 It's an honor to be here. I first want to start by thanking both John Kennedy and Professor Hattendorf for inviting me to present today and definitely an honor and I guess I can tell people from now on I lectured at the War College which I guess is as high a commendation as you can get in life. All right this of course is Ford Adams. That picture was taken about 1936. It's one of my favorite views of the Ford. It just sort of captures it and it's sort of its hey day so to speak. You know very beautiful. We'll get into some of the finer details later. One thing I do want to point out is as I was preparing this presentation I realized that I have about three hours of material to cram into 40 minutes so if it looks like I'm sort of breezing along that's exactly what I'm doing. Also my voice is about 50% of what I'd like it to be so hopefully I can make it through the hour. We'll find out but I'm tough. Okay the book that's me and my co-author. It's okay to laugh that photo is intended to be somewhat comical. It's a parody of the famous American Gothic painting and for some reason I something sees me I say why don't I get a musket with a bayonet and that'll take the place of the pitchfork and you know she can have that blank stare on her face so it worked out well. So I'll talk about my co-author. She couldn't be here today she actually has a full-time job as a parochial school teacher but she wrote a book called Life and Death at Ford Adams that's available at the Ford Adams gift shop if you want to get a copy it's about mostly mysterious deaths at the fort over the years also focuses a little more on the domestic side of the fort's life so definitely cover some material I won't be getting into today so I do recommend you check that out when you get a chance. So she had written that book and she got it published through History Press and then she says well I'm looking for an idea for another book and I said well you know a few years ago I wrote an online history of Ford Adams and I've been thinking about turning that into a book so how about we collaborate. So what I did was I essentially gave her my online history she took that ran with it did a little research on her own and added some things and made something sound a little more appealing I tend to in my writing style be sort of a just-the-facts kind of person she she likes to be a little more dramatic so it worked out well so so a book was born so this was published in June of 14 and you know it's it's kind of cool being a published author so that's the story behind that okay defending Newport this picture was made by the French during their occupation of Newport in the 17 1780 to 1781 basically you can see they lined up their their ships of the line so they have a crossfire also notice Brenton point there where the sort of the first fortification on that point was located that was originally built in 1776 by some Patriots because there were some ships near the harbor they didn't like so they built that little earthwork overnight and were able to fire on the British ships and scare them away of course the British came back and forth later in 1776 and occupied Newport from December of 76 to November of 1779 this is a from the Blaskowitz map of Newport that was highly detailed made in 1777 and this was the primary fort for Newport for many years from when it was originally built in 1702 and till when the army withdrew the garrison it's 1836 and you'll notice they had a number of names originally was named Fort Ann after Queen Anne of England then the you know she died and King George became king and then they had three King George's in the row so they didn't have to change the name for a while then when the Patriots took it over at the early days of the revolution they named it Fort Liberty and then the British occupied Newport renamed it Fort George and then after the revolution they decided the name of Fort Washington then somebody said no we want the name Fort Washington for Fort down in Maryland so then they decided on the Fort Walcott and that was named after Oliver Walcott it was a governor of Connecticut so I find it ironic you have a fort in Rhode Island named after somebody from Connecticut but so that's the story there that that fort mounted about 36 guns and like I said the army withdrew the garrison in 1836 they eventually gave the island and the property to the Navy and that of course was the site of the naval torpedo station from 1869 to 1950 and okay gentlemen named Lewis to Sard so it's after the American Revolution in the 1790s the army decided or actually the government decided well we need to develop some fortification plan they certainly had a few permanent forts left in the country after the American Revolution you know you had Castle what do they call that Fort Independence up in Boston there was a fort on that location there were also forts in the New York City area but they realized they need to have a formal fortification system so these forts that were developed in the 1790s were known as first system forts Louis to Sard at an interesting history he was a French Army officer came over to fight with the Americans during the American Revolution he actually was a volunteer with the Continental Army at the Battle of Rhode Island where he was wounded in action and lost an arm he was given a brevet as a lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army because of that so after the war we need to build things at this time America did not have a school of engineering that's why they developed West Point Military Academy originally so the best source of engineers were French officers because the French were the foremost military engineers of his day so he winds up designing what would to become old Fort Adams that we have here