstone Hill Fortress when they attacked it in 1782 under Admiral Comte de Grasse.

The fortress fell to the French after a siege of a month, but the politicians intervened and by the Treaty of Paris the following year, St. Christopher, as St. Kitts was originally named, was ceded to the British. It so remained until the island, with the adjacent Nevis and Anguilla went independent in 1983. Anguilla soon departed this marriage and is now a British Overseas Territory, with a landmass five times the size of Bermuda and a population four times smaller.

In the non-proportional representation at the United Nations where one country equals one vote, St. Kitts has the same power as a county like Brazil with 3,000 times the population. To the chagrin of preservationists, the lopsided voting power of some small countries in the West Indies appears to be assisting Japan and Norway to resume whaling, which is regrettable.

Back on St. Kitts, from whence many Bermudian families derived in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the preservation of land monuments has proceeded apace under the St. Christopher Heritage Society and the Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park Society. Their fine work is acknowledged by the designation of the Fortress as a World Heritage Site, a tribute to the years of effort by managers Jacqueline and Larry Armony, project donors and countless volunteers.

Brimstone Hill Fortress occupies a great outcrop of volcanic rock and some limestone, which rises 800 feet above the coastal plain near Sandy Point Town in the northwestern corner of St. Kitts. The limestone provided lime for mortar after burning and some Bermuda cedar may be present serving as lintels in gunports. The fortifications were built up over a century or so from the 1690s and now comprise several works on the successive slopes of the little mountain. At the top is the Citadel where museum exhibits are housed, including items lost at Bermuda, such as fine copper measures for gunpowder.

Looking down from the heights of the Citadel, the Prince of Wales Bastion proudly thrusts to the west and the Caribbean Sea. Below the Bastion at sea level and absolutely commanded by Brimstone Hill Fortress, should an enemy invest it, stands Fort Charles, last used as a hospital for lepers into recent times. Bermuda has no fortification to compare with Brimstone Hill Fortress for the 1700s, for it was a military backwater until after the American Revolution. A comprehensive tour for the fortress tourist would include both islands, for we have the finest early 1600s works and some of the best 1800s forts.

Once the United States came into being, the military importance of the West Indies was replaced by Bermuda. This is reflected in hard copy in the great forts that yet survive here from the 19th century, excepting Fort Langton, which was unnecessarily reduced to an industrial site in 1984.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. The views expressed here are his opinion, not necessarily those of the trustees or staff of the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm, to PO Box MA 133, Sandys MABX, or by telephone at 799-5480.