Fort Knox (3rd System, 1844-1869)
Posted: 2009-11-01 11:32pm
In response to the Duchess's Fort Casey thread, I grabbed a few shots of Maine's Fort Knox while I was waiting for an assignment to start. You'll see how it was the very end of twilight, and so it was too dark to do a full tour of the grounds and interior (besides which, there was a haunted house inside that night.)
The gun mounts of D Battery, located on the terreplein, north side.
The 15-inch Rodman on its cradle at A Battery on the riverbank southward. That's a hot shot furnace in the background. How big is 15 inches?
That big. Hard to read, but the muzzle is inscribed with the gun's tube weight - 48,554 pounds (22,070 kilograms).
The half of A Battery between the Rodman and the fort. Three 15-inch guns were mounted between A and B Batteries; the remainder were 10-inchers. You can see in the second picture that the battery is enfiladed with rifle slits and gun ports.
This is the view of the citadel from the first tier of the riverbank. Two stone embankments are built up, one from water level to the height of A and B batteries, and another (after a small terrace, where I was standing) from there to ground level at the citadel. They would not be easy to scale unless one was outfitted as a climber instead of as a soldier.
Continuing around the front of the fort brings one to B Battery, whose 15-incher is missing its cradle. B's guns cover the only easy approach from the water at the fort proper - the wharves where stones were brought in during construction and where any resupply by river would have landed.
Fort Knox retains a number of guns: the two 15-inchers, a 10-inch Rodman in one of the citadel casemates, four 24-pdr flanking howitzers, and another 10-inch Rodman converted to an 8-inch rifle in the parking lot.
This is one of the gun ports flanked by two rifle slits which enfiladed B Battery.
To leave the battery, one passes through this doorway in the hillside...
...and walks down a moist and ill-lit (at night) corridor to climb a flight of stone stairs and emerge in front of the fort above the second stone embankment.
Walking back around to the visitor entrance, one gets this view of the citadel.
Finally, some photographs of the old Waldo-Hancock Bridge (completed 1931, ret. 2006) next to the Penobscot Narrows Bridge that replaced it in '06.
The gun mounts of D Battery, located on the terreplein, north side.
The 15-inch Rodman on its cradle at A Battery on the riverbank southward. That's a hot shot furnace in the background. How big is 15 inches?
That big. Hard to read, but the muzzle is inscribed with the gun's tube weight - 48,554 pounds (22,070 kilograms).
The half of A Battery between the Rodman and the fort. Three 15-inch guns were mounted between A and B Batteries; the remainder were 10-inchers. You can see in the second picture that the battery is enfiladed with rifle slits and gun ports.
This is the view of the citadel from the first tier of the riverbank. Two stone embankments are built up, one from water level to the height of A and B batteries, and another (after a small terrace, where I was standing) from there to ground level at the citadel. They would not be easy to scale unless one was outfitted as a climber instead of as a soldier.
Continuing around the front of the fort brings one to B Battery, whose 15-incher is missing its cradle. B's guns cover the only easy approach from the water at the fort proper - the wharves where stones were brought in during construction and where any resupply by river would have landed.
Fort Knox retains a number of guns: the two 15-inchers, a 10-inch Rodman in one of the citadel casemates, four 24-pdr flanking howitzers, and another 10-inch Rodman converted to an 8-inch rifle in the parking lot.
This is one of the gun ports flanked by two rifle slits which enfiladed B Battery.
To leave the battery, one passes through this doorway in the hillside...
...and walks down a moist and ill-lit (at night) corridor to climb a flight of stone stairs and emerge in front of the fort above the second stone embankment.
Walking back around to the visitor entrance, one gets this view of the citadel.
Finally, some photographs of the old Waldo-Hancock Bridge (completed 1931, ret. 2006) next to the Penobscot Narrows Bridge that replaced it in '06.