Confederates manning a Fort Fisher battery dur- 

 ing the Civil War. Photo courtesy N.C. Division 

 Archives and History. 



Confederate masterpiece 

 with a rocky history 



At the height of its glory, Fort Fisher was the 

 mainstay in a system of forts devised to protect the 

 invaluable lower Cape Fear River. It was the vital 

 link which kept open the port of Wilmington until the 

 very last months of the Civil War, allowing dare-devil 

 blockade runners to slip in and out of New Inlet. 



The blockade runners were loaded with provisions, 

 clothing and war munitions for the troops and 

 civilians of the Confederacy. Wilmington's foreign 

 commerce boomed. Towards the end of the war, it 

 was the Confederacy's only supply link with the out- 

 side world. 



But even in its prime, Fort Fisher was an un- 

 finished masterpiece. Its story began in 1861, when a 

 two-gun earthenwork battery was constructed on the 

 northern side of New Inlet at Federal Point (called 

 Confederate Point during the war). The following 

 year Major (later Colonel) William Lamb assumed 

 command of the fort and began to mold it into his 

 vision— a formidable earthenware fort modeled after 

 the Malakoff of the Crimea. 



Under Lamb's direction, slaves and military men 

 were put to work building the huge traverses, 

 bombproofs and gun batteries. Conditions were dif- 

 ficult. Exhausted soldiers wrote home complaining of 

 rats in the cistern and "mosquitoes as large as hum- 

 mingbirds." 



At one time there were as many as 1000 men work- 

 ing on the fort, including 500 slaves. But construction 

 progress was thwarted by the fact that troops 

 stationed at the fort were constantly being called to 



the defense of other vital points in the Confederacy. 

 And, much to Lamb's dismay, he was unable to per- 

 suade North Carolina's Governor Vance to send more 

 workers and slaves to finish the task. 



The fort stretched in an L shape from the Cape 

 Fear River to the ocean and down the length of the 

 beach. The section guarding land was located a mile 

 and a half north of New Inlet. About 900 yards in 

 length, it consisted of 15 mounds and ended in a bas- 

 tion at the point of the angle. The first 100 yards of 

 the sea face were similar in construction. But the 

 remainder (1400 yards) was a series of small mound 

 batteries connected by infantry fences. 



On the edge of New Inlet, Fort Buchanan stood 

 isolated. Though it was a mile and a half from the end 

 of the sea face, it was a vital part of Fort Fisher. This 

 massive earthen mound held guns to cover the inlet 

 and stood ready to receive beaten troops who might 

 then retreat by water. 



In late 1864 the Union realized that it would have 

 to sever the Confederacy's supply link at Wilmington 

 if it was to win the war. On Christmas Eve, 1864, 

 Federal troops first attacked Fort Fisher. Seeing that 

 they didn't have enough forces to take the fort, they 

 retreated. But they returned by land and water to 

 launch a much stronger attack on the afternoon of 

 January 13, 1865. The fort was finally invaded the af- 

 ternoon of January 15 and Confederate forces surren- 

 dered that night. They had suffered a loss of 500 men; 

 the Federal casualties totaled 1500. 



The Confederate plan to use Fort Buchanan as a 

 retreat point also failed. Wounded commanding of- 

 ficers Whiting and Lamb were among those who 

 arrived at Fort Buchanan to find that Confederate 

 Navy forces had abandoned it and taken the boats. By 

 February 21, 1865, Wilmington was occupied and the 

 Confederacy's lifeline had been cut. The fall of the 

 Confederacy followed swiftly. 



But that was not the end of Fort Fisher's history as 

 a military installation. During World War II it was 

 used to protect the Federal Point-Smith Island area 

 from submarine attack. The fort became part of the 

 Camp Davis training center, located at Holly Ridge. 

 Wells were sunk; barracks, machine gun nests and 

 other buildings were constructed. Ammunition 

 bunkers can still be seen along the road just north of 

 Battery Buchanan. An experimental radar tower 

 looms over the beach today. 



Construction during World War II also meant the 

 loss of part of the Civil War historic site. Confederate 

 land face mounds were flattened to make an airstrip. 

 And more than half of Battery Buchanan was dis- 

 mantled to build bomb proofs to protect the ammuni- 

 tion bunkers. 



Most of the World War II buildings were in turn 

 destroyed when the Fort Fisher area became part of 

 the buffer zone of Sunny Point Ammunition Loading 

 Terminal during the early 1950s. It wasn't until 1965 

 that the state of North Carolina built a visitors cen- 

 ter/museum on the site to preserve its Civil War 

 history. The remaining batteries were restored and a 

 palisades fence was reconstructed. 