and basically a fairly irregular work this actually fit within the parade ground of the current Fort Adams and depending upon what sources you read anywhere from 12 to 20 guns that fort mounted backing up this shows the forts that were laid out in the 1790s around Newport of course Fort Adams on what was then called Britain Point the dumpling Fort never had a formal name that was around Tower I'll show you a picture of that in a minute Fort Walcott out in Goat Island Fort Hamilton on Rose Island that was never completed but the Rose Island lighthouse sits on one of the bastions of that Fort Fort Green which is where Battery Park is up in the point section of Newport and there was even a fort on Tondome Hill if you go up to Tondome Hill you can actually see some of the earthworks from that fortification there still there there's a nice picture of Fort Dumpling a picturesque ruin if you will it was not destroyed until about 1903 when they built the batteries of Fort Weatherill out there okay War of 1812 I must admit I I know I was playing to a Navy audience so I wanted to throw in some gratuitous naval history shots here of course that's the Constitution defeating the Gary air there is a and this is something maybe I could write another book about of course our the traditional narrative you know the British were harassing American ships and they were impressing American semen and there was the infamous incident of the Chesapeake and the leopard so you have the or is it the Shannon I'm so down in trouble now but anyway so and then of course we stood up against that we declared war in Britain and fought for our rights and everything was fine well the first commander of the first Fort Adams in 1799 was a gentleman named John Henry his man of mysterious origins from what I read he was probably from Ireland somehow he obtained a commission in the US Army resigned from the Army in 1802 went up to Vermont for a while and for some reason wound up in correspondence with the British Governor General in Canada and the correspondence was along the lines of gee there's a lot of people here in New England that don't really like the government in Philadelphia and maybe you know there might be some kind of a revolution to reunite New England with the mother country and you know things of this nature the sort of stuff that you know we wouldn't want to let get out so what happened was is that for and of course Henry apparently was an opportunist and he was thinking well if there's a revolution I can help lead it and I'll be richly rewarded well apparently the British weren't too keen on following through on this plan and then you know Henry's like oh darn I just got all this incriminating correspondence and no money and then he meets this mysterious Frenchman named Baron de Creon and Baron de Creon says hey guess what you can do I can work a deal so you can sell that to President Madison because he's looking for an excuse to declare war on Great Britain and then we'll take the money and I got this wonderful state over in France and then we'll be boon companions together we'll make a lot of money and you know drink wine for the rest of our lives or whatever the deal was so apparently Henry liked this and he really did sell this correspondence to President Madison for $50,000 that was serious money back then and then he gets on the sloop USS Wasp sales to France tries to link up a Baron de Creon and Baron de Creon is mysteriously disappeared now one of the theories behind this is maybe de Creon was actually working for Napoleon because just imagine it's 1812 Napoleon's about to invade Russia he probably wants the British Navy distracted what better way to distract the British Navy than to have war over in the Americas right so this is only a theory but there might be a book in it so okay third system for it so after the war of 1812 the United States realizes that it needs bigger and better forts this is a picture of Fort Monroe in Virginia that is the largest fortification in the United States in land areas about three times as big as Fort Adams but Fort Adams is the second largest but Fort Adams also was designed to mount more guns so they wanted to build a more permanent and more serious fortification system and this was sort of inspired by the work of Marshall Vauban of France was around during the 1600s so if you have a large budget and a great imagination this this is not a fanciful plan this was really built this is the city of Lille that's in northern France you have the city that's surrounded by a wall you can see these horn works they added on for additional protection and over there you have the Citadel the walls around the city are now gone but the Citadel is still there and in fact is still a French Army base so so we figured well we need to have the best so we'll get French engineers to build something for us so here's your French engineer Simon Bernard he attended the French a coal poly technique which was the sort of the French equivalent of MIT if you will where he learned military engineering he served in Napoleon's army and I don't know that much about it but he was involved when the siege of Torgau now from what I've been able to figure out this was a rearguard action when Napoleon's army was retreating from Russia in 1813 so I guess he basically said okay I want you guys to you know fortify the city and buy me some time while I try to make it back to Paris and of course that culminated in the Battle of Leipzig all I heard about the the siege is that it was a terrible siege and it lasted for three months so this undoubtedly made an impression on Mr. Bernard and I guess when the United States was looking for an engineer and at this time it was 1819 Napoleon of course was opposed in 1815 so what do you do when you're 50 years old and unemployed that's right you become a consultant so so mr. Bernard comes over to the United States they gave him the rank and pay of a Brigadier General in the US Army much to the chagrin of the American officers so he gets to work and he designs what became Fort Adams as far as I know this is the original plan for Fort Adams it's very similar to the fort as built except the west wall here you'll notice it has a big indentation there and the way it was built the west wall just extends out to here but that's the only major difference also you'll notice these two land fronts are in even length but the way the fort was built they actually tilted it slightly this way because there's a natural ridge line they wanted to take advantage of and there is a photograph from about the years I estimate 1960 but this shows the land front of the fort very well you'll notice that you had these little outer works this was called the covered way and then you get into this structure here which is called the tonight that's a French innovation basically oops sorry you have the you have cannons there and cannons there and they create a crossfire protecting that approach to the fort they also provide additional protection for the fort's walls so this is what's interesting about Fort Adams if you took a fortification expert shown Fort Adams without telling them where it was built or when it was built they would probably tell you this was a fort built in France around the 1700s where it was actually built in the United States in the early 1800s because of course it this was taken I guessing about the year 1960 okay what you can couple of clues you have the upstairs barracks there also you notice that the barracks on top of the south east wall is burned out and the fire occurred in the year 1947 so that sort of gives us a ballpark there and also that that remains of the barracks was torn down about the year 1975 okay Joseph Totten Bernard was the designer but Joseph Totten was the engineer in charge of construction they did the initial groundwork in 1824 Totten shows up in 1825 he personally oversaw the construction of the fort until 1838 when it became chief engineer of the US Army so most of what is Fort Adams today was built under his supervision it was an 1805 graduate of the US Military Academy served during the war of 1812 actually at one point he got to blow up a fort it was I guess they realized they couldn't hold out against the bridge so just blow up the fort okay so how many people can put that on the resume and so he then became chief engineer of the army served in that capacity until his death in 1864 after 59 years of military service this is before the army had a retirement program so you know so a very accomplished gentleman I could go on a length but I don't have the time okay so this is an interesting illustration you see the outline of Fort Adams as built and if you look very carefully you can see the outline of the original Fort Adams on the parade ground as well as these pencil marks where you see they're shifting the bastion there over a little over to the your the viewers left so I think those pencil marks is like okay yeah these are the changes I want to make so I find that interesting and probably made by Tottenham self this is Fort Adams birth certificate in the late 1800s they were doing some I think they were for some reason they were doing some exploding around one of the quarters of the fort or something but anyway this piece of paper popped out well thank you appreciate that and what this is is it basically indicates that the first stone of the fort was laid on I think it's May 11th 1825 and lists Joseph Totten and some of the other engineers that were with him and also mentions the president of the United States was John Quincy Adams and the vice president and the secretary of war things of that nature so a very historic document and it's known the National Archives where it should be okay construction of the fort this is a plan of the fort and trying to get the data on that looks like 1833 so every year as the fort was being built they drew one of these diagrams I have not seen the original but from what I understand they're about as big as this TV screen here so they're they're very detailed states of the works in this case they had completed the roof over the southeast bastion but they hadn't completed the roofs over the other fronts of the fort and they were still working on some of the outer works here so definitely making a lot of progress a couple things point out these circular objects those are called mortar mills where they would actually have a mule with sort of a plow that be going around where they had the mortar to keep the mortar mix that's what they did before they had cement mixers and this building here is actually the original barracks from the first four atoms that they kept as a I think a barracks for the workers at the fort okay speaking of workers you needed a labor force and obviously you know Dennis today you know economy matters so they wanted people to work hard and cheap and they found them in Ireland and I this is actually a picture from one of the information boards of the fort and I had a little girl who looked at this picture and she said why do they look so angry and miserable and probably because they are you know work back then was more about survival than it was about prosperity or fulfilling your destiny or having a good time or whatever it is so it was basically the deal was 10 to 12 hours a day six days a week and if you didn't like your job there would be somebody waiting to take it for you so I read one thing we're one of the engineers of the fort and this is from the 1850 somebody criticized him and say you're paying your workers only 