Fort Gaines - Mobile Bay, Alabama

Buckeye Bill

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Since 1834 Fort Gaines has stood as the guardian of Mobile Bay, Alabama. The military site and National Historic Landmark is located 22 miles west of Gulf Shores. The Fort Gaines Civil War highlight came on August 5, 1864, when the fort played a key role during the Battle of Mobile Bay before surrendering to Federal forces after a two-week siege. Alabama’s largest permanent military post between 1900 and 1923, the fort served during the Spanish-American War and World Wars I and II.

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Beautiful pics of Gaines and Morgan! Two of my absolute favorite forts. My daughter and I ran all around Fort Morgan while my wife and son sat in the air conditioned car, but everyone loved the ferry ride.

We really need to get back to Dauphin Island some day. Mobile is such a fun city to visit as well.
 
Nice photos.

Too bad Gaines is missing its glacis, which was unusual in having a sloping, rather than vertical counterscarp. The fort is designed after the theories of the French engineer Carnot and one of his notions was using the ditch as a shelter for sorties and thus using a sloped counterscarp to make sorties easier. Being a polygonal fort it lacks the spacious places of arms at bastion salients and curtain reentrants of the covered way that previously served as gathering places for sorties.

The odd free standing loopholed masonry wall in front of the earthen parapet was another of his ideas and is called a Carnot scarp and is rare in the United States, the only other is at Fort Clinch. It was popular in mid 19th Century British, Prussian and Austrian fortresses. With its Carnot scarps and caponiers rather than bastions on the corners it's a fine example of state of the art mid 19th Century polygonal fortification and is one of my favorite forts.

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How was the ferry ride and did you happen to notice how relatively shallow much of the bay is? And as strange as it seems, for some reason Fort Gaines just feels homier.
 
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How was the ferry ride and did you happen to notice how relatively shallow much of the bay is? And as strange as it seems, for some reason Fort Gaines just feels homier.

A relaxing ride and yes on the depth.
 
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What a great photo spread Bill. The clouds that day made the pictures even better. I hope to make it to the bay forts next year.
 
Nice photos.

Too bad Gaines is missing its glacis, which was unusual in having a sloping, rather than vertical counterscarp. The fort is designed after the theories of the French engineer Carnot and one of his notions was using the ditch as a shelter for sorties and thus using a sloped counterscarp to make sorties easier. Being a polygonal fort it lacks the spacious places of arms at bastion salients and curtain reentrants of the covered way that previously served as gathering places for sorties.

The odd free standing loopholed masonry wall in front of the earthen parapet was another of his ideas and is called a Carnot scarp and is rare in the United States, the only other is at Fort Clinch. It was popular in mid 19th Century British, Prussian and Austrian fortresses. With its Carnot scarps and caponiers rather than bastions on the corners it's a fine example of state of the art mid 19th Century polygonal fortification and is one of my favorite forts.

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Thanks for the diagram and information. Very interesting,especially in that there were only 2 of it's kind in the U.S.
 
Nice photos.

Too bad Gaines is missing its glacis, which was unusual in having a sloping, rather than vertical counterscarp. The fort is designed after the theories of the French engineer Carnot and one of his notions was using the ditch as a shelter for sorties and thus using a sloped counterscarp to make sorties easier. Being a polygonal fort it lacks the spacious places of arms at bastion salients and curtain reentrants of the covered way that previously served as gathering places for sorties.

The odd free standing loopholed masonry wall in front of the earthen parapet was another of his ideas and is called a Carnot scarp and is rare in the United States, the only other is at Fort Clinch. It was popular in mid 19th Century British, Prussian and Austrian fortresses. With its Carnot scarps and caponiers rather than bastions on the corners it's a fine example of state of the art mid 19th Century polygonal fortification and is one of my favorite forts.

View attachment 330484View attachment 330485
 
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