I was thinking of stating on the petition to save Fort Pitt that's
been discussed on the list how much it reminded me of Fort McHenry
("...was originally called Fort Whetstone" on the point named after
it) and this must be the reason and thanks to discussion I know a
little bit more why.

Edward Rutsch, from the "Society for Industrial Archeology" once gave
an interesting lecture on Fort McHenry in Baltimore (a bridge may run
over it yet) and then it was where I then found myself excavating in
the summer before grad school for the US NPS. He was very interested
in why it was flooding and quite sure that the history around it where
it may have drained. It once had to have water brought to it every
day, (a well dug just before the War 1812 bombardment thought for
revenge of the invasion of the fort near what's today Toronto on Lake
Ontario, where the bombproof blew up killing Zebulon Pike) and during
the Depression CCC days the "weep holes" in the ramparts had been
filled and much of the masonry "pointed" perhaps rather than
"repointed".

I wonder having worked in another perhaps Vauban apparently inspired
fort, Fort Jay on Governors Island in New York City's harbor (for
geoarchaeology) built it's said by Columbia University students, in
thankfulness to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, from the "Jay
Treaty".  They were once downtown vs. uptown today where former
President D.D. Eisenhower was once its president. We discovered a sort
of hardened clay surface in the earthen mound of the moat (dry today)
that might have been part of the earthwork construction using burnt
embers to harden a clay surface to carry or cart the earth by the
"Anglos". Fort Jay was also once under the US Army called Fort
Columbus, before the Coast Guard, which has since left and there's
interesting eagle ornamentation on some of the surrounding buildings,
some facing "dexter" (right) and others "sinister" (left),
representing the different armed services and different occupations.
Even Walt Disney served there once I was told.

There's a smal brass cannon on top of the rampart of Fort McHenry
pointing out at the harbor where the British Navy was just out of
range of the American guns it states I think, a gift from the French
government. Merci!

George Myers