50 cents a day and he says no I'm paying them 75 cents a day and don't you forget it so things were a little different back then also this is a copy of a newspaper ad where they're requesting 1 million bricks for the fort okay nice aerial view of the fort as completed I gotta keep rolling here okay a fort has a readout of many me this is located about a quarter mile south of the main fort and basically it's a miniature fort Adams here's an aerial view you have the central portion here you have a little ditch around it there then you have a bigger outer work and then you have another ditch here there are case mated cannons of what are called flank howitzers in the lower levels here that cover these ditches with gunfire so basically that's Fort's job is to keep the enemy busy for a week or two while they shore up the defenses in the main fort okay armament before it was intended to mount give me a break here I'll just test some water for it was intended to mount 464 guns in reality they only had about 200 guns but even at that was the most powerfully armed fort in the country the major calipers they had 32 pounders 24 pounders and what we're called 24 pounder flank howitzers apparently they originally used Karen aids for this job the army came out with its own flank howitzer in 1844 but this is apparently based on a drawing from Fort Adams from 1835 and so maybe the Navy had some surplus Karen aids the purpose of the flank howitzers those were anti personnel weapons they were fire and metal can full to muskicles work just like a giant shotgun and that will cover the land fronts of the fort from infantry attack this is a cannon mounted on barbrette on top of the fort and so that would be fairly typical anywhere from oh the 1830s up through maybe the 1870s or so okay and the pre-civil war era the fort was mostly complete by 1841 it became garrisoned it was active during the Mexican war where it was used as a mobilization center we'll talk about that in a minute there we go Franklin Pierce he was not formally assigned to the fort but he wasn't the fort for about five days he got commissioned in the army as a Brigadier General was at Fort Adams for a few days and then went down to Mexico of course later became president his brother Benjamin K Pierce was the commanding officer of the fort during the Mexican war apparently Benjamin was suffering from some type of illness because he died at the fort and also he was in command of the fort but there wasn't any garrison to speak of so I think it was what I would call a convalescent assignment before it was also used as the mobilization center for the ninth United States infantry that was recruited from men in New England and their commander was Truman Ransom who was killed in action at Chapultepec Ambrose Burnside a lot to be said about him I'll give you the very brief version he was stationed at the fort 1848 to 1849 shortly after he got out of West Point also again 52 to 53 leaves the army in 1853 starts the Burnside repeating rifle company unfortunately for him that was not financially successful and I read something that said he when he went bankrupt he had to go as far as to sell his uniform and a sword so that's very sad he wound up getting in touch with his old army buddy George B McClellan who at that time was treasurer of the Illinois Central Railroad and the general counsel of Illinois Central Railroad was Abraham Lincoln yeah so so it was pretty well connected so he wound up working as an engineer in terms of building bridges and whatnot for the railroad and that kept him busy until the Civil War broke out he then got a commission as a colonel of the first Rhode Island regiment on August of 61 he became a brigadier general August excuse me I think about April of 62 he became a major general and again without getting details he rose a little too fast for his own good and eventually was placed on waiting orders general Grant told him to go home and wait for further orders that never came he then got out of the army spent three years as governor of Rhode Island and then was a United States senator okay John B. McGrooder very flamboyant personality commanded the fort 1857 to 59 he is said to have well number one he was a southerner so a lot of southern hospitality had four days where the public were welcome to come out to the fort and enjoy its you know hospitality also it said he used the dumpling tower in Jamestown for target practice and during yes and during the Civil War there was a report that he had been shot by a jealous husband and the Newport Daily News says anyone familiar with General McGrooder's reputation will not be surprised at this report so it wasn't true but anyway so not a boring guy okay Civil War this is a print by J. P. Newell what happened of course war breaks out at the start of the Civil War the Fort Adams was on caretaking status the Naval Academy they were fearful the Confederates would take over Maryland so they put the all the cadets as they were called back then on the USS Constitution totter up here that's the both the toller and they set up the Naval Academy in Fort Adams and it was there from May to September of 1861 and then they guess they realized having a big fort with all the tunnels and what not it was not conducive to military discipline so they moved into the Atlantic House Hotel in town in Newport so that's a picture of the Atlantic House a few of the noteworthy individuals who attended the Naval Academy of course our our hero Stephen B. Loose was there as an instructor you also had future Captain Gridley of the Olympia and Admiral well Captain of the Maine and later Admiral Sigsby you had William T. Samson Winfield Scott Shiley and Rob Lee Evans who commanded the first leg of the great white fleek around the world