Artillery District of Baltimore 1899-1920

Artillery District of Baltimore 1899-1920. "The Bulldog at Baltimore's Gate". , Beyond the trees in front of you is where the Patapsco River flows into the Chesapeake Bay. In 1814, this is where British ships turned into the river to approach and attack Baltimore. In the 1880's the United States was again threatened by foreign navies., That threat led the Department of the Army to purchase this property and two others on the Patapsco and build coast artillery installations. By 1903 thirty-six artillery pieces had been placed at these forts. On the map you can see where you are at Fort Howard and the locations of the other forts built to protect Baltimore Harbor., Note how the ranges of the largest guns at the four forts (the colored lines) completely covered the entrance to Baltimore Harbor., Large enemy vessels in the Patapsco would have been restricted to the shipping channel (the black line) and would have had to run a gauntlet of huge steel shells in order to approach the city., In 1908 a local newspaper reported on the completion of the four forts called them "The Bulldog at Baltimore's Gate.", The Spanish American War. The need for big guns at these forts and at twenty-nine other locations around the U.S. stemmed from improvements in naval weapon technology in the second half of the nineteenth century. Advances in steel making capacity resulted in the naval powers of the day constructing fleets of armored warships equipped with long-barreled large caliber guns. Spain was one of those naval powers who built armored ships. They used their fleet to maintain control of their colonial possessions., In the late 1800s Spanish control in Cuba was being challenged by violent insurrections. Spain's response to the rebellion included the introduction of large military units to the island and a naval squadron in the Caribbean Sea that included steel hulled cruisers armed with long-range guns., Below is a picture of the Cristobal Colon, one of the armored cruisers in the Spanish flotilla., Spain's military presence in the Caribbean was the source of increasing tension with the U.S. Americans were alarmed at the violent repression of the Cuban rebels and there was real fear that our coastal cities were vulnerable to incursions by Spanish ships. In 1898, the situation led Congress to declare war with Spain., In the end, no enemy ships from Spain or any other nation ever risked an attack on an American seaport city after these coastal defense forts were built.