This morning we drove back up to Fort Macon - we are becoming regulars there! - and watched one of the younger rangers demonstrate the firing of a Civil War-era musket. (That does not sound very romantic for Valentine's Day, but we remembered that last year we went to see a performance of Macbeth in New Bern, one of Shakespeare's bloodiest plays, which concludes with the beheading of the main character.) So a small group of us watched Ben, the youngest Park Ranger, explain to us in fascinating details the nine-step process of loading and firing an 1864 Springfield musket.
He said that soldiers in this era were required to have at least three teeth, on opposing jaws, because the first step in firing the musket was ripping open with their teeth the little package containing powder and bullet. The powder was poured in, then the ramrod removed from under the barrel to tamp it down, then the bullet. Only two fingers were used because sometimes a barrel too hot from firing would blow the bullet out on its own; thus, the unlucky soldier would have a thumb and two more fingers to continue loading and firing.
Because the huge 58-caliber bullets (which succeeded the "minie" balls) could ricochet around brick walls, Ben used a tightly rolled-up wad of Charmin's toilet paper. The explosion was deafening and was accompanied by a cloud of smoke caused by the poor-quality gunpowder used; during battle, these clouds could create terrible visibility on the battlefield, intensifying the horror of up-close, bloody battle with bone-shattering bullets and bayonets. What a horrible thing warfare is! And how good we have gotten at improving weapons of war over the years.
After the musket demonstration concluded, we joined Ben on a tour of the Fort. Although we had been on self-guided tours through the restored barracks, gunpowder room, and officers quarters in past years, this tour was one of the best we have attended.
These mortars were brought into the fort after the climactic battle of 1862 in which General Burnside shelled the fort and ultimately caused the confederate soldiers inside to surrender. He showed us the huge crack in the ceiling, running through several rooms, which was the deciding factor for the confederates; it was enough to convince Colonel Moses White, commanding the Confederate garrison, that "further resistance was folly." The main reason for this was fear that the nearby gunpowder room would explode, which would make the other two explode as well, which would in Ben's words have created a mushroom cloud and a very large hole in the ground. The mortars, had they been in place in 1862, could have been used against the Union artillery set up in the dunes (past which we often run) because they are accurate over shorter distances. But all they had were these 32-pound cannons, which were accurate against ships coming into the Beaufort harbor for up to three miles, but would slam harmlessly into the sand dunes behind which the Union forces were shielded.
Although much of the fort was re-constructed during the Depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps, signs still remain of the many cannonballs that fell within the fort. This is a huge depression left in the solid Connecticut granite stone topping the brick walls along the interior parade ground of the five-sided fort.
I had also never known that the parade ground and citadel in the interior, surrounded currently by a wide perimeter of green grass, was originally a moat filled with water from gates that could be opened and closed; a complex drainage system keeps it dry now.
What an interesting place to learn about in more depth! It is sobering to remember the warfare that took place here over 150 years ago and the men who lost their lives. It was a different era then, though. Before battle commenced, General Burnside personally approached the fort, knocked on the doors, and asked it to surrender. And he did this two more times before shelling began. When the battle was over, he had lost a single man and the garrison inside seven men. All of the garrison were taken prisoners, but then released after they had signed a paper saying they would return to their farms and places of business and not fight anymore. "Of course," Ben said, "They quickly left, picked up a musket, and continued fighting until the war was over."
Now, when we run past the fort on our way to the Visitor Center, we will look at those cannons and that flag and remember what took place here in our not-too-distant past.
But Valentines Day is not over, and we are looking forward to eating dinner tonight - out first dinner out since we have arrived - at Amos Mosquito's, just down the road from the condo, and a bit more romantic than a Civil War musket demonstration.
No comments:
Post a Comment