cruise professor did I get them all or did I miss a couple downstairs okay yeah I'll get to that Willie McCarty little I should mention him too as far as the Elks home the Elks home actually was built after the Atlantic House so this was there a burned down I'm not sure let's say around 1890 and that's when the Elks home was built so it was on that site but a different building okay picture of the fort probably from the Civil War I just want to draw your attention to the nice shot furnace unfortunately that's no longer there if you go to Fort Griswold and Groton Connecticut they have a very nice shot furnace if you want to see something like that you also notice the cans mounted on top of the fort okay north lawn of the fort they also had a few field pieces out the fort in addition to the guns bounded in the walls so those would be mobile artillery if they needed them Robert Anderson commanded Fort Sumter at the beginning of the Civil War one of my favorite pieces of Fort Adams trivia his opposite number was the Confederate General Beauregard General Beauregard's first assignment out of West Point in 1838 was helping to build Fort Adams where Anderson's last assignment in the Army before he retired was as commanding officer of Fort Adams in 1863 was only at the fort for about three weeks then it got retired from the Army wound up dying in Nice France so I guess if you're going to die France is a good place to do it so anyway post Civil War I love this picture you have of course the fort and all this glory and you have this great dramatic shot of the gun crew there that's the old readout jail near the main gate that's still there so it was a pretty nice place to be Thomas W. Sherman local new porter the story goes that he walked all the way to Washington to meet with his Congressman to get an appointment to West Point graduated in the class of 1836 served in the Mexican War during the Civil War he was a brigadier general wound up getting severely wounded in the Red River campaign down Louisiana lost his right leg in fact it was so severely wounded the Newport Daily News published a three page obituary about him thinking he was going to die but he did not so he was commanding officer of the fort from 1866 to 1869 and this is a 15 inch robin these were really big the cannon tube is 16 feet long four feet in diameter at the back course 15 inch bore fires a cannonball weighing 450 pounds so that was pretty much state of the art for the Civil War and for about 30 years thereafter so that's serious that's that picture is taken at Fort Knox in Bucksport main by the way okay in the west wall of the fort they had 10 inch robins that were similar but of course smaller than the 15 inch robins quarters one this was the commanding officers quarters built in 1876 it's a three-story about a 15 room mansion not too shabby used by President Eisenhower later on we'll talk about him later and then we have officers row these houses were built late 1870s early 1880s still in use by senior officers at the Naval War College I'm going to guess there's a couple of people in this room who actually lived in some of these quarters yes all right Ida Lewis not directly related to the fort she was lighthouse keeper in Newport Harbor for many years she rescued 18 people from the water during her 40 years of manning the lighthouse she received a congressional gold lifesaving medal that's actually rarer than the Medal of Honor and a number of her best customers were soldiers from Ford Adams apparently the soldiers had no trouble getting into Newport from Ford Adams by boat but for some reason coming back from Newport they were more likely to fall out of the boat so well these days I'll figure out why Stephen B. Loose a very tangential connection to the fort because he was you know obviously we could do a whole whole series about him of course but one of his innovations was this wargame in November of 1887 he had the North Atlantic squadron sail up the East Passage and then they had the guns at Ford Adams fire on the ships as if to simulate combat so provided training for both the Army and the Navy and as far as I know this is the first joint training exercise in the history of the US Armed Forces so that's pretty significant and then they landed Marines up around Cottington Point and then attempted to take over the city so it was just putting together a lot of elements in one operation okay Spanish-American War Commodore Dewey of course next to him I believe that's Captain Gridley if you may fire with when ready Gridley I doubt they had sailor stand on top of gun tours in the middle of the battle but it looks pretty dramatic you know all right actually I should mention what the fort was during the during the Spanish War the short answer is not much there was a regiment from the New York National Guard that got mobilized sent to Fort Adams but they were never deployed overseas also the Newport artillery company went out to the fort for about a week to receive training on the 15 inch Robin guns just in case they were needed and then we get into what's called the Endicott period of fortifications these were more modern guns because in the roughly the 30 years since the Civil War technology had come a long way so instead of having the iron cannons you had breech loading rifles so this looks like a 10 inch rifle a very powerful weapon probably has a range of about 15 miles it's on a disappearing carriage so it's in the firing position of course and when it would fire it would actually recoil on its carriage to reloading position get reloaded pop it back up and fire again and this is a 12 inch mortar these were the first modern artillery pieces installed at the fort 1898 I'm not sure if it was in time for the Spanish-American war or not but right