| Torra di Mortella | |
| Monument historique |
The Torra di Mortella is a Genoese tower in Corsica, located on Mortella (Myrtle) Point in the commune of Saint-Florent, Haute-Corse. It was a progenitor of the numerous Martello towers the British built in the 19th Century throughout their empire.
On 7 February 1794, two British warships, HMS Fortitude (74 guns) and HMS Juno (32 guns), unsuccessfully attacked the tower at Mortella Point; the tower eventually fell to land-based forces under Sir John Moore after two days of heavy fighting.
Late in the previous year, the tower's French defenders had abandoned it after HMS Lowestoffe (32 guns) had fired two broadsides at it. Then the French were easily able to dislodge the garrison of Corsican patriots that had replaced them.[1] Still, the British were impressed by the effectiveness of the tower when properly supplied and defended and copied the design. However, they got the name wrong, misspelling "Mortella" as "Martello". When the British withdrew from Corsica in 1803, they, with great difficulty, blew up the tower, leaving it in an unusable state.[2]
It is one of the Official Historical Monuments of France.[3][4]
