Visiting Fort Delaware

Under Construction 🙂

One of my favorite 19th century forts is located in the heart of Delaware. Its history goes back to the Revolutionary War when the British launched a successful bombardment and capture of the city of Philadelphia. Without any major naval fortifications before the city, there was little resistance the colonists could put up. Decades later in the 1800’s, the US military finally decided to build a naval fort south of Philadelphia. The original fort was destroyed by a fire before it was even completed, and its reconstruction was incredibly slow. It wasn’t until 1846 that Fort Delaware was finally finished, roughly 70 years after Philadelphia was attacked! The photo above shows the outside of the fort, which is completely surrounded by a shallow moat.

Fort Delaware is actually located on an island, with one side of the river belonging to Delaware and the other side to New Jersey. The fort’s main defense was of course with the use of cannons, and it was impossible to sail past either side without coming in easy range. I assume at one point Fort Delaware had dozens of cannons lined up along these windows that could see out in every direction. Any attack on the city would have required that the fort be destroyed first, which would have been a very difficult task.

I’m not sure what these guys were doing and suppose I should have asked! These two guys were packing something around the cannon area and seemed to be figuring it out as they did it. There was another room I later went to and saw three people dressed up in 19th century attire trying to temper some metal, it seemed they were also experimenting and learning how to do it on the spot.

Fort Delaware is much more than just an walled defense post, it actually has a few marge buildings inside along with this huge courtyard. Sadly most of the fort seemed to be in ruins and felt abandoned with a need of major restoration. From a distance though, these two photos make it look like it’s not in such bad shape!

There’s several areas of Fort Delaware that are off limits and almost seem to be crumbling. This photo above of a ceiling two stories up looks to be okay minus some needed mold treatment. The photo below shows an unlit hallway that was pitch black dark. Using my flash you can see some of the bricks were starting to crumble away, and there was a small pile on the floor. It seemed that at least half of the entire fort or more was off limits, and I’m not sure if that’s because of preservation purposes or simply safety.

The majority of the places that you can visit are restored and decorated. This photo above shows what the kitchen looked like during mid 19th century. While Fort Delaware was built as a way to protect Philadelphia, it was never used in battle and more famously became a prison during the Civil War. The fort held an incredible 33,000 captured Confederate soldiers, political prisoners, and others against the Union. The conditions weren’t exactly terrible, but a small pox epidemic and other issues killed over 7 percent of the prison population, or over 2,500 people in total. With that said, it’s hard to imagine this tiny kitchen could feed tens of thousands of people, so clearly at one point they had a much larger operation going.

These two photos show two different dinning areas. The photo above shows the dinning area for officers and important visitors, while below was the common dinning areas for troops and later the prisoners.

These two last rooms I’ll share is what I believe to be a laundry room above and a storage room below. All of these rooms I’ve showed are off limits, and you can only view them behind a rope. There was a small gift shop that I didn’t visit, but I think a small cafe here wouldn’t have been a bad idea! I’m all about preserving historic places, the only issue with Fort Delaware is once you arrive you are a bit trapped, and in the summer heat or cold winters it’d be nice to have a place to have a snack.

After visiting the inside, my friend and I headed up to the roof. You’re allowed to climb the two flights of stairs and walk around a small area, but like the rest of the fort most of this area was roped off. It was a bit strange to have the roof covered in grass, but aside from that there were the expected canons and small decks scattered around. I did find some tunnels that seemed to connect different firing points together. I assume these were made so that someone could get from one station to another without being exposed, but these were another one of those places that were blocked off.

Lastly, here are some photos of renactors. The girl above looks like someone straight out of Handmaid’s Tail minus the colors of her clothing. In the photo below, these guys gave a talk and put on a firing show for visitors. There’s actually a bit to learn here, from 19th century laundry demonstrations to heavy artillery drills.

More of Delaware

Wilmington, Delaware

Trap Pond

Horseshoe Crab Migration

Nearby States

Virginia

Pennsylvania

Maryland