about that time oddly enough some of these were actually made at the builders iron foundry in Providence a few people realized they had a cannon factory there for at least a little while three inch mine defense guns a lot of forts had these because they would have minefields they didn't want the enemy having minesweepers taking out their minds so they had these small guns to take care of small craft like that this is an eight inch breech reloading rifle this was sort of a stop gap measure during the Spanish-American war apparently they had the tubes but they didn't have the emplacement so this has a more modern carriage but during the Spanish-American war they put them on a 15 inch Robin carriage guess the guns weight about the same weight 25 tons by the way and they had one installed at Fort Adams during the Spanish-American war okay so this is the old barracks basically the soldiers lived on the lower levels of the fort very cold and damp during the winter because of course it's a stone fort the army identified this I read a report from I think it was 1845 that identified that the quarters for the soldiers were very cold and damp and not very healthy but it took the army until about the year 1900 to do something about it so so that's when they built the upstairs barracks so the sleeping quarters were upstairs there were a lot warmer and drier they had a central heating system by them with radiators the downstairs they converted into latrines mess halls and kitchens that's the upstairs with the bed so very communal lifestyle for the soldiers this is one of the mess halls set up for Christmas dinner in 1911 and that's the kitchen I just love this chef here with the knife you know great picture okay domestic life yes there were women and children at the fort bear in mind that the officers and the NCOs were usually married so they lived at the fort with their wives and their children so there was definitely you know a softer side to Fort Adams and that's something that we should not forget there's you know women and children on the home front you know it's more people in the military than just the service members children this is the Hamel family that guy looks happy this guy doesn't but that's alright I actually I'm pleased to say I actually gave a tour to I think there was two of the boys one of the girls on my tour one day and they were talking about all the mischief they got into in the fort we're all adults here so I'll tell you this one they overheard their father was a sergeant at the fort that they were going to be showing Mickey Mouse films and so the boys were like oh wow that's great I like Mickey Mouse so they snuck into the theater watch the film problem was Mickey Mouse films was a euphemism for films about the hazards of venereal disease and and apparently the boys made a lot of exclamation and then they got a threshing from their father so that's the story there they the I was looking for a photograph about World War 1 I found this this is just so cool you know maybe should glorify war I'm guessing this is probably right after the armistice this sign is actually in German but they're wearing American rank insignia so I guess they're just celebrating the end of the war so it's kind of neat okay so World War 1 you had Fort Adams Fort Weatherall Kierney Getty Grebel all these forts are the more modern Endicott period forts Fort Weatherall had 4 12 inch guns Getty had 3 12 inch guns Grebel had 3 10 inch guns and some 12 inch mortars Kierney had some 6 inch guns but the point is definitely a lot more modern artillery and Fort Adams really wasn't the primary defending fort for Newport Harbor anymore because the gun arcs were shooting out this way and so the other forts would be providing the bulk of the firepower you know so over here on Satchewas Point what they did was they took two cannons from Fort Adams put them out there just in case the Germans might want to land on second beach or something like that and one of those cannons is now in Equality Park in Newport on Broadway the the old Canada it's a 4.7 inch Armstrong rifle it's made by the way is at Fort Moultrie in South Carolina okay not going to get into that I should mention the first provisional artillery brigade the basically the army realized they needed heavy artillery in France of course the army didn't have heavy field artillery so they got into railroad artillery where you'd have a 10 inch gun or they even took the 12 inch mortars and put them on railroad carriages so they organized a brigade of three regiments bearing in mind each regiment had about a thousand men so you had 3,000 men being organized and trained here late 1917 and then in early 18 they went over to France okay where was I alright an innovation yeah for fear the Germans might send over their zeppelins they realized how are we going to shoot them down so they had three inch anti-aircraft guns and yes those are mounted on Model T chassis and that was the first mobile anti-aircraft artillery in the army okay interwar period they had the second battalion of the 13th US infantry at the fort why the infantry at Fort Adams basically the army then their their idea was to have the army more or less spread out instead of today where usually they have big bases with a lot of troops at them I think the fear was urban insurrection so they would always have troops relatively near any population center they took out most of the undocked period batteries by World War two they only had a 12 inch mortars and three three inch anti-aircraft guns and Fort Adams served as the command post of the Harbor defenses of Narragans Bay and also headquarters from the 10th Coast artillery regiment okay baseball yes recreation at the fort this is a rare picture of a baseball game in progress