Beside it, tourists are allowed to place wreaths. That hole is now covered by a white sheet and beneath it is a memorial shrine to all the souls that went through it. The hole leads into a deep and dark tunnel system that was used to takes slaves underneath the castle's courtyard, leading them to the "door of no return." The first one on the tour is where the strongest men were held together and the last one has a hole in the wall. The Obamas are expected to enter two of the dungeon's men's chambers at the front of the castle. He died at 46 and was buried next to his wife. She was the wife of George McLean, the British administrator of the castle. Whitehead, a 38-year old British soldier who was killed by a Dutch soldier in the courtyard. Phillip Quarcoo, the first black Anglican pastor, who died at the age of 75. The brick courtyard of the castle, which Ghanaians commonly refer to as Cape Coast Dungeon, has two 18-foot water wells and four graves. ![]() government officials inspected the grounds that Mr. Mensah explained to a tour group of 10 people on Thursday as U.S. And what was once a beautiful, orange-tiled roof has since lost much of its color.īut its black cannons and mortars are still strategically placed on a concrete deck facing the ocean and on the rooftops of its towers on each side of the three-story main building. Its crisp, white paint has since faded into almost gray over the years. In Cape Coast, which was originally called Cabo Corso, the castle is seems to have lost the grandeur of its heyday. At Elmina, located about six miles from Cape Coast, the Portuguese built a similar castle, which also was the grounds of the slave market. However, the first European settlement on these shores was at a place called Elmina - named so by the Portuguese who landed here in 1471. ![]() The British moved the capital to Accra in 1877. Originally built as a fort by the Swedes for their timber and mineral exportation, and then taken over by the Dutch before the English wrestled it away from them, the history of Cape Coast Castle remains the focal point of this coastal city.Ĭape Coast, a city of about a million people, was once the capital of what was then known as the Gold Coast. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrived in Ghana yesterday and are expected to visit the castle today on their inaugural presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa. Mensah, 26, Cape Coast Castle remains as one of Ghana's key tourist attractions. ![]() "You have to use your imagination to understand what it must have been like to be here back then, to see the evil of what one man did to another," said Isaac Mensah, a tour guide at the castle, which is seated on the oceanfront about 90 miles west of Accra.Īnd because people of all walks are compelled not only to imagine how the horror of slavery was implemented, but to walk and inhale the air in the dungeons where millions of Africans died - in body and soul - said Mr. CAPE COAST, GHANA - The door of no return, which for more than 100 years opened to the certainty of a short and brutal life for the millions of Africans that were captured off these shores and sold into slavery, now opens to the serene and awesome vastness of the Atlantic Ocean.Īnd the beach beyond the notorious exit door at Cape Coast Castle, which was the main British hub of the transatlantic slave trade in West Africa from 1665 to 1807, is now lined with an extensive slum of wooden shacks and colonial-era brick buildings covered with tin roofs.
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