Noon Gun "Time Cannon" - Time Signals on Waymarking.com

The settlement at the Cape was founded by the Dutch in 1652 and the signal guns were originally part of the regular artillery at the Imhoff Battery at the Castle in Cape Town. In 1795 Britain took the Cape Colony from the Dutch East India Company, also known as (De) Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), as a tactic in the Napoleonic Wars. The VOC transferred its territories and claims to the Batavian Republic in 1798 and ceased to exist in 1799. The British handed the Cape Colony back to the Batavian Republic in 1803. However, in 1806 the Cape was occupied again by the British after the Battle of Blaauwberg, as a strategy against Napoleon. Thereafter the British controlled the Cape continuously until it became a part of the independent Union of South Africa in 1910. Shortly after the English took over, the two Dutch guns were removed from the Imoff Battery and placed in town as signal guns. The Castle received the latest English 18 pounders. Because the very loud report of the cannons upset people nearby, the guns were eventually moved from the environs of the city itself to the somewhat more remote Lion Battery on Signal Hill

The first signal fired from there was on the 4 August 1902.
The guns were originally used to announce to the interior the arrival of an important ship, perhaps requiring provisions for a trip onward to India. Sailing ships were slow by modern standards and could not store fresh food for long periods, so the provisioning of vessels was one of the major commercial functions at Cape Town in those olden days. Indeed, the city was widely renowned as "The Tavern of the Seas". There were no telephones or telegraphs before the latter half of the 19th Century and the sound of the guns travelled much faster than a dispatch rider on a horse. The use of the guns to indicate that a ship was in port was discontinued when more modern means of communication were developed somewhat more than a hundred years ago.

Taken from answers.com

Type: Time Cannon In service: yes Time of signal: 12.00 Year established (if known): 1806 Address: Signal Hill,Cape Town,South Africa Year decommissioned (if applicable): Not listed Weblink (if any): Not listed

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Date Logged Log   11/10/2019 André de Montbard visited it