Defending the coastKate Gawlik
The pirate Blackbeard passed through it in 1718. The Spanish
plundered it in 1747. The British captured it in 1782. The
Confederates occupied a fort protecting it in 1861. Federal forces
took the fort back in 1862.
The hot commodity is Beaufort Inlet, the entrance to Beaufort
Harbor, one of North Carolina's major deep-water ocean ports. After
years of hostile takeovers, the U.S. government realized it needed
to establish a coastal defense to protect Beaufort and other
coastal towns and entryways that encountered similar attacks.
Therefore, during the early 1800s, several forts were built along
the Eastern Seaboard.
After constructing two failed forts on Bogue Banks, an island
outside Beaufort Inlet, the government completed Fort Macon in 1834
to guard the inlet and harbor (the first fort never was finished,
and the second deteriorated and washed away). Fort Macon was built
by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and named after Nathaniel
Macon, an eminent North Carolina statesman.
Although Fort Macon has been repaired and renovated throughout
the years, its infrastructure was damaged from water that
penetrated the ceilings, walls and floors of the casements, or
fortified "rooms"...
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