on the parade ground other activities were football and boxing so basically a lot of activities to keep the soldiers occupied this lady is Monty Allen she was hired as the forts hostess she was essentially there what today we would call the MWR director she ran the service club and I guess the idea was to give the soldiers something a little more wholesome to do rather than going into Newport and getting into whatever kind of trouble they might get in there when she died in 1956 her Paul bearers were sergeants retired sergeants from Fort Adams and she's buried in the Fort Adams cemetery so quite an honor citizens military training camps this was a program around during the 1920s and 30s it was basically to provide the army with a nucleus of trained citizens typically a young man would volunteer to go to one month's of training during the summer and get paid for it that's why they took the training I guess to get the money and the theory was in time of war they could call up these people with some degree of military training and you'd be already be ahead of the game also they had a commissioning program where if you completed for summer training camps you'd be eligible for commission in the reserves of the National Guard this is in the southern part of the fort relatively near where the Fort Cemetery is that big building is where they had the classrooms and these buildings I believe were the latrines and showers okay World War two some love for the Marine Corps there you go Bruce and okay in World War two they built some more modern forts Fort Church Fort Green Fort Burnside those were Fort Church had two 16 inch guns Fort Green had two 16 inch guns and another battery that they never got around to putting guns in because the war ended too quickly Fort Burnside has a six inch gun battery out up there they were thinking of building a 16 inch battery but didn't have to and then of course you had the remnants of the older forts in the area as well so pretty heavily defended okay I'm not going to get into that let's see all right okay so by late war Fort Adams is being used as a training center we had wax and training here there's a picture in the book of a group of wax graduating from the training you might have heard of Florence Kane Murray from Newport she was a state supreme court justice she was also a lieutenant colonel in the Women's Army Corps during World War two so a very distinguished person who was in the Women's Army Corps from Newport by May of 45 there are only about 500 soldiers left in the defense of the Narragans of Bay the other soldiers were deployed out to serve elsewhere in the war because that's where they were needed I should have mentioned in 1940 that's when they mobilized the 243rd Regiment of Coast Artillery from the Rhode Island National Guard and bear in mind that was over a year before Pearl Harbor so you know there was definitely concerned we'd be getting into the war and for what it's worth the last guns at Fort Adams were two 90 millimeter anti-aircraft guns they were mounted where the readout is okay post-war Fort Adams was greatly reduced let's another point here the Coast Artillery Corps merged with the field artillery in 1950 Fort Adams was deactivated about 31 May 50 that's when the Army abolished the Coast Artillery Corps and then kind of coincidentally the Korean War started in June 1950 and of course they weren't thinking about coastal fortifications at that time this is a picture from the retirement ceremony for Colonel Metzger who was the last Colonel in command of Fort Adams that was September of 49 and that was sort of marked the end of the fort the fort was then basically just getting ready for deactivation after that point okay so after 1950 I'm running out of time I apologize I'll just breeze right through this one thing I do want to point out is the commander of the Naval Station suggested that they tear down Fort Adams and use the stone for breakwater at the Navy base President Eisenhower spent his summers at Fort Adams well 57 he was here at the base 58 and 60 he was living at Fort Adams and in 1960 they brought over the brand-new ballistic missile submarine Patrick Henry they're firing just dummy charges they're not real missiles but it's interesting you see Fort Adams in the background here and then you see the submarine so this is strategic deterrence from the early 1800s and this is strategic deterrence from the late 20th century so it just shows you how much times have changed okay the fort gets neglected given to the state of Rhode Island this is probably taken around the 1960s or 70s and this is why certain parts of the fort are not open to the public so Fort Adams declared a national stark landmark became site of the jazz and folk festivals and again from 1980 to 95 the fort was allowed to decay I should have mentioned the fort was open during the 70s restoration two very important people Senator Teresa Piverweed from Newport she's done a lot to bring funding to the Fort Adams over the years still working very hard for us Colonel Frank Hale he was the first actually acting executive director of Fort Adams trust from 95 to about 2000 when Tony Palermo came on board but he's a very key figure if not for him Fort Adams might not be doing what it's doing today some of the restoration and 24-pounder mounted in a casemate and this is an event casemate at the fort and finally the end okay before we get into questions and answer I want to recognize Rick Nagel executive director of Fort Adams trust I was asked to give you five minutes yes what's that what was they want to do the Q&A first oh he did it oh I didn't know that okay good all right so questions please what about the battery that you forgot about over on James Town from the revolution oh yes still