The two articles by Lubomyr Oryshchyn in the Summer issue [about Crownhill Fort in Devon, England, and the Moncrieff Disappearing Gun] cover the tip of what is an immense iceberg — the complex and massive development of coastal defense in and around the British Isles from 1859 onwards.
Not only “England” was defended by such fortifications and guns, but from the very north of Scotland, to the Channel Islands, Gibraltar and the whole of Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom. Forts such as Crownhill number in their dozens, but few are as well cared for.
“Palmerston's Follies,” as Oryshchyn mentions, was a derogatory term for these substantial forts, but not one coined by the press or by foreign detractors. It was spread by the Royal Navy which wanted none of this shore defense nonsense since obviously from the time of Nelson, the shores of Great Britain could only be defended by her fleet.
Ultimately, by the 1880s the Admiralty had won, with the decision that Britain should have a fleet equal in size and efficiency to the next two largest fleets in the world combined.
The forts were not “follies,” but a response to very serious threats in Europe; and here's a point all too frequently forgotten — incorporated into the ideas of the man who built and designed them, Maj. Gen. Jervois, was the experience of the American Civil War: the blockade, the new weapons, and the experiences of ships against forts. A lot was learned from that war.
This is the brief story of one small fort, one lost gun. Swansea, my home town, is a large seaport on the coast of South Wales, some 200 miles from London. In 1858, Swansea was a major coal and iron exporting port, but apart from a few militia troops and a handful of light guns, it was completely undefended from the sea.
The Crown was pressed to act and a survey was carried out. As a result, the first coast defense guns arrived, two 18-pdr. muzzle loaders, which were fired from the seashore promenade on high days and holidays.
The following year, a five gun battery was being built on the Lighthouse Island at the entrance to Swansea Bay, and in 1861 five 68-pdr. Rifled Muzzle Loaders arrived by sea from Woolwich Arsenal, to be manned by the Artillery Militia.
The guns were not to be fired in anger, despite the high state of readiness brought about by the activities of Confederate supply ships and the fitting out of raiders off the coast of Wales. CSS Fingal was active off Wales, and CSS Alabama was actually fitted out for war anchored in a Welsh bay.
The moment passed. In the 1870s two of the elderly 68-pdrs. were replaced by state-of-the-art 80-pdr. rifled muzzle loaders on traversing slide carriages (two are shown in the Oryshchyn article). They were in use up to the end of the century, when they were dismounted, as Oryshchyn mentions, and buried in pits below the waterline close to the island.
The Lighthouse Island remained defended, however, with two smaller Quick Firers and machine guns through much of the 20th century. The 68-pdr. gun sites remain, but to visit means a risky walk at low tide. In the 1970s one of the guns was recovered by divers from a local sub-aqua club and was restored, though not remounted. It now stands upon a plinth in the city's Maritime Quarter. The other has still not been found or raised.
As a final point, the suggestion that Sir Alex Montcrieff, inventor of the disappearing carriage, was not told how many of his inventions had been built is incredible news to me. Exactly 170 were initially proposed, some 70 were made, in two distinct patterns. Twenty were Pattern I, of which 11 went to defend Cork Harbour in Southern Ireland (I have not seen these positions), and the remaining nine went to Flatholme Island in the Bristol Channel.
Of the heavier Pattern II, some were used in Great Britain, and the remainder in outposts of empire. Many, 64-pdr. models, went to Malta, where the sites can still be seen. There are eight Montcrieff positions, built in 1872, at Hubberstone Fort near Milford Haven in West Wales, designed to take the 7-inch rifled muzzle loaders, and another six of the same type at Popton Fort, a few miles from Hubberstone.
There was no question of Montcrieff’s mounting being used for the new generation of armor-piercing guns; it simply couldn't take the weight of the 9-inch rifled muzzle loaders and remain stable, or of the larger 10-inch or 12-inch guns which were being designed.
The mounting had been altered to take several types of gun, but weight did in the mounting in the end, together with the new 1873 concept of "The Dover Turret," which could mount a 14-inch or 15-inch rifled muzzle loader ,better protected.
We should not omit the transatlantic connection of Alex Montcrieff who turned to hydraulics and patented the design of a high-angle coast defense howitzer which was to be widely adopted by the United States Army and which, I'm sure, is very well-known to readers of this journal.
(About the Author: Military and maritime historian Robert Morgan is secretary of the Welsh Maritime Association and a member of the Ordnance Society who writes frequently about artillery and fortifications.)