RS ยง i ah | | at aud if a auf ee Sul Hi , aut he at ein} a) mii i i +] iota F it |i } if aan ctoee ners argent re eee ee ee \ Re RT ANGLE ETI TOS Oe aN a 382 Chronicles of the Cape Fear River solely with the view of resisting the fire of a fleet, and it stood uninjured, except as to armament, in two of the fiercest bom- bardments the world ever witnessed. The two faces to the works were 2,580 yards long. The land face was 682 yards long, and the sea face 1,898 yards long. Tue Lanp Facer or Fort Fisuer. At the land face of Fort Fisher the peninsula was about half a mile wide. This face commenced about one hundred feet from the river with a half bastion, and extended with a heavy curtain to a full bastion on the eeean side, where it joined the sea face. The work was built to withstand the heaviest artillery fire. There was no moat with scarp and counterscarp, so essen- tial for defense against storming parties, the shifting sands ren- dering such a construction impossible with the material avail- able. The outer slope was twenty feet high and was sodded with marsh grass, which grew luxuriantly. The parapet was not less than twenty-five feet thick, with an inclination of only one foot. The revetment was five feet nine inches high from the floor of the gun chambers, and these were some twelve feet or more from the interior plane. The guns were all mounted in barbette on Columbiad carriages, there being no casemated gun in the fort. There were twenty heavy guns on the land face, each gun chamber containing one or two guns, and there were heavy traverses, exceeding in size any before known to engineers, to protect from an enfilading fire. They extended out some twelve feet or more in height above the parapet, running back thirty feet or more. The gun chambers were reached from the rear by steps. In each traverse was an alternate magazine or bomb- proof, the latter ventilated by an air chamber. The passage- ways penetrated traverses in the interior of the work, forming additional bombproofs for the reliefs of the guns. As a defense against infantry, there was a system of subter- ranean torpedoes extending across the peninsula, five to six hun- dred feet from the land face, and so disconnected that the explo- sion of one would not affect the others; inside the torpedoes, about fifty feet from the berm of the work, extending from river bank to seashore, was a heavy palisade of sharpened logs nine feet high, pierced for musketry, and so laid out as to have an enfilading fire on the center, where there was a redoubt guarding er. ie i te - pel ECE LL ANE PLO eae AL ee ERE ES LRT Re Bt eeeeee es ome aeRO