Copyright, Detroit Publishing Company
A DISTANT VIEW OF FORT CONSTITUTION
On the Fourth of July, 1809, an explosion of powder took place at Fort Constitution in which four men and three boys were killed and a number of bystanders wounded. The cause of the explosion was the carelessness of a sergeant with a lighted fuse, and the unlucky hour that he chose for his celebration was a time when his colonel (Colonel Walbach) had a number of guests to dinner. None of the diners were injured, and a quaint contemporary account tells their natural distress at various of the phenomena around them. “One poor fellow,” says this account, “was carried over the roof of the house and the upper half of his body lodged on the opposite side near the window of the dining-room; the limb of another was driven through a thick door over the dining-room leaving a hole in the door the shape of the foot.”
The appearance of Fort Constitution to-day is not very warlike and it does not play a very active part in the city’s defences. The walls of the older part of the fort are of rough stone topped with brick. Over the arch of the sally-port here is a date, 1808. These walls have been partly enclosed by unfinished walls of granite of later construction.
The martello tower, to which reference has already been had, was constructed during the War of 1812 and was begun one Sunday morning while two British cruisers were lying off the Isle of Shoals. Its purpose was to prevent a landing on the beach at the south side of the main work. An assault on that work was not attempted at the time, but who can say that the promptness of the New Hampshiremen in thus adding to their defences in the face of the enemy did not have its moral value in forestalling an attack? The tower had three embrasures.