Many Forts, Many Uses

Castle Island's strategic position beside the narrow deepwater channel into Boston made it an ideal place to deter attacks, and English colonists built its first fort there in 1634 from timber and mud. Each successive fort was sturdier than the last, and the present fort is built of granite from Rockport, Massachusetts. The island served both military and civilian purposes: religious dissenters, deserters, and convicted criminals were imprisoned there; British officials and soldiers took refuge there from outraged Bostonians in the 1700s; and during the 1764 small pox outbreak it was Boston's inoculation facility. In March 1775, Prince Hall and 14 other men of color were inducted into a British Army Lodge of Freemasonry likely at Castle Island, and nine years later they formed the first Masonic African Lodge in the U.S. During the Civil War, cannon manufactured at South Boston Iron Company were brought by barge to be tested there, and Union recruits also trained on the island. During World War II, Castle Island was where the Navy demagnetized hundreds of U.S. warships to protect them from magnetic mines. In 1962, the federal government transferred the fort and island to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Boston, Massachusetts · United States