I was able to purchase a box of new toys. This is really pinball related, but it is tangential and relevant enough to my current thrust of collecting that I thought it a worthy addition. This is: The Fort.
The box I received had over 3+ sets worth of pieces. What you see above is a set that I am keeping. The rest is up for sale if anyone else wants them.
From the Guelph Museum:
- 1879 The Fort set with a metal arch, but no pieces. (archive)
- 1875 The Fort set with a wood + metal arch, and small nub pieces. (archive)
- 1875 The Fort pieces and balls. (archive)
- 2014 holiday post about The Fort. (archive)
The basics of gameplay:
- Setup The Fort at one end of the table with pieces placed as per instructions.
- The first player propels the ball down the table with a cue in an attempt to knock over the pieces.
- After each attempt, the ball and any felled pieces are removed. The ball must have struck a removed piece. The piece is not removed if the ball jumped a rail to hit it or the piece fell due to table vibration. Pieces remaining are placed in their positions before the next strike.
- After a specified number of attempts all pieces are reset and the next player has a try.
Pieces and placement:
- King (20 points) goes in the front chamber
- Queen (15 points) goes in the rear chamber
- Each chamber entrance is guarded by 2 Bishops (10 points)
- Guards (5 points) go under the King chamber arches, and on either side of the large arches.
See the photo above for an example of this setup.
There seems to be a few points of deviation amongst copies of this game. Above you see the thicker arch, but there are also wood+metal arches. Let's look to some of the original documentation. I believe the following is from a piece of the game's box as it is glued to the thick cardboard-like paper material.
Let's crop that illustration and mess with the colour balances:
This somewhat depicts the set that I am keeping, with the metal arches and upright pieces.
The set came with a typed copy of the above rulesheet:
Transcription:
THE FORT
Directions
Place the Fort on one end of a covered table, with the back against the side of the room, with the men in position, as shown in the above cut. The King in the front circle, the Queen in the back circle. King's Bishops immediately back of the King, Queen's Bishops back of the Queen. King's Guards (two in number), one in either entrance to the inner fort, directly under the arch; Queen's Guards (four in number), one on either side of both entrances to the outer fort, about one inch back from the arches.
Rules of the Game
1. Choose Captains, and the Captains choose sides.
2. Strike the balls lightly with the cue so as not to shake the fort. If a man falls without being struck by the ball, or if the ball jumps over any part of the fort and knocks down a man, or if one man in falling knocks down another, it must be replaced before the next ball is played.
3. The balls must be removed from the fort as soon as they cease rolling, also the men as soon as they are knocked down.
4. Each player plays 12 balls before stopping, and the number knocked down credited to the respective Captain.
5. Each player plays three rounds before the final count is made, and the side having the greatest number has won the game.
How to Count
King counts 20. Queen, 15. King's Bishops, (10 each?) Queen's Bishops, 10 each. Guards, 5 each.
Manufactured by P. C. Allan, 35 King Street West, Toronto
*Illegible due to poor condition of original
All of these scans are available in higher resolution on Archive.Org
We have another document. It is torn and missing portions, but has less soiling.
This version of the game used the wood + metal gates. There are smaller pieces placed around the game. The central piece is not connected by the wire gates, and it is placed protruding from the surrounding wood, somewhat.
The woodcut illustration has small pieces all over the playfield that are not mentioned anywhere in the rules. My assumption is that these pieces are used to ricochet into the guards, but it is curious they're not written down.
Some of the pieces from my set:
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| 3 clay balls from The Fort on the bottom/left. The black, white, and red bagatelle balls are from Masters Of Game |
They did not perform as well since they were not heavy enough. Look at the numbers, the clay balls from The Fort are 19% more dense.
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| wood bagatelle balls vs The Fort's clay balls |
I will have to find a place that sells balls of similar density.
So why would I want this game? Besides the interesting Canadian connection, in regards to pinball ancestry this is a great way to bring up the advent of table games. While this game is 145 years young, table games similar to it go back to the ~16th century, and were early instances of aristocratic lawn games moving indoors.
I am looking for an antique (100+ years old) trou madam arch, but in lieu of that, The Fort will be a useful example
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| trou madam woodcut from a 1630 book by Matthaus Merian |
Trou Madam graduated to the billiards table, an early aristocratic table game that would lay the groundwork for bagatelle games.
While the game might have been made in 1870 or 1875, the earliest patent is 1879, in Canada. Thank you to tweakbod for digging the following items up for me.
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| Canadian patent # 10650 the first of 5 handwritten pages |
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| Canadian patent # 10650 page 6 |
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| Canadian patent # 10650 illustration detail |
This was followed by an 1880 patent in USA.
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| US patent # 224882 page 1 |
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| US patent # 224882 page 2 |
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| US patent # 224882 page 3 |
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| US patent # 224882 detail |
The inventor is William B. Cowan, who we can actually see in this hilariously titled book "Men Of Canada".
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| 1891 Men Of Canada; Or, Success by Example, in Religion, Patriotism, Business, Law, Medicine, Education and Agriculture |
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| excerpt from 1891 Men Of Canada; Or, Success by Example, in Religion, Patriotism, Business, Law, Medicine, Education and Agriculture |
On the box text we see that it was sold by P.C. Allan in Toronto. 2 mentions of them:
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| Canadian Magazine of Politics, Science, Art & Literature Volume 2 1894 |
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| Industries of Canada Historical and Commercial Sketches of Toronto and Environs; Its Prominent Places and People, Representative Merchants and Manufactures ... 1886 |
35 King Street West is now Toronto's financial district.
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| 35 King Street West would have existed about here |
Addendum: Here is a patent from 1904, Toronto, that seems like an updated version of The Fort. This one is called Crusades.
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