Existing comment:
The Northwest Demi-Bastion:
A demi-bastion is a section of the fort that projects beyond the main wall and provides concentrated defensive fire.
The bastion design includes two levels of artillery. Guns were to be mounted on the parapet above and in the casemates you see below at the base of the wall. When the fort was armed in the 1840s, however, only the guns on the upper, or barbette, level were installed.
The casemates saw other uses. Company laundresses lived in two of them with their soldier husbands until better quarters were built outside the fort in 1867. Other casemates served as storerooms and the sutler, or post trader, had a shop in one during the early 1860s. |