The impetus for the construction of New Tavern Fort came from the threat posed by the United Kingdom's adversaries in the American War of Independence - the newly created United States of America and its European allies, France and Spain. Serious weaknesses in British coastal defences had been revealed in 1778 by the American adventurer John Paul Jones in his raid on Whitehaven, Cumbria. The activities of his squadron on the British east coast the following year, along with the failed Franco-Spanish Armada of 1779, prompted the British government to commission a survey of the country's coastal defences. The state of the defences was found to be unacceptably deficient and plans were made for the building of 30 new batteries, positioned in an arc along the southern and eastern English coast from Norfolk to Cornwall.