Trip Report - Part One

At some point in my life, I had the opportunity to visit Fort Hancock in New Jersey. This is Part One of a Three-Part Trip Report.

Sandy Hook peninsula is about 6 miles long and around 2,000 acres in total with sandy oceanfront beaches all along the perimeter. Most of the peninsula is inhabited by Fort Hancock which consists of old, historic, military fortifications in various states of preservation and/or apparent abandonment. Some of the old barracks and associated buildings are leased to the public. Some are inhabited and otherwise in use. Others are crumbling. I ran around maniacally covering the whole thing in one day during which I explored everything I could get my hands on. To this end, I prioritized the site's more unique military structures which consisted primarily of the many varieties of coastal defense gun emplacements and associated infrastructure.

Notable among the points of interest here are Battery Potter, Nine Gun Battery, Batteries Gunnison, Peck, Kingman and Mills, in addition to some other things which I may go into more detail on in subsequent posts. Just as these Endicott batteries guarded and defended New York Harbor on the east coast, the hills around San Francisco, California are covered in Endicott batteries which defended San Francisco Bay and the west coast. I am extremely grateful and feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to explore both of these similar but distinct awesome historic sites which lie 3,000 miles apart and on opposite coasts of the United States. This, my solo trip to Fort Hancock, was the east coast rendition of exactly what I had done an unspecified number of years prior on what was my first long distance exploring trip, which was also my first such solo trip, to San Francisco. These were both incredible experiences which I will never forget.

Echoes of history, adrenaline, and a vague sense of undefined nostalgia mixed with the nicotine pulsing through my veins as I smoked a celebratory cigarette after a full day of solo exploring while standing barefoot in the ocean, staring out at the limitless expanse of the horizon on one of the eastern and outermost edges of this great continent so far from home and everyone that I care about. I am not a smoker, usually. But when you do this sort of thing and you reach the end of an adventurous day to find yourself still very much alive, a little bloody and scraped up but neither hurt nor arrested, and the sun has already gone down behind you to usher in darkness along with the exhaustion you had previously been ignoring, and there's nothing left of the day except to head back to the hotel and wash away the rust and grime that has caked onto your disgusting body, I contend that there is perhaps no time and no mental state in which it is either more appropriate, satisfying or necessary to smoke a cigarette and to contemplate on all that you have done with this day and all that you have done with this life. The cigarette sizzled briefly as it extinguished in the water beneath a sky no longer illumiated nor warmed by the sun and irrespective of what any clock might have indicated, it was this closing ceremony which marked the official end to the day. I felt a great sense of satisfaction but also melancholy. I gave it hell, I went hard and I victoriously updated another pin on the map. But now it's over. As I turn my back to leave I know that I might never come down this road again.

Histoy of Fort Hancock

Fort Hancock is a large decommissioned coastal artillery base located in New Jersey which consists of most of the 6-mile long Sandy Hook peninsula near the entrance to New York Harbor. Due to the valuable strategic location of Sandy Hook, this site has had a military presence stationed on it for the 200 years spanning the American Revolution up until December 31, 1974 when it was decomissioned and transferred to the National Park Service. The lighthouse at Sandy Hook was built in 1764 and is the oldest working lighthouse in the United States. A coastal artillery base was completed in 1896 and it defended the Atlantic coast as part of the Harbor Defenses of New York until 1950. The Sandy Hook Proving Ground was established adjacent to Fort Hancock in 1874 as a coastal defense weapons testing area. In 1885, The Endicott Board of Fortifications was convened with the goal of modernizing coastal defense weaponry based on lessons learned in the U.S. Civil War. Fort Hancock was one of the first installations built to prototype the new weapons and defensive systems and it is where the first operational gun of the Endicott Program was deployed and it is the site of the first concrete mortar battery constructed in the United States. Fort Hancock also features the "Nine Gun Battery" which is the longest contiguous gun battery constructed for the Endicott System.

Fort Hancock was the first line of defense for New York Harbor until the Navesink Battery was first established around the start of WWI in the bluffs of Navesink on the mainland which overlooked Sandy Hook. Enemy ships attempting to enter New York Harbor would be subject to fire from Navesink and then the full gaunlet of weaponry located on Sandy Hook. Any ships that managed to survive past this point then had to contend with Fort Wadsworth just north of Sandy Hook. Since the dawn of the United States, the locations of forts Wadsworth and Hancock had been of utmost strategic importance to the defense of the country in general, and New York specifically, against seaborne attack.

During WWI, the only action Fort Hancock saw was the removal of various guns for distribution into service elsewhere, although much was left intact due to its role as the primary defense for New York City. After WWI, the proving grounds were relocated to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and many other batteries saw their more modern guns removed. The older guns were left in place and the fort in general was mostly vacant until the events which led up to WWII.

