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Advance
Redoubt was built to assist Fort Barrancas (700 yards south) in
protecting the Navy Yard from overland assault. Although Redoubt
was begun in 1845 construction dragged on for almost fifteen
years. It is unique among the early American forts at Pensacola in
being designed solely for resisting a land-based assault.
Advance Redoubt was only manned during the Civil War. At the
conclusion of the Civil War it became evident that the masonry
forts could not stand up to the fire of modern rifle artillery and
were therefore rendered obsolete.
Fort
Barrancas built between 1845 and 1859 was designed
to make assault costly for attackers by placing obstacles in their path. It was
intended to exhaust attacking troops before they could gain access to the Navy
Yard. It assisted Barrancas in defending the Navy Yard peninsula. An attack on
the Advanced Redoubt would create a bloody slaughter, but its design was never
tested by an enemy.
It is unlike any of the other fortifications around Pensacola, however, since
it was designed exclusively to defend against a land assault. It has a central
area that is filled will sand and soil, with the cannon mounted en barbette at
the parade ground level. Its shape is trapezoidal, with a dry ditch completely
surrounding the structure, scarp and counterscarp galleries, and half bastions
to guard the gorge wall and the sallyport. The main entrance, or sallyport, is
located in the gorge, or rear, wall of the fort, and is accessed by crossing a
drawbridge over the ditch. This is the side of the fort facing the Navy Yard,
opposite of the direction an assault would be expected to come from The parade
ground level of the Advance Redoubt is quite small. Its primary weapons were to
be relatively small field artillery weapons, instead of the heavy seacoast
cannon of the other Pensacola forts. Here you can see the firing locations for
some of the field pieces along the inside of the scarp wall. The Advance
Redoubt, again like Fort Barrancas, has both scarp galleries, located below the
parade ground level, and counterscarp galleries. The counterscarp galleries are
located behind the counterscarp walls, which are the walls on the opposite side
of the dry ditch from the main structure of the redoubt. This view shows the
interior of a counterscarp gallery. Looking down the dry ditch toward the front
of the fort, you can see the firing ports of both the scarp and counterscarp
galleries. The larger embrasures in the center of the picture, which are sealed
with red brick, were for flank defense howitzers. These small cannon would fire
canister or grapeshot, which were loads consisting of multiple small
cannonballs. The troops would fire from this parapet until forced to retreat to
the traverses, and later into the fort itself if an attack continued.
Our
Findings:
Unfortunately, we did not take any equipment other than our cameras. With
heightened security aboard the Naval Air Station, we did not want to cause any
undue suspicion. We were greeted by a Gulf Islands National Seashore Park ranger
and two maintenance workers. The Fort was closed to visitors but they were kind
enough to allow us to tour the area while they were working.
We entered through
the drawbridge and went to the left and down a circular flight of stairs into
the scarp gallery. One section was not high enough to walk through and
we had to bend over as we passed through this section. Our only visitor was a
bat hanging from the ceiling. We noticed the walls had been painted to
help preserve the aging brick.
The gallery was approximately 7' wide and 20'
high with walls about 4' thick. As we walked through the gallery, we could see
where the cannons had been positioned along strategic points of the fortress. In the areas across from where the cannons would have been, we would
find angled rooms where munitions would have been stored. We traveled
from one gallery to the other which brought us out to the parade grounds
on the right sight of the drawbridge.
We never came across any area that felt
unusually cool where a presence may have been nor did we hear anything out of
the ordinary. Actually, although we took quite a few pictures we did not expect
to have any results. We were taken by surprise when we examined the pictures and
found quite a few orbs. All were in the scarp and counterscarp galleries, none
above ground.
While we learned no actual battle ever took place on this site we
cannot help but wonder if the orbs we found were from fallen soldiers, Spanish
settlers from years before or from the Creek Indians native to this area for
many years before the fort was built.
All standards and
protocols were followed.
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