The Battle of North Point

Ft Howard Battery

This photo is brought to us by our corresponding photographer, Bryan. Please welcome him to the community.  

What you see here is not part of Bryan’s correspondence from the jungle, but rather from south eastern Baltimore County.  The history of this site links back quite a ways.    

While the British navy was bombarding Fort McHenry, their army was attempthing to invade Baltimore by land.   Having sailed up the Chesapeake, the British army landed at what was then called North Point, but is now the site of Ft. Howard. This landing constituted the largest number of troops to ever invade the United States.  They made it up along the river and then westward until they were turned back by American forces at Patapsco Park.  They returned to North Point and fled south.     

In the beginig of the 20th century the Army began to build batteries on this site and multiple sites directly across the river, at the mouth of the Patapsco and just south along the bay, for the protection of Baltimore.  Most of the batteries were only in operation through the late 1930′s.

What you see here is one of those batteries as it currently lies, overgrown by Ivy.   We’ve got many photos from the site so you have something to look forward to in the future.  

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 10:42 PM and is filed under Baltimore County. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

6 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Guy // Feb 19, 2008 at 6:57 AM

    Very nice.

  • 2 SMC // Feb 19, 2008 at 8:59 AM

    ooooh guest DJ!

    awesome picture, bryan. :)

  • 3 Bryan // Feb 19, 2008 at 11:56 AM

    I was thinking that we could hold a Shakespeare festival there. The gun emplacement you see here was designed for a “disappearing gun” . Read more on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearing_gun A pretty cool concept that never really saw any noteworthy use. If not for the trees and shrubbery, from the spotter’s post – you would have a clear view of the entrance to the harbor.

  • 4 Jorg Haider // Feb 19, 2008 at 2:20 PM

    This is beaufitul! Did George Washington play here as a child!!

  • 5 Fort Washington // Feb 25, 2008 at 11:46 PM

    [...] in the 1880’s concrete weapon embankments similar to these  were placed along the outsides of the 1824 [...]

  • 6 How Rude. // Jan 14, 2009 at 8:51 AM

    [...] comes from Ft. howard, also featured in a very early post on MDP.   I don’t know if I can explain the historic origins of “your mom goes to [...]

Leave a Comment

Security Code: