Fort Popham
Phippsburg, Maine, USA

Settlers of the Plymouth Company, 120 colonists led by George Popham (1550-1608), arrived at the mouth of the Kennebec River in August of 1607 and immediately did what all right-thinking colonists did in the era in question: They built a starfort! Fort St. George, named for England's Patron Saint, was built by the colonists on Sabino Head, just across a little bay from Hunniwell Point, where Fort Popham sits today.

George Popham was elected President of this new colony, but he died in 1608. Overwhelmed by the harshness of the Maine winter and distressingly leaderless, the rest of the colonists abandoned their starfort the following Spring and returned to England. Though the Popham Colony predated the much-vaunted Plymouth Colony by 13 years, it was ultimately unsuccessful, and thus generally forgotten to history.

Fast forward, if you'd be so kind, to the middle of the 18th century. The town of Bath, up the Kennebec from the ill-fated Fort St. George, established itself as a shipbuilding community in 1743. By the mid-19th century, Bath was the nation's fifth-largest port, along a coast that had been raided at the British Royal Navy's whim during the American Revolution (1775-1783) (at which time a minor gun battery existed on the site of the future Fort Popham) and War of 1812 (1812-1815).

Maine had become a United State in 1820, and the city of Augusta, also up the Kennebec River, was designated it's capital city in 1827...which made two strategically important locations on the Kennebec, not yet protected by a starfort. For heaven's sake Maine, get on it already!!

Maine, or more precisely the United States government, finally got on it in 1857, by authorizing an actual fortification to be built on Hunnewell's Point. Though it was technically planned and built as part of America's Third System of Seacoast Defense, the design of Fort Popham, as well as that of other forts planned at the time in question, were unique to that system.

It's easy to understand why such fortifications would be desirable. With naval gunnery ever improving, and the added game-changing development of the ironclad warship (the CSS Virginia had wreaked havoc on the US Navy at Hampton Roads in March of 1862), the gentlemen with the impressive facial hair of the federal government felt sure that masonry atop masonry was the only sure way to defend against a belligerent navy in the 1860's.

Suddenly all of the massive works in a state of mid-construction along the Union's shores seemed less necessary than they had before the war started. Work was eventually abandoned on Fort Popham, with only the two tiers we see today completed.

But even in a state of 2/3 of its intended size, Fort Popham would have been a sticky wicket indeed for an approaching vessel with ill intent. A closed lunette built with granite blocks, the nonstarfort of our current interest was thirty feet high facing the river, and would have defended the mouth of the Kennebec with 36, ten- and twelve-inch guns in two tiers of vaulted casemates...a daunting obstacle for any ship at the time, but now understood to be vulnerable to the concentrated attentions of rifled artillery.

We find ourselves once again thanking the Spanish Empire, this time for ruling Cuba in a heavy-handed fashion! Though a global power due in no small part to the careful maintenance of an overseas empire for several hundred years, by the end of the 19th century the Spanish Empire was heading for rock bottom: Spain was on the wane. A buff young United States had a not-completely-unreasonable desire to reign supreme in it's own hemisphere, and there was Spain, fighting a Cuban independence movement 90 miles south of Florida.

Spain had the international reputation of possessing and wielding a most formidable navy, honed by centuries of colonial domination and paid for by an endless stream of treasure from those colonies. During the period in which the United States was beginning to bump heads with Spain over the latter's possessions in the Caribbean, the Spanish Navy's Numancia was the first ironclad warship to circumnavigate the globe (which took place in the late 1860's), and their Peral was the first electrically-powered, military submarine to take to the seas (1888). The United States could, therefore, be excused for believing that the Spanish Navy was a modern, irresistible juggernaut of nautical force, which would sooner or later come down on America's shores like a steel hurricane, should any sort of hostilities be initiated.

Once the Spanish-American War finally came to pass in 1898, the Spanish Navy was revealed to be however the opposite of a modern, irresistible juggernaut of nautical force could be described. Two of Spain's three naval groups were swiftly annihilated by the US Navy and swept from the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, while the third group raced home to defend Spain's coast from an expected American invasion.

Fortunately Spain had no secret, supermodern nuclear naval group dedicated to the North Atlantic, so Fort Popham spent the war peacefully. The fort was briefly garrisoned, but spent much of the war, indeed most of the Endicott Period, manned by a single Ordnance Sergeant. This is not to say, however, that the federal government had given up on defending the mouth of the Kennebec River.

Baldwin had been an American military engineer during some very trying times: He fought with the British in the French and Indian War (1754-1763), assisting Captain William Eyre (d.1764) with the construction of Fort William Henry. Lessons learned during this conflict helped Baldwin become Chief Engineer of the Northern Theater Army during the American Revolution (1775-1783), in which post he strengthened the defenses at Fort Ticonderoga.

Another war broke out in Europe in 1914, into which the United States leapt in 1917. This was of course the First World War (1914-1918), which brought a merry garrison back to Fort Popham for the last time. Though no longer a source of defensive gunfire, Fort Popham was still an important part of the Endicott Era defensive strategy, in that electrically-fired mines had been liberally sprinkled throughout the entrance to the Kennebec River, and the minefield's Fire Control system was operated from within the old fort.

A series of unpleasant-sounding tar-paper-nailed-over-wood-frame buildings were constructed as "shelter" for this garrison of around 200 men, who must have primarily stood around looking at each other, as it couldn't have taken more than a few dudes to operate the minefield controls, and the only semi-modern gun at Fort Popham, the 8" breechloader outside the fort at the 1898 battery, was apparently no longer there by 1916. And surely nobody expected to deflect the Imperial German Navy with 40-year-old Rodman Guns?

Forever. Forts Popham and Baldwin were sold to the state of Maine in February of 1924 for use as public parks, and Fort Baldwin's remaining gun mounts were transferred to Fort Preble in Portland.

Our fort and faux fort were federalized in 1941 with the United States' joining of the Second World War (1939-1945). A battery of four 155mm guns on Panama Mounts were installed around Battery Hawley at Fort Baldwin, and a five-story Artillery Fire Control Tower was also constructed: This was one of four such towers intended to direct fire from two huge new 16" guns installed 40 miles away at Peak's Island Military Reservation, in Portsmouth Harbor.

I visited Fort Popham in May of 2015. Won't you visit the Fort Popham page in the Starforts I've Visited section?