At the very eastern tip of Bogue Banks is Fort Macon State Park. This strategic point guards the Beaufort inlet, the channel that allows shipping from the Atlantic Ocean to reach the port town of Beaufort. Several inferior fortifications were built in the 1700s and early 1800s. Finally, in 1826, a proper fort was built. It was named Fort Macon after US Senator Nathaniel Macon, who advocated funding for the fort.
In General Burnside’s 1862 campaign to capture the strategic points in the Pamlico Sound, he also set his sights on Fort Macon. Burnsides sent General Parke to capture the fort. Parke’s forces surrounded the fort, demanding surrender. The fort’s 400 Confederate soldiers refused to surrender. On April 25, 1862, General Parke bombarded the fort for 11 hours, smashing it to a pulp. The fort surrendered.
After the Civil War, the fort was used as a civilian and military prison until 1877. It was briefly reoccupied by the military in 1898 during the Spanish-American War, only to be abandoned in 1903. In 1923, the army put the fort up for sale as surplus property. The state of North Carolina bought it in 1924 for $1. During the Depression, the CCC restored the fort, and in 1936, Fort Macon became North Carolina’s first state park.
The Army briefly reoccupied the fort during WWII only to return it to the State after the war. One odd incident occurred during the Army’s WWII occupation. Some soldiers rolled some old cannon balls into a fire thinking they were solid shot, that is, just a large round bullet. I guess they thought if the metal would heat up it would retain the heat after the wood died down. Anyway, the cannon balls were actually exploding shell. In the fire, they exploded killing two men. That incident has been dubbed, ‘The last shot of the Civil War’. Very clever, eh?
The fort was nicely restored and we enjoyed milling about. It did command a terrific view of Bogue Sound and Beaufort Inlet. The Confederates, however, didn’t use rifled cannons. Smooth bore cannons were not very accurate. Burnside and Parke’s forces did use the highly accurate rifled cannons. When Parke opened up his bombardment of the fort, his rifled cannons hit the fort with 560 direct hits. Rifling, as I mentioned in an earlier posting, puts a spin on the bullet or cannon ball. That spin gives the projectile a straight predictable path. Smooth bore barrels are like a baseball pitcher throwing knuckle balls, which cannot be thrown accurately - neither the pitcher nor the hitter can know where the ball is going to go. Great for baseball, lousy for military use.
Fort Macon State Park had a nice museum and some terrific nature trails. We checked it all out.
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