Addu City

Addu City lies at the southern end of the Maldives, formed from the inhabited islands of Addu Atoll (also called Seenu Atoll). It is administered as a single city with six districts – Hithadhoo, Maradhoo-Feydhoo, Maradhoo, Feydhoo, Meedhoo and Hulhudhoo – each occupying its own island but linked well enough to function as one urban area. Hithadhoo serves as its capital, and Addu is the second-largest urban centre in the country by population, one of only two places outside Malé to hold city status.

The atoll is among the oldest settled parts of the Maldives: Meedhoo has revealed traces of habitation going back to around 2000 BC, with early settlers said to have come from Gujarat and Bihar in India. Its more recent history is shaped by a very different chapter. In 1941 the Royal Navy chose the atoll's deep, sheltered lagoon as a secret Eastern Fleet base, known as Port T, after judging Trincomalee in Ceylon too exposed. Airstrips were built on Gan, oil tanks on Gan and Hitaddu, and the six main islands were garrisoned with shore batteries and anti-aircraft guns, later linked by causeways and a light railway. The base saw little glamour – postings were considered a hardship due to the heat, humidity and lack of recreation – but it saw real action: the German submarine U-183 torpedoed the tanker British Loyalty in the lagoon in 1944, and the wreck, scuttled in 1946 off Hithadhoo, is now a dive site known for its marine life.

The naval base passed to the Royal Air Force in 1957 and operated intermittently as RAF Station Gan until the British withdrawal in 1975. Locals who had worked for the military and gained English fluency moved into the Maldives' emerging tourism industry once the base closed, and many also went to Malé for work and schooling. The former airfield on Gan is now Gan International Airport, and the old RAF site has been redeveloped as a tourist resort built around the equator.