Sci Friday # 118: Visual Inspiration
Images that inspired me
“Knowing Where to Dig“
What?
If you’re digging for pirate treasure, you don’t start in the Rocky Mountains. And if you’re looking for coastal artillery data, you gotta go look at deactivated Army forts.
I grew up in Delaware and never knew there were any coastal artillery forts in that state, except for Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island in the middle of the Delaware Bay. I didn’t even know about the coastal artillery branch until I saw Humphrey Bogart’s 1941 movie, “Across the Pacific.” In that movie, he plays a court-martialed, former coastal artillery officer, who is later cultivated by Japanese spies, led by the awesome character actor, Sydney Greenstreet. Interesting thing, all the actors playing Japanese characters in that movie are actually Chinese.
Why?
Anyway, when I was looking for the schedule for the boat to take me to Fort Delaware, I saw that there were three coastal artillery forts in Delaware, Fort DuPont, Fort Saulsbury, and Fort Miles, which is inside the Cape Henlopen State Park.
I drove down to the park on a Saturday—yes, I know, never drive to the beach on a weekend. 🤦♂️ It could’ve been worse. When I was leaving the park, there was a three-mile long line of cars trying to get in.
Talk about good timing.
Back tracking, Fort Miles has a museum with lots of cool info about the Delaware River defenders and the gear they used to “fire the big guns.”
They even had demonstrations—not live fire ones, dang it—with museum staff in period uniforms. Two of the museum staff were dressed up in period work dungaree uniforms for the demonstration.
Readers questions: Have you ever reenacted? If so, what time period was it?
Hope all y’all had a great week. Enjoy the weekend. 👋