Grand Battery

Fort Montgomery was built to prevent British ships from sailing up the Hudson River, and the centerpiece of its river defenses was the Grand Battery, armed with six 32-pounder cannons. Among the largest cannons of the Revolutionary War, these formidable guns had a range of well over a mile, and the term 32-pounder referred to the weight of each cannonball while each cannon itself weighed more than 6,000 pounds. Enemy ships sailing up the river would be exposed to this heavy artillery before they could return fire. The cannons stood on a platform of 2.5- to 3-inch-thick planks behind a defensive wall made by stacking bundles of sticks called fascines and filling the space between them with dirt. The guns fired through openings in the wall called embrasures, which were covered with a thick layer of mortar to keep the fascines from igniting when the cannons were fired. On July 23, 1776, General George Clinton reported that in the afternoon a British tender sloop sailed up within full view and long-shot of the battery while carefully sounding the river, and the battery fired a thirty-two pounder that hit her, causing her to turn about and fall back down the river.

Highlands, New York · United States