Battery Dearborn - Ft. Morgan, AL - Photos Then and Now on Waymarking.com

Fort Morgan, Alabama was built as a coastal defense fort, completed in 1834. In 1885 President Grover Cleveland ordered the creation of a fortification board, under the direction of Secretary of War William Endicott, to report on the present state of fortifications and to make recommendations for the implementation of a modern coast defense program. The Endicott Board recommended a $127 million construction program made up of an integrated network of dispersed reinforced concrete artillery batteries to be constructed at 29 strategic locations along the U.S. coast. These concrete gun positions were to mount a small number of large breech-loading rifled guns, heavy rifled mortars, or small caliber rapid-fire guns.

On October 17, 1898 the Chief Engineer of the Army approved $100,000 for the construction of an eight gun mortar battery at Fort Morgan. Named to honor Major General Henry Dearborn, the battery emplaced eight Model 1900, 12-inch steel Breech-Loading Rifled mortars. These weapons weighed thirteen tons and measured eleven and three quarters in length. The minimum range for the 12-inch mortar was one and one quarter miles at sixty-five degree elevation and the maximum range was seven miles at an elevation of forty-five degrees.

Battery Dearborn’s field of fire was divided into eight zones. During action, the battery was to concentrate patterns of vertical fire onto any enemy ship that steamed into one of the eight zones. The weights of the projectiles and powder charges were determined by the zones of fire. The projectiles weighed between 824 and 1,046 pounds and the powder charges weighed between 54 to 62 pounds.

During World War I four of Battery Dearborn’s mortars were removed for conversion to railroad artillery. Coast Artillerymen soon found that the removal of these guns actually increased the battery’s efficiency in delivering fire. Although Battery Dearborn never fired a shot in anger, its high arcing fire would have been highly effective in dealing with armored warships of the era. The battery’s four mortars remained in place after Fort Morgan’s closing in1923 but were scrapped during World War II.

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Year photo was taken: 1910

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