Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Trincomalee

TRINCOMALEE, a town and naval station in the island of Ceylon, is situated on the north-east coast which is bold, rocky, and picturesquely wooded by road 113 miles north-north-east of Kandy, in 8 33 30" N. lat. and 81 13 10" E. long. It is built on the north side of the Bay of Trincomalee, on the neck of a bold peninsula separating the inner from the outer harbour. There is a lighthouse on the extremity of Foul Point at the southern side of the bay, and another on the summit of Round Island. The inner harbour is landlocked, with a safe anchorage and deep water close to the principal wharves; the outer harbour has an area of about 4 square miles, with a depth of about 70 fathoms. There is an admiralty dockyard, and the town is the principal naval station in the Indian seas. The breadth of the streets and esplan ades somewhat atones for the mean appearance of the houses, but the town generally has a gloomy and im poverished aspect. Pearl oysters are found in the lagoon of Tambalagam to the west of the bay. The Government buildings include the barracks, the public offices and re sidences of the civil and naval authorities, and the official house of the officer commanding-in-chief in the Indian seas. There is an hospital and outdoor dispensary, and also a f riend-in-need society. The population of Trincomalee in 1881 was 10,180.

The town was one of the earliest settlements of the Malabar race in Ceylon, who at a very early period erected on a height at the extremity of the peninsula, now crowned by Fort Frederick, a temple dedicated to Kouatha, or Konasir, named the " temple of a thousand columns." The building was desecrated and destroyed in 1622, when the town was taken by the Portuguese, who made use of the materials for the erection of the fort. The town was successively held by the Dutch (1639), the French (1673), the Dutch (1674), the French (1782), and the Dutch (1783). After a siege of three weeks it surrendered to the British fleet in 1795, and with other Dutch possessions in Ceylon was formally ceded to Great Britain by the treaty of Amiens in 1801. Its fortifications have lately been strengthened.|1}}