Fort Pulaski National Monument

Battle of Fort Pulaski
April 10-11, 1862

Fort Pulaski, built by the U.S. Army before the war, is located near the mouth of the Savannah River, blocking upriver access to Savannah. Fortifications such as Pulaski, called third system forts, were considered invincible, but the new technology of rifled artillery changed that. On February 19, 1862, Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Sherman ordered Captain Quincy A. Gillmore, an engineer officer, to take charge of the investment force and begin the bombardment and capture of the fort. Gillmore emplaced artillery on the mainland southeast of the fort and began the bombardment on April 10 after Colonel Charles H. Olmstead refused to surrender the fort. Within hours, Gillmore’s rifled artillery had breached the southeast scarp of the fort, and he continued to exploit it. Some of his shells began to damage the traverse shielding the magazine in the northwest bastion. Realizing that if the magazine exploded the fort would be seriously damaged and the garrison would suffer severe casualties, Olmstead surrendered after 2:00 pm on April 11.
 
The Siege of Fort Pulaski concluded on this day in 1862.
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I have always liked Savannah, visited several times when my Sister in law was a dean at SCAD. Very nice area (Other than the humidity, makes Ohio seem dry). Liked to go to both the forts, the antique book/map dealer (bought several items for my personal collection there), and the food. If you go there, try the Crab Shack on Tybe Island. Great fresh seafood. Defiantly miss going there, have not been back for several years, and my Sister in law has retired and moved back to Ohio due to illness, so don't know when I'll get back there.
this is a link to the map dealer http://www.vjduncan.com/
 
An interesting fort. I don’t buy the common wisdom that the reduction of the fort showed that masonry forts couldn’t stand up to rifled cannon as being some profound event given that as early as the 1400s masonry forts couldn’t stand up to the primitive cannon of the time, thus the development of the Italian trace. The problem with Fort Pulaski was the increased range of cannon that made a masonry front vulnerable to fire from a range not considered when the fort was built. Had the masonry walls brought under fire been protected by a glacis and tenailles (as at the land front of Fort Adams at Newport) I think the fort would’ve held out considerably longer.

A bloody minded garrison would’ve helped too. I’m put in mind of Badajoz in 1812 when a resolute French garrison successfully defended the breaches in the defenses and made a shambles of Wellington’s troops who attacked the breaches. Unfortunately for the French the breaches were taken from the rear by British troops who stormed unbreached sections of the defenses but that’s another story.
 
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