Ambon Bay

Ambon Bay cuts about twenty kilometres into Ambon Island in the Moluccas, opening southwest toward the Banda Sea. The inlet divides the island into the smaller southeastern peninsula of Leitimur and the larger northern one, Leihitu, also called Hitoe; the two are joined only by a narrow neck of land in the east. On the Leitimur shore the bay gave a safe harbour. The Portuguese, who arrived in 1513, built the fort of Nossa Senhora da Anunciada here around 1575, and the Dutch East India Company took it in 1605 and made it Fort Victoria, the seat of its clove-trade government.