Fort Hamilton

New Jersey

The fort guarding New York Harbor was designed by one of Napoleon's own military engineers.

militaryhistoricalengineering

The man who drew up this fort had spent his career serving Napoleon. Simon Bernard was a French military engineer. After Napoleon's defeat in 1815, he joined the United States Army. On the eleventh of June, 1825, he set the cornerstone here himself. Six years and half a million dollars later, the fort was finished and a battery of the Fourth US Artillery moved in. Bernard shaped it as a trapezoid, wide side facing the Narrows, narrow side facing inland. Cannon ran in two tiers, one inside the walls and one on the roof. Loopholes for muskets covered the three landward sides, and a dry ditch ran below them. Projecting into that ditch was a caponier, a firing position meant to sweep the ditch clean of attackers. It was a rare feature in American forts. About half of those original defenses still stand.

This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
Bernard was previously a French military engineer under Napoleon, who had joined the US Army after Napoleon's defeat in 1815.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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