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Fort Conant
Stage Fort was a fort that existed from 1635 to 1898 on Stage Head in what is now Stage Fort Park in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Stage Head was named for a fishing wharf, "stage" dating back to the original settlement by the Dorchester Company, Dorchester Adventurers Company circa 1624. The area was first fortified in 1635 and garrisoned intermittently from then until the Spanish–American War.Roberts, p. 400 History After the first fort was built on the site in 1635, the next upgrade was a rudimentary Breastwork (fortification), fortified breastwork in 1703 for Queen Anne's War. New breastworks and a platform for eight 12-pounder cannon were built in 1743 for King George's War. The fort was refurbished for the French and Indian War circa 1754. Another breastwork was built for the American Revolutionary War in October 1775. In the War of 1812 the fort was repaired and a barracks added. The fort was further renovated circa 1862 for the American Civil War under the supervision ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stage Fort Park
Stage Fort Park is a park at Stage Head in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Gloucester, Massachusetts, part of the Essex National Heritage Area. It contains two beaches, a large playground, picnic benches, two baseball fields, a basketball court, a dog park and plenty of room for any weekend activities. The park includes Gloucester's Visitor and Welcome Center and Stage Fort, a reconstructed Civil War fort on a site fortified since 1635. A seasonal restaurant in the park, The Cupboard of Gloucester, selling a wide variety of food and ice cream including fried clams and sandwiches. The most prominent geological feature is a large rock, some sixty feet high and two hundred wide. It was said to be an ancient ritual stone used by Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Native Americans. Often referred to as "Tablet Rock" for the tablet installed into its face in 1907. It reads: ''On this site in 1623A company of fishermen and farmers from Dorchester Eng. under the direction of Rev. John White f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Ann
Cape Ann is a rocky peninsula in northeastern Massachusetts on the Atlantic Ocean. It is about northeast of Boston and marks the northern limit of Massachusetts Bay. Cape Ann includes the city of Gloucester and the towns of Essex, Manchester-by-the-Sea and Rockport. Etymology During the summer of 1606, French explorer Samuel de Champlain visited Cape Ann for the second time. He came ashore in Gloucester and drew a map of the Gloucester harbor, naming it as le Beau port. Eight years later, English Captain John Smith named the area around Gloucester ''Cape Tragabigzanda'', after a woman whom he met while in Turkey as a prisoner of war. He had been taken as a prisoner of war and enslaved in the Ottoman Empire before escaping. Smith presented his map to Charles I and suggested that Charles should feel free to change any of the "barbarous names" into English ones. The king made many such changes, but only four survive today. One was Cape Ann, which Charles named in hon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buildings And Structures In Gloucester, Massachusetts
A building or edifice is an enclosed structure with a roof, walls and windows, usually standing permanently in one place, such as a house or factory. Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and functions, and have been adapted throughout history for numerous factors, from building materials available, to weather conditions, land prices, ground conditions, specific uses, prestige, and aesthetic reasons. To better understand the concept, see ''Nonbuilding structure'' for contrast. Buildings serve several societal needs – occupancy, primarily as shelter from weather, security, living space, privacy, to store belongings, and to comfortably live and work. A building as a shelter represents a physical separation of the human habitat (a place of comfort and safety) from the ''outside'' (a place that may be harsh and harmful at times). buildings have been objects or canvasses of much artistic expression. In recent years, interest in sustainable planning and building practi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forts In Massachusetts
A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ("strong") and ("to make"). From very early history to modern times, defensive walls have often been necessary for cities to survive in an ever-changing world of invasion and conquest. Some settlements in the Indus Valley Civilization were the first small cities to be fortified. In ancient Greece, large cyclopean stone walls fitted without mortar had been built in Mycenaean Greece, such as the ancient site of Mycenae. A Greek '' phrourion'' was a fortified collection of buildings used as a military garrison, and is the equivalent of the Roman castellum or fortress. These constructions mainly served the purpose of a watch tower, to guard certain roads, passes, and borders. Though smaller than a real fortress, they acted as a bor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Military Installations In Massachusetts
This is a list of current and former military installations in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Current military installations in Massachusetts Joint facilities ;Bases * Joint Base Cape Cod (state designation, not federally recognized)USCG Air Station Cape Cod Official Site ;Centers * David S. Connolly Armed Forces Reserve Center * Westover Armed Forces Reserve CenterWestover Air R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Coastal Fortifications Of The United States
The United States and the colonies that preceded it built numerous coastal defenses to defend major cities, ports and straits from the colonial era through World War II. Some listed were built by other nations and are now on United States territory. United States fortification programs Colonial period through 1885 In the American colonies and the United States, coastal forts were generally more heavily constructed than inland forts, and mounted heavier weapons comparable to those on potential attacking ships. Coastal forts built from 1794 through 1867 were generally grouped into three time periods by later historians; these were marked by significant federal fortification programs with most forts built in a particular style. Forts of the first and second systems were generally earthwork star forts with some masonry reinforcement, mounting one tier of cannon, usually on the roof of the fort or behind low earthworks. Along with new forts, a few masonry forts of the colonial p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seacoast Defense In The United States
