Fort Constitution

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Fort Constitution and Portsmouth Harbor Light

Fort Constitution in what is now New Hampshire , United States, served as a military facility for over 300 years and was the most important fortress in New Hampshire. The coastal fortification is located on a peninsula to the northeast of New Castle at the mouth of the Piscataqua River in the Atlantic. The ruins of the fort are now a State Historic Site.

history

Fort Constitution was one of seven forts built to protect Portsmouth's harbor and shipyard . The other six forts were Fort Washington , Fort Stark, and Fort Dearborn in New Hampshire, and Fort Sullivan , Fort McClary, and Fort Foster in Maine .

Colonial times

The first military facility to protect the port of Portsmouth was a four-gun earth rampart with four guns built on the Great Island peninsula in 1631 to protect against attacks by the pirate Dixie Bull . This first fortification , known as Fort Point , was followed by the construction of a wooden log cabin during the Second Anglo-Dutch Sea War in 1666. During the King William's War , the first of the French and Indian Wars , in 1692 cannons and other equipment came from England as reinforcements, which were in a new fortification protected by a parapet. The fort was named after the English rulers at the time, Fort William and Mary , and consisted of an earth wall about one meter high and a wall about two meters high, built in 1705. The 19 cannons stood on wooden platforms and could fire through loopholes. The system was renewed several times, but existed in this form until the American War of Independence . As the first beacon, a lantern was installed on a wooden pole in 1771, which was maintained by the small crew of the fort, which in peacetime only consisted of four to eight soldiers.

American War of Independence

The fort had its greatest historical significance shortly before the beginning of the war of independence. In December 1774, Paul Revere of Boston warned the colonists in New Hampshire that the British wanted to garrison Fort William and Mary again . As a result, on December 14, 1774, over 400 colonists from Portsmouth, Rye and New Castle, led by John Langdon , stormed the fort, overpowered the British crew, which consisted of a commander and five soldiers, and captured about five tons of gunpowder. Then a second group, led by John Sullivan, removed 16 small artillery pieces from the fort. The British Governor of New Hampshire, John Wentworth , then requested reinforcements from Boston. The British sloop Canceaux reached the fort on December 17th, followed two days later by the 40-gun frigate Scarborough . The fort was occupied by 100 British marines. After the fighting began, Governor Wentworth and his family sought refuge in the fort for two months in the summer of 1775, but because of the tense situation the British evacuated the fort and Wentworth and his family left the fort on August 24, 1775 on the Scarborough for Boston. A month later, Wentworth returned to Fort William and Mary for a brief visit and issued a proclamation, but British rule in New Hampshire ended. The New Hampshire Militia, under John Sullivan, destroyed what the British had left behind after their departure and built Fort Washington and Fort Sullivan upriver as new fortifications to protect the port of Portsmouth.

Fort Constitution

After the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, a small garrison of six US soldiers moved into the Old Fort at New Castle . They renewed the beacon and built shelter for themselves. The facility was then re-fortified with seven coastal guns and six field guns so that the fort could serve as a customs post for the port entrance to Portsmouth. In 1791, the state of New Hampshire gave the fort and the beacon to the United States, which renamed the fort Fort Constitution in 1802 . In 1803 a new 25 meter high wooden lighthouse was built. In 1808 a new enclosure wall, new powder magazines and two brick barracks for 150 soldiers were built. The fort should be armed with up to 36 guns. However, the fort was only manned in times of war and crisis; in times of peace only a guard watched over the facility. In 1840 the outer walls were expanded, but the complex was already out of date by the middle of the 19th century, so that the garrison was withdrawn in 1852 and the fort was only used as a training camp. During the Civil War , new Parrot guns were installed in the fort and the facility was reoccupied with a permanent garrison.

Fort Constitution at the beginning of the 19th century

Expansion during the Civil War

In 1862 the northern states began building a new fortress according to the Third System northeast of the previous fort. The fortress was to consist of three-story casemates made of granite and armed with a total of 149 guns. As the war progressed, however, it became clear that brick fortifications could no longer withstand artillery fire, so construction of the fortress was discontinued in 1867. In 1874 the garrison was withdrawn, only a caretaker remained to maintain the unfinished facility. In contrast to Fort Foster and Fort Stark, various plans for the modernization of Fort Constitution were not implemented or only partially implemented. Only the wooden lighthouse was replaced in 1878 by a new, still existing 15 meter high cast iron tower.

Endicott period

During the construction program named after the Secretary of War Endicott , Fort Constitution and the forts Stark and Foster were expanded. In the event of a defense, the access roads should be mined to protect the port, the minefields and the access roads should be defended by coastal artillery from the forts. At Fort Constitution, in addition to the outdated fort, a new coastal battery, called Battery Farnworth, with two 20.3 cm guns on concrete beds was built between 1897 and 1899, and in 1904 a battery with two 7.6 cm rapid-fire guns was added. A mine bunker was built in the old fort and the fort received a landing stage so that the mines could be loaded onto boats. The port approach was mined for the first time during the Spanish-American War in 1898. The obsolete Parrott guns were scrapped in 1905. However, due to construction defects, the bunkers and magazines of the Farnsworth Battery were constantly damp and were no longer usable from 1905.

First and Second World War

During the First World War , the 20.3 cm guns were dismantled for use on the Western Front in France, but they were no longer shipped and stored in an arsenal. In the old fortress walls, wooden barracks had previously been built for the gun crews, which were used by the National Guard after the war . After the First World War, a new fire control device for the rapid fire battery and a new mine bunker were built in 1920. From 1922 the fort was only in reserve status and no longer occupied. In 1938 part of the fortress walls of the old fort from the civil war was removed and used as bank reinforcement. New batteries were built at Fort Foster and Fort Dearborn
during World War II . The port entrance was mined again and Fort Constitution served as a mine store. After World War II, the Army handed the facility over to the New Hampshire National Guard in 1948, which used it as a training ground until 1958. In 1961 the site was transferred to the state of New Hampshire, and on July 2, 1973, the former fort was added to the National Register of Historic Places . The lighthouse, Portsmouth Harbor Light , was electrified in 1934 and automated in 1960 and continues to serve as the Coast Guard lighthouse .

Current condition

The approximately one acre site of the fort and lighthouse is now managed as a State Historic Site by the New Hampshire Division of Parks and Recreation. The remaining ruins of the fort come from the two complexes from the 19th century and are freely accessible all year round. The concrete bunkers of the Endicott phase are built over or cannot be visited due to their dilapidation.

literature

  • Nelson H. Lawry and Leo K. Polaski: Portsmouth harbor's military and naval heritage. Charleston (SC): Arcadia, 2004. ISBN 978-0-7385-3647-7 .

Web links

Commons : Fort Constitution  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nelson H. Lawry and Leo K. Polaski: Portsmouth harbor's military and naval heritage, p. 43.

Coordinates: 43 ° 4 ′ 16.7 "  N , 70 ° 42 ′ 36.7"  W.