The exact year
Sources agree on the 1720s and on the Royal African Company; a precise founding year is not reliably given.
Header Photo - at Richter Fort Osu, Accra
Ghana-Net.com · Central Region · Ekumfi · Otuam
A small English fort built in the 1720s to trade in people, praised by a company surveyor in 1727 as "a pretty little regular fort" — and so thoroughly forgotten since that archaeologists now need radar to find out what is left of it under the ground at Otuam.
Between Saltpond and Apam, on the Ekumfi coast, lies Otuam — also known as Tantum. In the 1720s the English Royal African Company built a fort here and called it Tantumquery. Its purpose was the same as every other company fort of that period: to buy captives from the interior and hold them for the ships.
Little of it stands today. Much of what survives is below the surface, and in 2026 archaeologists published a study that used ground-penetrating radar and excavation to map the buried remains. That is where Fort Tantumquery is now: not a monument you walk around, but a site you have to dig for.
Built for the slave trade. Some forts on this coast began with gold and turned to people later. Tantumquery was built in the 1720s, when the Atlantic slave trade was the business. For the scale of that trade, see The Forgotten Giants of the Atlantic Slave Trade and The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade under British Rule.
The best description of Tantumquery comes from the man sent to check whether it was worth the money.
In 1727 the Royal African Company, worried about the cost of its African forts, sent the surveyor William Smith to inspect them. His verdict on Tantumquery was brief and approving:
"This is a pretty little regular Fort having Four Flankers, on which are mounted Twelve Pieces of Ordnance." — William Smith, 1727
Four corner bastions, twelve guns, a square plan: a small, textbook company fort. Smith's engravings of the Gold Coast forts were widely reprinted in the eighteenth century, which is why old prints of Tantumquery still turn up at antique dealers — more pictures of the fort survive than walls.
The English presence here never became important. Tantumquery was one of the smaller posts between the big castles, and it faded as the trade shifted and then ended.
Otuam is a fishing town, and it is better known in Ghana for its people than for its fort. It is the hometown of President John Evans Atta Mills, who died in office in 2012. Our archive holds rare audio and video of him: Atta Mills — audio and video.
It is also the town of Nana Amuah-Afenyi VI, known as "King Peggy" — a woman who worked as a secretary at Ghana's embassy in Washington for decades and became chief of one of Otuam's clans. Her story became a book and made Otuam briefly famous abroad.
Neither story has anything to do with the fort, and that is the point: in Otuam the fort is the least remembered thing in town.
Sources agree on the 1720s and on the Royal African Company; a precise founding year is not reliably given.
When the English left Tantumquery is not clearly documented. It had long lost importance before the end of the slave trade.
The town appears as Otuam and Tantum; the fort's name comes from the second. Both refer to the same place in Ekumfi.
East on the Cape Coast–Accra road past Anomabo and Saltpond, then down to the coast at Otuam. Allow about an hour, more in traffic.
West on the coast road towards Cape Coast; Otuam lies off the main road beyond the Apam turning. It is easier as a stop on the way between the two cities than as a trip of its own.
Fort Patience at Apam to the east, Fort Amsterdam at Abandze and Fort William at Anomabo to the west.
Cape Coast, or the beach lodges around Anomabo. Options on ghanahotels.biz; flights on ghanaflights.info.
Expect traces, not a fort: no staff, no fee, no signs. Ask in town, respect the houses built around the site, and do not dig or remove anything — this is an archaeological site. Ghana Museums and Monuments Board: +233 302 221633 or +233 302 221635. More on the coast: Central Region Beaches.
No tour we know of stops at Otuam. The Cape Coast and Elmina tours below pass along this coast; Otuam you do on your own.
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Fort Lijdzaamheid — named Patience because building it took so long. One of the better-preserved smaller forts.
Built by the English as Fort Kormantin, taken by the Dutch in 1665. The origin of the name Coromantee.
One of the largest British forts on the coast, and the site of the 1806 battle in which the Fante and their British allies lost to the Asante.
The first Dutch fort on the Gold Coast, and their headquarters until Elmina fell in 1637.
Goedehoop, above the fishing town of Senya Beraku, further east towards Accra.
Where captives were washed for the last time before being marched to the coast.
All of them, in order: Forts and Castles of Ghana.
Fort Tantumquery is not worth a trip on its own — there is too little to see. It is worth knowing about, because it shows how many forts this coast had, and how completely some of them have gone. A fort with twelve guns in 1727 is now a subject for radar surveys.
Verified: 26 September 2026. Construction by the Royal African Company in the 1720s and William Smith's 1727 description follow standard reference accounts of Fort Tantumquery. The 2026 ground-penetrating radar and excavation study is published in Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa. Otuam's connection to President Atta Mills and to Nana Amuah-Afenyi VI ("King Peggy") is well documented. Founding year and abandonment date are not reliably recorded. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.