1861: Fort Popham in Maine

[Skydog]

From Wikipedia: Fort Popham is a Civil War-era coastal defense fortification at the mouth of the Kennebec River in Phippsburg, Maine.

Construction of Fort Popham was authorized in 1857 as part of the Third System of fortifications the but did not begin until 1861.

The fort was built from granite blocks quarried on nearby Fox and Dix Islands. It had a 30-foot (9 m)-high wall facing the mouth of the Kennebec River and was built in a crescent shape, measuring approximately 500 feet (150 m) in circumference.

The back side of Fort Popham was built with a low moated curtain containing a central gate and 20 musket ports.

War experience showed that masonry forts were vulnerable to modern rifled guns. As a result, in 1869 construction at Fort Popham stopped before the fortification was completed.

(SD - I took this picture from a wedding photography website as I thought the people standing next to the blocks provided some helpful perspective).


SD’s Casual Observations: Built in 1861? Isn’t that the same year the American Civil War was supposed to begin?

Deploying the North’s precious resources to quarry massive cyclopean-caliber granite blocks on two islands on the coast of Maine appears to be a small to medium-sized strategic blunder in this pleebivilian’s humble opinion.

No land battles were fought in Maine during the American Civil War according to my cliffsnotes.

Call me old fashioned, but wouldn’t a fully enclosed circular shaped fort provide a wee bit more protection from the bad guys with black hats than a semi-circular shaped structure with nothing but a baby gate on the back side? Thinking back to the German controlled machine gun nests that we were shown at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan - those weren’t semi circles. I mean come on man - what kind of flunkie military strategy were they supposedly running back then...

I do love the fact that Wiki notes that masonry forts don’t provide protection from “modern rifled guns” after all. You don’t get much vaguer than that! So if they can’t even defend against rifles, what can they protect against? Muskets and bow and arrows? Please.

I think Jon Levi hit the nail on the head when he proposed Star Forts and the like are to control the movement of large bodies of water etc (e.g. ancient massive river valves of some sort).

That’s all for now.

Happy New Year to SH!

Thanks for dramatically downsizing the time I spend on useless other sites the past year and for making each minute I spend distracted / away from the family meaningfully count!

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[Archive]

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Username: jd755
Date: 2020-01-01 18:13:01
Reaction Score: 1

“modern rifled guns”

Here's a couple of rifled guns.

 

[JWW427]

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Username: JWW427
Date: 2020-05-20 13:54:55
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Masonry forts in the Civil War era made little sense.
This Maine fort smacks of star civilization culture, but I think it was modified over the years.
Rifled guns were accurate and devastating.

 

[mifletzet]

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Username: Mifletz
Date: 2020-05-20 17:11:13
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Men of this ilk weren't capable of maneuvering 2 ton arch keystones and laying them with only arm-power to perfection above their heads!

 

[Archive]

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Username: andym
Date: 2020-05-21 05:52:26
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while pretty cool, and i love the fort, the real gem is fort baldwin which sits on the hillside behind the fort. one of my favorite places actually.

i will say the mouth of the river is key though because of the shipyards that go back hundreds of years (so they say) and even to this day navy ships launched from Bath Iron Works go right past the fort as they exit the kennebec and enter the atlantic.