Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1891-10-23

ing the ocean at a southwest angle.
Each fort is to be 600 bv 400 feet, accord
ing to General Henery B. Abbott, presi-
dent of the board OF engineers, in whose
office the plans have been prepared,
The rampartS of the forts are to be thirty
five feet ebb tide, and the guns will rest
on body OF cement raised ten feet above
the low water.
The interior of each fort is to be Owed
ed into four pits, each containing four of
those terrible engines Of destruction,
twelye-inch howi,zers. Tle guns will be
fired out of great well, as the earth
walls of the fort will rise twenty-five feet
above the level on which the cannons are
operated. Tie mortars will thus be en-
tirely invisible from the ocean. In the
deep pits the guns will be perfectly pro-
tected from the impact of the shot thrown
by the enemy, as the mounds of earth
forming the ramparts are to be of thick
ness impentrable by any known projectile.
Between each pit is to be a storage
magazine for powder, protected by
masonry and earth, and there are to be
extensive magazines for high explosives,
located at some distance from the bat
teries. The powder magazines for each
battery will hold one hundred tons. In
the rear the two forts will not be par
aquetted, but will be left open.
The only way the Plum Island batteries
can be siencad in time of war will be to
destroy the earthwOrks. Tney cannot be
attacked by mortars from the ocean un-
less a problem in naval engineering is
solved that has so far proved impossible Of
solution. These are mechanical Difficult.
ties resulting from TIE recoil of heavy
guns that prevent their firing at an eleva-
ton exceeding fifteen degrees, while
mortar is most often fred at an angle Of
thirty degrees and upward. The large
guns forming the armament of a man-of-
war are only for horizontal fire and the
only vessel equipped with cannon for YER
tical fire is the Vesuvius, which has been
proved a failure. 1t is therefore, safe to
say that the gunners who may be called
upon to operate the howitzers in the pits
at Plum Island in case of war will not suf-
fer from shot thrown into the sky above
them by guns on the ships whose attack
they will repel,
The thirty-two great guns for the two
Plum Island batteries are to be Of the new
pattern Of twelve inch mortars known as
howizars, of which successful tests have
been made within the last few days at
Sandy Hook. They are breach-loading,
and constructed on the build up plan,
steel lined, rife bored aud steel hoped.
1t is much longer than the old pattern of
mortars and is capable of extreme accur-
oCy in firing The projeCtiles for one of
these monster cannons, which dropped on
the deck of the best armOred iron clad IN
existence would pierce the entire ship, is
of solid bulk of steel three feet long weigh
ing 624 pounds and costing $500. Eighty
pound of powder will drive this large pro-
jectiIe eight miles. The gun will also
throw shells containing high explosives.
BY this means it can drop enough nitro
glycerine on Il ships deck to scatter an
iron clad into ten thousand pieces.
The important work at Plum island will
go on cOincidently with the completion of
the Notifications at Sandy Hook, where
Engineer Gillespie has nearly 200 men now
at work. These Notifications, which are
well advanced are but a few hundred feet
from the remnants of the great stone fort
that was begun during the war of the re-
beIIion. The gunless recesses and unhn
ished walls of the old fort, with their i'm
posing elegance of cut granite, are inter
esting today only as a monument to an
tiquated methods of warfare The work
on the Sandy Hook fort was abandoned
soon after the close of hostilities with the
south, when areadv the improvement in
projectiles foreShad0wed the future useless
ness of some Notifications. A few hundred
feet from these grass-grown and sand
sire En walls staEds a great mass of iron
and steel, surrounded by complicated ma
chinery, derricks, cranks, cogwheels, swiv-
els and recording dials. 1t is one of the
new tweIve-inch howitzars whose detona-
ton during its test firing the past fort
night has shattered windows six miles
away, and which with single shot has
destroyed $4,000 worth of armor plating.
Albany Argus.