Fort William, also known as Anomabu Castle, was designed by the British engineer John Apperley and constructed between 1753 and 1760. At the time it was considered to be the strongest fortification on the coast. It is about from Cape Coast Castle. After his death in 1756, Anglo-Irishman Richard Brew took over the Governorship of the fort and continued its construction. The Anomabu fort became the center of British slave trading along the Gold Coast until the practice was outlawed in 1807. In the same year, a small garrison successfully resisted the entire Ashanti army, although the city suffered greatly from the attack. In the later 19th century, it exported in palm oil, ivory, gold dust, peanuts, and Guinea grains in exchange for considerable imports of manufactured goods. Its population in the 1870s was around 4500.