Battery Clagett

Battery Clagett. . , This Endicott Period gun battery was built in 1900. It was named for Lieutenant Levi Clagett who died in 1814 defending Fort McHenry. The battery was armed with two 3-inch rapid fire guns on masking parapet carriages. These guns defended the northern flank of the Fort Howard gun line until 1920 when the battery was deactivated., The M1898 was a rapid-fire 3-inch seacoast gun used by the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps. Designed in 1898, it was manufactured by DriggsSeabury Ordnance Company. A crew of twelve men operated the gun, which fired fifteen pound shells and could shoot up to twelve rounds per minute. It weighed 1,782 pounds, and its maximum firing range was 12,000 yards., The guns were intended to engage enemy vessels that came near the shore in shallow waters, including (A) landing craft, (B) minesweepers, and (C) torpedo boats., William Endicott , In 1885 US President Grover Cleveland appointed a joint army, navy, and civil board led by Secretary of War William Endicott to study the coastal defenses of the United States. The board concluded the existing defenses were inadequate and that a $127 million program should be undertaken to update those defenses. Updates included building new installations or modifying existing ones with breech-loading cannon, mortars, floating batteries, and submarine mines at twenty-nine locations on the U.S. coast. Fort Howard was one of those installations.