February 11, 2004 - Livingston, TX - 2

Next stop is Ft. Pickens, one of the campgrounds in the Gulf Islands National Seashore, just across the bay from the Pensacola Naval Air Station.  This Fort has been around a while, and has had lots of modifications.  These mortars are just one example.  The guns themselves are gone, because when they were superseded by advances in technology, they were scrapped.

I followed Barb up to the top of the battery, and looked toward the Naval Air Station across Pensacola Bay, and then turned 180 degrees and looked out toward the Gulf of Mexico.  The water wasn't nearly that far away when the fort was built.  The prevailing wind and waves have washed a lot of sand from the east to the west, adding land to this end of the island.

Like I said, this fort has been here a while.  It was built by contractors for the government, and they in turn used skilled slave labor to build the place out of brick.  And in the second shot I'm looking at the end of a wall that has been blown away.  More on that a bit later.  Pretty thick walls, eh?

There is a public fishing pier there, and the PVC pipe is used to hold the monofilament line that fishermen want to discard.  Hiking around, we next came across this turret gun hiding in the bushes.

Pretty big gun.  And it's protected by 4 inches of steel.  The tower was built to assist the gunners find the range of the ship they wanted to use as a target.  There were two of these towers, and by using the compass headings of the target ship from the two towers, the range for the guns could be determined.

Different batteries used different guns at different times.  Of course, none of these ever were actually used in combat thankfully.

This disappearing gun from 1906 is the only one in existence, the others having been melted down as scrap when new technology replaced them.  It took over a year just to forge the barrel for this monster.  It worked by men cranking up the platform so the gun would clear the embankment, and then the recoil of the gun would blow it back down again for reloading (thus it's name--the disappearing gun).

An Eastern Oriole hollered until we took it's picture.  We'd been on a guided tour of the fort, and this was the last stop.  The men who handled this canon were tough, strong, quick, and ... deaf.  Very little mechanical about it.  That mast was used to hold the block and tackle that lifted the 700 pound ball into the barrel.

Remember that wall that had been blown up?  Well, we're on top of it, looking across the bay, and you can see where there were more canons at one time.  And at the very top of the fort is the reason for it all in the first place.  The fort only saw hostile activity for a few days, and that was during the Civil War.  The Union held the fort, and the Confederacy was firing on it from where the Naval Air Station is today.  Some irony here.  The South was actually in the north, and the north was actually in the South.  After trading shots for a few days, doing more damage to the fish in the bay than anything else, the Confederates moved out and left the fort alone.

There were several of these boardwalks leading from the road to the Gulf, and we walked them all.  And fortunately, there was a bench here and there too.  Some birds, but no other wildlife this time of year around here that we could see.  Did see evidence of armadillos but never did see any of the funny little guys.

Ah, yes.  The "proof" that we were here.  And then the next day we rode our bikes back to the fort to take a more leisurely stroll through it.  Going on a guided tour is great because we learn so much, but it moves right along and there are always lots of people, and that makes it difficult to take pictures.  By coming back, we knew what we wanted pictures of, and we pretty much had the place to ourselves.  This canon is pointing across the bay, and could be swung in an arc from a pivot point in front of the carriage.  It was a modification of the canon in use at the time of the building of the fort, and because it needed more swinging room, the walls had to be notched for the carriage to clear, and you can see one of the notches on the right.  And it's done quite nicely, not just bricks knocked out of the way.

Because the carriage was so heavy it would grind through the brick floors, granite was inlaid into the floor for the carriage wheels.  See what looks like a fireplace at the end of the carriage?  It was actually an air inlet, bringing air in from above the roof of the fort.  When fired, the canon would fill the space with smoke, and not only was it difficult to see, the men couldn't breath either.  So vents had been built over the canon for the escaping smoke, and these vents lower down for fresh air.

The room alongside the canons where the balls were stacked, and later the ammunition for the more modern guns.  And notice how the arch is used everywhere.  That's because this fort is sitting on sand.  Not only are the walls pretty heavy, but there's a lot of heavy canons in here, and the movement of the canons would move things around were it not for the archways.   And the builders made sure the roof was not attached to the walls.  That way, if a wall was breeched and collapsed, the roof would still be offering protection, besides not caving in on the men inside.  The coloration you see there is the result of years of water leeching through the mostly limestone mortar used to hold the bricks together.

As time went by, constant modifications were made.  An example is this generator room.  Originally built for canons, it later had cement laid for the foundation to hold electric generators.  Barb is looking out at what was once a dry moat.  The canons in this part of the fort were aimed downward into the bottom of the moat, and were short little guys that would fire a whole passel of small sharp projectiles rather than a single ball.  The wall Barb is looking at has duplicate ports for canons like the one that was converted to a generator room.  At first look, it would seem as though the fort had canons pointing at each other, since the moat has been filled in.  But before it was filled in, they aimed at the bottom.

We're standing at a corner in the fort, looking up at the intricate brickwork in the ceiling.  And then outside toward the wall facing the gulf.  On the right, that bank houses what was called Pensacola Battery.  Two disappearing guns.  Originally, the space to the right was the parade grounds inside the fort, and the wall ahead of us has had it's top removed (blown off) so the guns from the Pensacola Battery could see the gulf.  To the left had been living quarters, and the place where Geronimo and his people were kept before moving them someplace else during a sad period in our past.

Since there is no fresh water at the fort, they kept rainwater in cisterns, and the picture on the left is what remains of one of those cisterns.  Another irony of the fort is that the only people who died here didn't die in combat but from the fort itself.  Dysentery because of bad water.  And then an example of some of the leeching mentioned earlier.

Another example of the limestone leeching, and then the foundation for the arch.  Every arch in the place has its counterpart underground supporting it.  By having upper arches sitting on lower arches buried in the sand, the necessary strength was attainable.  Ancient building technique used extensively by the Romans.

Now, the rest of the story about the missing wall.  This was originally one of the corners of the fort, and stored underground was a lot of stuff.  Supplies for the horses, gunpowder, food, and what have you that was necessary for everyday life for the soldiers manning the fort.  Well, one day a fire broke out in one of the tack rooms that held equipment for the horses.  After fighting the fire for a bit, the soldiers remembered that right next door was 250,000 pounds of gunpowder.  In a flash of common sense, they quit trying to put the fire out and got as far away as they could.  KA-BOOM!!  No more storage, no more wall.  And since this happened about the time the fort was ready to install Pensacola Battery in the parade ground, they just left the gap in the wall so they could move the materials and guns into the parade ground without having to build ramps up and over both sides of the wall.  So another bit of irony.  The only damage done to the fort was by the fort itself!  And then on the ride back to the campground, Barb elected to quit trying to pedal in the sand, and has resorted to pushing her bike.  We'd left the main trail to see where this little trail led.  Gee, imagine us getting off the beaten path!

This pine tree was about the biggest tree on all of Santa Rosa island, where the fort and a couple of towns are located.