Port Blair

Port Blair is the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a Union Territory of India. This is also the chief city of the whole group of islands from which the Union Territory derives its name. The city derives its name from Lt Archibald Blair who had established the first British settlement of a free colony in 1789 at Chatham Island, which is now part of Port Blair, although it was then called Port Cornwallis. Lord Cornwallis had sent Lt Archibald Blair and Lt Colebrook in 1788 to survey the island and to explore a suitable place for settlement to effectively deal with pirates and murderers of ship-wrecked crews along the Andaman coast.

The city has historical importance where the British had erected a jail to imprison the revolutionary freedom fighters of India. The Jail is known as the Cellular Jail. People in mainland India then knew it as Kalapani where the revolutionaries were being sent to serve a term in that particular jail. It is now standing there as a symbol of brutalities of the British barbarism. The city has also a memorial monument of 1857 freedom movement erected on August 15, 1957.

Nearby pages
Port Darwin, Port Elizabeth, Port Glasgow, Port Louis, Port Royal, Port-Au-Prince