At the outset of WWII, Fort Hancock served mostly as a mobilization and training center. Following the war, and coinciding with the dissolution of the Coast Artillery Corps in 1950, Fort Hancock was deactivated and its guns were all scrapped. In 1951, Fort Hancock was re-activated as a base for antiaircraft guns which marked the first such Cold War defense site in the United States. In 1956 it became the site of a Nike missile base which was operational until 1974. Fort Hancock was mostly decomissioned in 1974 at which point it joined the National Park System while a small portion of the peninsula today is an active U.S. Coast Guard Station. Fort Hancock today has one of the largest collections of preserved Endicott batteries anywhere.

Source(s) used in this article: 1, 2, 3

Nine Gun Battery

Nine Gun Battery was constructed from 1897-1904 and when completed was the longest such contiguous gun battery the US Army ever built. By the time the United States declared war on Spain in 1898, three 10-inch caliber guns were operational here. By 1900, two larger 12-inch caliber guns were installed along the northern edge of the battery to cover the channel as it bends around Sandy Hook peninsula and thus it utilized both 10 and 12-inch caliber guns to cover the main shipping channel running into New York Harbor. It consists of four technically separate batteries constructed to form one continuous fortification: Alexander, Halleck, Bloomfield and Richardson. It operated until 1944 at which point the guns were scrapped.

Historic Photos of Nine Gun Battery

End Historic Photos

Battery Gunnison

Battery Gunnison was constructed in 1904 and named in honor of Captain John W. Gunnison who was killed in 1853 in Utah Territory. This battery featured two 6-inch rapid fire guns and the structure contained rooms for communications and storage and it was the only rapid-fire battery on the peninsula's eastern shore. The original guns in this battery were upgraded in 1943 by the smaller but more capable guns from Battery Peck and these guns are among the only ones in of all of Fort Hancock to survive to present day. Virtually all other guns were salvaged/scrapped to recycle obsolete and disused materials into modern war efforts and equipment.

Historic Photos of Battery Gunnison

End Historic Photos

Battery Kingman

Batteries Kingman and Mills were constructed from 1917-1921 to address the new threat of improved artillery and battleship armour being developed at the dawn of World War One. The batteries at Kingman and Mills featured two 12 inch M1895 guns which had a 360 degree field of fire and had a range of over twenty miles which was a vast improvement over the existing guns on Sandy Hook whose ranges were 7-8 miles. Each battery had two guns spaced 420 feet apart. Underground concrete encasements between the guns housed the ammunition and gunpowder, plotting rooms, storerooms, latrines and quarters for the soldiers. By the end of WWII, these batteries were obsolete and they were deactivated in 1946.

Begin Historic Photos of Battery Kingman (and Mills?)

End Historic Photos

Battery Mills

Mortar Battery

The Mortar Battery at Fort Hancock was the first concrete mortar battery constructed in the United States. Construction began in 1890 for a group of four mortar pits which each held four 12-inch caliber mortars which were designed to fire in groups of 8 or 16 at once utilizing 700-pound projectiles to rain down upon enemy ships like shot from a massive shotgun. The pits were over 30ft deep and surrounded by counterscarp galleries from which machine gunners could fire upon any attempt at a land based enemy attack on the mortar batteries. The Mortar Battery was completed in 1894 and test fired in June of that year. In 1905, telephone/data booths were installed above each mortar pit to better facilitate communication between the battery's commander and the crews in the pits.

Begin Historic Photos

End Historic Photos

Battery Peck

Battery Peck was constructed from 1901-1903 and it was named after U.S Army Lieutenant Fremont Peck who was killed during the testing of a new gun at Sandy Hook Proving Grounds in 1895. It was armed with two 6-inch guns mounted on barbette pedestal carriages which could fire 3-4 rounds per minute (this was considered "rapid-fire" compared to the other large caliber guns which defended the fort) and they had a 360 degree field of cover which was better than most others at the time. Battery Peck worked in conjuction with the underwater minefields to prevent unauthorized entry to the shipping channel. In 1943, the guns from Peck were relocated to upgrade Battery Gunnison (which was then renamed to "New Battery Peck") and (old) Battery Peck was rearmed and renamed to Battery Number 8.

Arrowsmith

Battery Arrowsmith was constructed in 1908 and named in honor of Lieutenant Colonel George W. Arrowsmith who died at Gettysburg in the Civil War. Battery Arrowsmith was armed with three 8-inch guns and defended Sandy Hook peninsula's western shore. By 1919, Arrowsmith was already obsolete.

Fort Hancock Machine/Maintenance/etc Shops