Sky Watch Friday

Looking to the skies and seeing the Spanish flag, guarded by a cannon, flying over the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida. Why a Spanish flag in Florida?  When the National Park Service has reenactors on site on any given day, they fly the flag of the country those reenactors represent - if the English are represented they fly a British flag. :)

Flutter over to the Skywatch blog for all the great images each week.

Fort Matanzas

A few miles south of St. Augustine, Florida lies an obscure piece of history: Fort Matanzas.  It can hardly be called a fort given its size - 50 feet long, 30 feet wide, with a 30 foot tower in the back half - quite tiny.  Standard garrison was generally only one officer, four soldiers, and two gunners (more could fit if needed).  It was built in 1740 to protect the southern entrance or "back door" to St Augustine and protect Matanzas Inlet after the British under Oglethorpe (founder of the colony of Georgia) used the Matanzas river as a way around the main Spanish defenses in St. Augustine to lay siege to that town in 1740.  It was abandoned after the Spanish ceded Florida to the United States and lay in ruins until the 1920s when it was turned over to the US Park Service and has since become a national monument and is run in conjunction with the larger and more famous Castillo de San Marcos in downtown St. Augustine.  You can visit Fort Matanzas for free (donations greatly accepted), but it does require a boat ride on a park service run ferry that operates every hour on the half-hour.  If you are lucky you will catch them on a day when there are soldiers re-enacting Spanish or British garrisons (as they were this past weekend when we visited).

Tomorrow: The British are coming!  The British are coming! :)

ABC Wednesday: "W" is for Water Pump

For ABC Wednesday this week we have W for Water Pump. Not much explaination needed... they pump water... google it if you must. :)

This particular water pump is found inside Fort Clinch on Amelia Island, Florida, a 19th century sea-coast fort.

Visit Mrs. Nesbitt for all the ABC Wednedsay fun!

ABC Wednesday: "U" is for Umbra

Had to dig deep this week for a "U":

Umbra: the darkest part of a shadow. It is actually the Latin word for shadow. You usually only see it used in relation to lunar eclipses (combined with prenumbra and antumbra).

So in the below photo of the southern wall of the Castillo de San Marcos, the left hand portion is an umbra because it is in full shadow... I think... ah, who cares. It's a "U", it's a photo. Mission accomplished. :)

Old Florida Series: Part 5

Continuing with some more photos from Fort Clinch:

Below is a better view of one of the 10-inch Rodman seacost guns that would have been fitted at the fort during the time of the Civil War if it had evern been completed in time. The 10 inch Rodman weighs around 7.75 tons could fire a shot weighing over 100 pounds nearly 5,000 yards - just shy of three miles. It was quite a powerful gun in its day, but now is dwarfed by modern artillery. The strip of land you can see in the distance of the below photo is Cumberland Island, Georgia, giving you an idea how close the two islands are to each other and why the fort was built here to command the channel.

Below is a man depicting the fort's cook prepping firewood for the evening meal.

The fort's water pump and bucket.

One of the soldiers cleaning and inspecting his rifle.

You've got to watch out for this guy - he has a Canon.

Haha. A little photography humor for you. :)

Tomorrow: The Mayport Ferry and the end of the series.

Old Florida Series: Part 4

Our main destination in Fernandina was Fort Clinch, a 19th Century fortification built at the very northernmost tip of Florida - just a few hundred feet of the Cumberland Inlet separate Florida from Georgia here. Because of this relatively narrow gap and the natural deep harbor fort in Fernandina, this location was a prime stategic placement for a fortification.

The south wall of the fort, facing inland, with the fort road winding through

the glacis towards the entrance.

Construction on the fort began in 1847. It was named for General Duncan Lamont Clinch, an American officer during the Second Seminole War fought in Florida a few decades earlier. Since America faced no great naval threat after 1847 and piracy had been all but wiped out (certainly it was so in Fernandina by then) there was no great need to hurry the construction of the fort, and so by the time the American Civil War erupted in 1861 the fort was only partially completed: two bastions and 1/3 of the outer brick wall, though the main earthen ramparts. Not a single cannon was in place. The guardhouse and prison were finished, and a wooden kitchen, storehouse, and lumber shed were in various stages of completion.

A Confederate sentry standing guard at the main entry, or sallie port.

With no true garrison present at the start of the Civil War, the Confederates simply took control with no resistance. The Rebels didn't attempt to finish the fort, but they did establish some gun batteries in the fort and other places on this island and across the inlet on Cumberland island, Georgia. With resources stretched thin, however, the Confederates decided in 1862 that they couldn't cover every single island outpost and abandoned most of them, allowing the Union to retake the fort - again without a shot fired - in March 1862. The Union, led by the 1st New York Engineers, then continued to work on the fort and by 1867 it was nearly completed (the war ended in 1865) when the army decided to deactivate the fort and construction was halted.

A view of the fort's interior showing one of the completed barracks. The flag flying is an early Confederate flag from Florida that reads: "Hurrah for Florida! Let us alone!"

The fort was reactivated for the Spanish American war in 1898 but while a mount was built to hold a modern gun, it was never put in place and the fort was again abandoned in September of that year. The army sold the fort and land to private buyers in 1926 and in 1935 the state of Florida bought the complex for preservation and outdoor recration. The Civilian Conservation Corps (a byproduct of the "New Deal" from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to pull America out of the Great Depression) developed the property into Fort Clinch State Park, with the fort, nature trails, camping, beach access, and wildlife protection.

Confederate artillerists fire a Civil War era 3 inch Ordinance Rifle. (3 inch refers to the size of the shell fired.) This would not be used in a fort, but none of the larger guns in the fort are opperational, so they use this smaller gun for demonstration purposes.

Another view of the fort's internior, showing a building that is used for storage and staff offices. The large cannon on the right of the building are 10-inch Rodman Seacoast guns, a common Civil War-era fort cannon. More about the Rodmans and closeup photos Saturday.