Fort Alice owes its existence to the Brooke dynasty, the extraordinary English family who ruled Sarawak as personal monarchs from 1841 until Japanese occupation in 1941. James Brooke, the first White Rajah, ordered the construction of Fort Sakarran in December 1849 at the mouth of the Skrang River. The goal was practical: control the movement and trade of the Iban people along the Skrang and Batang Lupar rivers, two of the most important waterways into Sarawak's interior. But the jungle fought back. In 1856, the floor of Fort Sakarran collapsed entirely. Charles Brooke, then serving as Tuan Muda under his uncle, rebuilt it and renamed the structure Fort James in honor of the first Rajah. Yet even the rebuilt fort suffered from perennial flooding at its low-lying site across from Nanga Skrang.

Charles Brooke had learned his lesson about building in a floodplain. In 1864, he ordered the fort relocated to an elevated site at Simanggang, where the terrain offered both better drainage and a commanding view of the river below. The new structure went up in belian wood -- Borneo ironwood, famous for its resistance to rot, insects, and time itself. The two-storey rectangular fort featured thick walls pierced with loopholes for firearms, an open courtyard, cannons, a drawbridge, and an elevated observation platform for surveillance of the surrounding jungle. It was initially called simply "the new fort at Simanggang." The name Fort Alice came later, honoring Margaret Alice Lili de Windt, who married Charles Brooke in 1869. The Brookes had a habit of naming their fortifications after Ranee Margaret -- Fort Margherita in Kuching and Fort Lily in Betong bear her other names.

After Sarawak was divided into administrative districts in 1873, Fort Alice became the seat of the second district. Inside its ironwood walls, the fort housed the Resident's office, a courtroom, a small garrison of soldiers, and a lock-up for prisoners. From this perch above the river, the Brooke government monitored every boat that passed, suppressed piracy, and launched what they called pacification campaigns against hostile groups deeper in the interior. The fort was simultaneously courthouse, military post, and the most visible symbol of Brooke authority for miles in any direction. For the Iban communities along the Batang Lupar, it was the place where the river world met the world of colonial law -- a threshold announced nightly by that gong and that call in their own language.

The Sarawak State Government listed Fort Alice as a historical monument in 1971, recognizing what the belian wood already proved: the fort had outlasted the dynasty that built it. Restoration work began in June 2013, a painstaking effort that cost MYR5 million and took nearly two years to complete. On 18 April 2015, the fort reopened as the Sri Aman Heritage Museum, its rooms now filled not with soldiers and prisoners but with exhibits tracing the Brooke era in Simanggang. The ironwood walls still stand, the loopholes still frame views of the river, and the drawbridge mechanism remains as a reminder of the nights when the fort sealed itself shut. The gong no longer sounds at eight, but the fort endures -- one of the oldest and most significant surviving structures from the Brooke dynasty, still watching over the water that gave it purpose.