Walbach Tower

Walbach Tower, a Martello tower built at Fort Point in New Castle, New Hampshire, in 1814 during the War of 1812, was a hurried coastal defense ordered by Captain John Walbach after British warships attacked Eastport, Maine, threatened the New England coast, and were reported near the Isles of Shoals. Fort Constitution had protected Portsmouth Harbor, but fear of a British landing from Little Harbor led Walbach to mobilize his militia and local inhabitants to construct this circular fortification, fifty-eight feet in diameter, in a remarkably short time. The British never attacked, and the tower, built with mortar made from local "dead sand" and affected by faulty construction techniques, soon began to deteriorate. Later, the construction of Battery Farnsworth in 1899 encroached on it, and the Army damaged it further during World War Two, leaving it a ruin atop Jordan’s Rock. The design came from the round tower at Mortella Point in Corsica and from similar coastal forts built there in the fifteen hundreds against North African pirates; Britain later built more than a hundred Martello towers, and the United States Army built ten, including Walbach Tower. John Walbach, born Jean Baptiste de Barth in France in 1766, came to New Castle in 1806 with heavy artillery, led the reconstruction of Fort William and Mary as Fort Constitution in 1808, ordered the tower’s construction in 1814, later commanded other forts from Boston to Virginia, and rose to brigadier general.

New Castle, New Hampshire · United States