Black Island Battery

Civil War Field Fortifications

Magazines

Detached Magazines

Black Island Battery, Charleston

Black Island was the largest of a number of isolated wooded islands of solid ground in the extensive marsh that separated Morris Island (location of Confederate Fort Wagner) and James Island. In August, 1863 Federal forces occupied Black Island with the intention of erecting a battery prepared to receive an armament of two 30 pounder Parrott rifles mounted on siege carriages and one 30 pounder Parrott rifle and one 100 pounder Parrott rifle mounted on experimental non-traversing wooden top carriages that would allow them to fire at a very high angle over James Island and into Charleston. The battery itself was constructed with an irregularly traced parapet echeloned to the left with the flanks covered by epaulments. Two traverses were constructed with their crowns on a level with the parapet between the number one and two and number two and three gun platforms where the 100 pounder rifles were mounted. Embrasures were not cut through the parapet; since the guns were mounted on special platforms to fire rather after the fashion of mortars that did not allow the guns to fire directly over the parapet's superior slope this can not be considered a barbette battery.

Due to the high water table which did not permit the construction of a sunken magazine this battery was served by a fully raised magazine with the chamber floor at or near the natural level of the ground. To protect the guns and battery structure from accidental explosion or bombardment induced failure the magazine was sited with the perimeter of the covering mass about 20 yards in rear of the parapet covering the extreme right gun platform. The 8 x 12 magazine chamber was laid out with its latitudinal section roughly parallel to the angular direction of the parapet's echelon while the entrance to the chamber was placed on the unengaged half of the wall perpendicular to the direction of the echelon of the parapet. A 90 degree turn was built into the gallery under the covering mass which allowed the entrance to the gallery to be placed on the unengaged side of the magazine parallel to the parapet's echelon.

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