Seacoast defense was a major concern for the United States from its independence through World War II. Before airplanes, many of America's enemies could only reach it from the sea, making coastal forts an economical alternative to standing armies or a large navy. Substantial fortifications were built at key locations, especially protecting major harbors. Seacoast defense also included submarine minefields, nets and booms, ships, and, later, airplanes. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers played the central role in constructing fixed defenses, but all of the armed forces participated. Designs evolved and became obsolete with changes in the technology available to both the attacking forces and the defenders. The evolution of the U.S. seacoast defense system is generally identified among several "systems", which are somewhat defined by the styles used, but more so by the events or trends which periodically stimulated new funding and construction. The division of the early forts into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fort Defiance (Massachusetts)
Fort Defiance was a fort that existed from 1794 to after 1865 on Fort Point in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The location protecting the inner harbor was also called Watch House Point. History 18th century Prior to the establishment of Fort Defiance, the British Fort Anne was located on Watch House Point, built in 1703 for Queen Anne's War and rebuilt in 1743 for King George's War, the latter work possibly named Fort Libby.Roberts, p. 400 A Breastwork (fortification), fortified breastwork was erected on the site during the American Revolutionary War. In 1794 a fort at Gloucester was funded as part of the federal Seacoast defense in the United States#First System, first system of U.S. fortifications. The selectmen of Gloucester requested that Fort Anne be rebuilt as the new fort. The fort was built at the direction of Stephen Rochefontaine, a former French military engineer and Revolutionary War veteran working in the United States as a civilian; the next year he was commissioned a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish–American War
The Spanish–American War (April 21 – August 13, 1898) was fought between Restoration (Spain), Spain and the United States in 1898. It began with the sinking of the USS Maine (1889), USS ''Maine'' in Havana Harbor in Cuba, and resulted in the U.S. acquiring sovereignty over Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, and establishing a protectorate over Cuba. It represented U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence and Philippine Revolution, with the latter later leading to the Philippine–American War. The Spanish–American War brought an end to almost four centuries of Spanish presence in the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific; the United States meanwhile not only became a major world power, but also gained several island possessions spanning the globe, which provoked rancorous debate over the wisdom of expansionism. The 19th century represented a clear decline for the Spanish Empire, while the United States went from a newly founded country to a rising power. In 1895, C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Point Fort
Eastern Point Fort was a fort that was garrisoned or maintained from 1863 to 1867 on Eastern Point in Gloucester, Massachusetts, built for the American Civil War. References indicate the name has also been used to refer to the much-older Stage Fort across the harbor.Roberts, p. 400 In June 1863, Confederate commerce raiders attacked Gloucester-based fishing vessels at Georges Bank, a rich fishing ground east of Cape Cod.Manuel, pp. 32–37 Also that year, US Army engineers realized that attacking vessels could be well inside Gloucester's harbor before being engaged by the existing forts, Stage Fort and Fort Defiance. The Eastern Point fort, never formally named, was sited to be able to engage any enemy approaching from seaward. It was built near the end of the peninsula forming the eastern side of Gloucester's harbor, on the "high land of the farm of Thomas Niles". Construction was supervised by Major Charles E. Blunt. Eastern Point was the only Civil War fort on the north s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smoothbore
A smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars. Some examples of smoothbore weapons are muskets, blunderbusses, and flintlock pistols. The opposite of smoothbore is rifling. History Early firearms had smoothly bored barrels that fired projectiles without significant spin. To minimize inaccuracy-inducing tumbling during flight, their projectiles required an aerodynamically uniform shape, such as a sphere. However, surface imperfections on the projectile and/or the barrel will cause even a sphere to rotate randomly during flight, and the Magnus effect will curve it off the intended trajectory when spinning on any axis not parallel to the direction of travel. Rifling the bore surface with spiral grooves or polygonal valleys imparts a stabilizing gyroscopic spin to a projectile that prevents tumbling in flight. Not only does this more than counter Magnus-induced drift, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magazine (artillery)
A magazine is an item or place within which ammunition or other explosive material is stored. The word is taken originally from the Arabic word ''makhāzin'' (مخازن), meaning "storehouses", via Italian and Middle French. The term is also used for an ammunition dump, a place where large quantities of ammunition are stored for later distribution. This usage is less common. Field magazines In the early history of tube artillery drawn by horses (and later by mechanized vehicles), ammunition was carried in separate unarmored wagons or vehicles. These soft-skinned vehicles were extremely vulnerable to enemy fire and to explosions caused by a weapons malfunction. Therefore, as part of setting up an artillery battery, a designated place would be used to shelter the ready ammunition. In the case of batteries of towed artillery the temporary magazine would be placed, if possible, in a pit, or natural declivity, or surrounded by sandbags or earthworks. Circumstances might requ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
