Construction
Construction began in April 1909 and lasted five years while the island was leveled by U.S. Army engineers and then was built up with thick layers of steel-reinforced concrete into a massive structure roughly resembling a concrete ship, 350 feet long, 144 feet wide, and with a top deck 40 feet above water at mean low tide. The 14 inch M1909 guns and their two custom built turrets, dubbed Batteries Marshall and Wilson, were delivered and installed by 1916. The secondary 6 inch M1908MII guns, batteries Roberts and McCrea, were installed the same year. Searchlights, anti-aircraft batteries, and a lattice-style fire control tower were mounted on the fort's upper surface. The living quarters for the approximately 240 officers and enlisted men along with the power generators, plotting rooms and ammunition magazines were located deep inside the fort.
Read more about this topic: Fort Drum (El Fraile Island)
Famous quotes containing the word construction:
“Striving toward a goal puts a more pleasing construction on our advance toward death.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)