there well I I couldn't cover everything when I was thinking about my presentation I realized I could do a lecture just about the social history of the fort that would take an hour I could do a lecture about the fortifications and the engineering and that would take another hour and then I could do another lecture about the history of the fortifications in the area in their historical context we thank you for that super part yes the battery was that you have to us we have a recreation center that was the recreation center for the battery and they gave that to us so we're very grateful to the artillery oh thank you appreciate that yes sir okay yes okay a couple of things number one it's a case of if you don't use Ford Adams as a naval base an enemy might so we are strategically located between Boston to the north and New York to the south also keep in mind that as late as the census of 1800 Newport was in the top 10 cities in the countries in terms of population another feature of Newport was that it's the only harbor that can be entered with a southwest wind and that's significant because you would have southwest storms that would be very devastating to ships and if you're caught in one of those if you could if you're relatively near Newport you can make it into Newport Harbor to relatively safety so that was a consideration but it's it's primarily that Newport's just a great place to have a naval base and Stephen B. Loos recognized this yes it's amphibious Navy sailor you want to point out that the first successful Navy Army amphibious group were at Wilmington North Carolina yes okay great okay you know you always miss something okay there were POW camps if you will at Fort Gettingen Jamestown and Fort Kearney in Saunders Town and the book I recommend you read is Harbor Defensor or Defenses of Narragans and being World War two by Walter Schroeder he gets into this one of the interesting features is they actually had a school for the Germans who were considered shall we say less notified than others on the theory that they would become leaders in post-war Germany so they were getting lessons in democracy and government and things of that nature so that's a very interesting dimension I have heard it mentioned that they had Italian prisoners of war doing sort of fatigue details at Fort Adams during the war so but that's you know definitely part of the history there German subs yeah do you 853 we still got the propellers in the backyard yes okay what's that excellent okay so anyway so you had definitely you boats were a major concern more of course that was more of the Navy's concern than the Army's but the u8 53 basically it went down fighting on May 5th of 45 it sank a Collier off of the or cargo ship rather off of Newport it was tracked down by the USS Atherton and the USS Moberly and the depth charged it and sank it and so so there was definitely some action around here and one of the bodies of the sailors one of the sailors on the submarine was recovered and it's in the island cemetery annex here in Newport so okay yes wait a minute but it canceled me oh it's alright okay anything else yes the core of the army had a fleet of boats tied up on the east side of the fort during World War two and they were I think army transportation car why didn't you mention no again I have a lot of material to cover I should have mentioned that there was a minefield that was operated by the army they had the army mine planter service and that was based out of Fort Wetherell where you have the big gray storage building for the mines and they would go out and plant mines in wartime and they would be command detonated as necessary of course never had to be used but yes sir knows anybody else made a submarine that's at Melville you know yes that's correct all over the world oh yes yes sir during the Civil War not much the Confederates did not have shall we say an ocean going Navy there was a ship called the Takane that was a raiding ship that was operating off of New England and so of course Fort Adams had the East Passage more than covered they were concerned it might come up the Sakana River so they took the 20 pounder parrot rifle the city owned gave it to the Newport artillery company they go at the satuous point and waited for the Confederates to show up the Confederates ship actually wound up in Portland Harbor in Maine they captured a United States revenue cutter they were beginning to make their escape there was a couple of civilian ships in pursuit and they realized they were going to be taken over so they abandoned the Cale cushion but they set fuses on on the gunpowder on the ship and blew it up and I know that because my great-great-grandfather was part of the pursuers and wrote about it in his diary so and then the Newport artillery after the ship got blown up they just declared a victory and went home and had a beer I guess but anything else okay thank you very much as you walk back towards the War College on that sidewalk that goes back towards the sprues they just now literally put the propellers in place off the UA53 we haven't even got our signage up yet that's how I should mention the books on sale at the gift shop okay one more thing the World War one mm-hmm we had a German submarine be real yes come over to Jamestown to visit one of his friends yes his friends family he was then the school director for the Jamestown school and it was really something that right in the middle of the war he came into visit yes he visited Newport Harbor and this is while America was still neutral and it was basically to make the point well the United States we have submarines that can come over to your coast and do some harm if we choose to so yeah next week on Thursday we'll be on John Adams so look forward to seeing you here