Fort Niagara is a primarily French-built colonial outpost, at the mouth of the Niagara River on Lake Ontario. The preeminent Indian tribe of the region, the Seneca, told the French that they didn't care what they built there to cosolidate their position, so long as it wasn't a masonry fort. Twisting their moustaches in a dastardly fashion and cackling with glee, the French got around this restriction by building the Maison a Machicoulis, or House of Peace, in 1726.

While the French surely did desire peace with the Seneca, the Maison was essentially a fort that looked like a house. Within a very few years, the French had added to their position, and precisely the thing that the Indians had indicated should not be built in their territory was there: A French starfort. Which, after the French and Indian War (1754-1763), became a British starfort, which the Indians no doubt liked even less. Despite their propensity for building starforts where they weren't wanted, the French did generally get along with Indians better than the British.

The Seneca were likely even less pleased when the end of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) made them all semi-citizens of the United States. Despite losing the war, Great Britain held on to Fort Niagara for another decade, when the Jay Treaty tied up many of the Revolution's loose ends in 1794. The new United States had a new starfort!

Fort Niagara soon faced British starry edifice Fort George, just 1200 yards across the Niagara River. Fort George had been completed in 1802 for the express purpose of countering Fort Niagara, but when the War of 1812 (1812-1815) began in June of 1812, neither fort was ready to do much of anything of an offensive nature.

The two forts finally got their acts together and exchanged artillery fire in October and November of 1812. Fort George enjoyed a slight elevation advantage, so Fort Niagara's garrison hauled a six-pound cannon up onto the Maison's roof, which, in at least one case, accomplished the desired goal of devastating, plunging fire.

On October 13, 1812, an American hot shot hit the roof of Fort George's powder magazine. While this certainly could have been the death blow that scattered all of Fort George's inhabitants to pieces had the fire that started gone unchecked, checked it was, and the British were not incinerated. This non-event was, however, one of the only instances of hot shot doing what it was intended to do, which was being a potentially game-changing destructive force, after the events at Yorktown in 1781.

Serving the gun atop the Maison during a furious artillery exchange of November 21, 1812, was Betsy Doyle. Living at Fort Niagara with her children, Betsy was the wife of Andrew Doyle (a US Artillery officer who had been captured by the British at the Battle of Queenston Heights in the previous month), and felt compelled to assist her husband's unit in his absence. Mrs. Doyle heroically carried heated shot "from a fire" (there was no Hot Shot Furnace at Fort Niagara at this point, famous engraving of Mrs. Doyle's heroics to the contrary) to the gun atop the Maison, in the interest of enflaming Fort George's wooden buildings.

The following year, Fort Niagara was captured by the British, who used it as a base of operations as they merrily tooled about upstate New York, burning things (in retaliation for the wholly unnecessary burning of the Canadian town of Newark by US forces). The Treaty of Ghent ended the war at the end of 1814, and US troops regarrisoned the fort in May of 1815.

Astute readers may have noted that Fort Niagara still doesn't have a Hot Shot Furnace. This is because our narrative has yet to reach the magical 1840's, when the Hot Shot Furnace Fairy visited many American starforts, sprinkling her Magical Furnace Dust with reckless abandon.

The Hot Shot Furnace that exists at Fort Niagara today was built during the 1839-1843 timeframe, during which improvements were made to the fort's riverside defenses. Rebellion had broken out in Canada, whose local residents had taken issue with their British overlords. Canadian rebels sought arms and shelter from the United States, and relations betwixt the US and Great Britain deteriorated. Time to upgrade those rotting northern defenses!

Fort Niagara might also be unique in that, when its Hot Shot Furnace was built, also constructed was a Hot Shot Battery. While many US forts had shot furnaces and guns from which to shoot heated shot, none of which I am aware had a dedicated battery, specifically for the delivery of heated shot. The Hot Shot Battery today only has one gun, although there may have been at least one more cannon perched up there when it was first built.

By the time the riverside defenses were improved, tensions with Great Britain had eased: Heated shot from Fort Niagara's sandstone furnace were never flung in anger.

I visited Fort Niagara in August of 2015, and spent some quality time with its hot shot furnace. One thing for which my pre-visit studies had not prepared me was the size of Fort Niagara's hot shot furnace! While those furnaces I've visited have all varied to one degree or another, none other has even approached the scale of Fort Niagara's, which is taller than any other with which I have come in contact by at least four or five feet.