A Civil War-era fort that was built to help guard the shipways of Portland Harbor is about to be made a bit more accessible.
The Army Corps of Engineers plans to invest in new safety features at Fort Gorges. And after a century of neglect and vandalism, that effort is leading some of the fort’s longtime fans — and the city of Portland — to dream big.
On a recent windy day, water taxi Capt. Kevin Claremont lands several visitors at the fort, about a mile off the city in Casco Bay. It’s a bit tricky, because the original dock has long ago sunk into the sea, leaving just a causeway that’s strewn with granite blocks.
Passenger Paul Drinan knows the fort well. He’s the executive director of the Friends of Fort Gorges, and he has been motoring or kayaking out here for decades.
“Since I was a teenager,” he says. “I came out here with my brother, and was immediately taken with the space. and I’ve been visiting ever since.”
Built during the Civil War years, Fort Gorges was modeled on Fort Sumter in Charleston. It also bears a structural likeness to Fort Popham up the coast in Phippsburg, a style known in military architecture circles as Third System: six imposing and almost featureless gray granite walls angle together to surround an interior parade ground that’s open to the sky. At the far side, there are two stories of arched, brick-ceiling casemates where rows of cannons once poked through stone embrasures, aimed out at the open sea.
The rapid evolution of more powerful weaponry during the Civil War rendered the fort obsolete even before it was completed. It never saw any action and was never garrisoned. Still, it can catch the imagination.
“The first thing I thought of was the old Globe Theatre, with all of the open archways,” says Drinan, a part-time actor well-versed in Shakespeare.
He can’t help himself.
“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes/I all alone do weep my outcast state/And trouble heaven with bootless cries/And look upon myself, and curse my fate,” Drinan recites. “OK that’s enough of that.”
Bowdoin College artists Christina Knight and Erin Colleen Johnson, who came along for the trip, are inspired too. They quickly begin scheming a series of dance, theater and video multimedia performances they hope to stage here this summer.
“It’s just a really open canvas right now so I am thinking through what that is going to look like,” Knight says. “But it’s begging for movement, it’s so still.”
But for all the creative energy the place can release, there are some problems that threaten to turn this venue into a ruin.
Up on the second story, below a roof of sod, water is finding its way through the soft brick ceilings. Foot-wide icicles hang to the floor, making the casemates look like grottos filled with stalactites.
“You can see the icicles just driving the masonry apart, right where these cracks are,” Drinan says. “And according to the historic preservation engineers and the Army Corps project manager, this is really reaching a critical point. We’ve got to get in here soon. And here, look, bricks on the floor. This is all new, I have to photograph this.”
It’s a striking demonstration of the fort’s disrepair. But there’s a lot more trouble — the floors of huge underground ammunition magazines are burned out, and they’re filled with rubble. Open cisterns beckon to break the unwary ankle. Graffiti abounds. And much of the wood that framed and floored the officers’ quarters has been torn away to fuel bonfires on the parade grounds.
Drinan makes use of the vandals’ work as a cutaway window on the past.
“Where you see granite blocks, and these standoff blocks of wood and then a masonry wall, and then furring strips, plaster and lathe,” he says. “And you can also see here the different applications of plaster with these hashmarks on the first coat so the second coat could take. It’s almost a living museum.”
“It provides a remarkable laboratory to see what the construction techniques and the construction sequences were in the fort,” says Alfred Hodson, a civil engineer who oversaw the rehabilitation of Fort Popham a decade ago. “It tells a story of craftsmanship in the 19th century. And it tells a story of precision and it tells a story of care that went into the construction of these fortifications. It tells the story of the granite and those who carved the granite and quarried the granite.”
Now the question is whether a new chapter can be written. One goal will be to enable significantly more tourist visits to the site. For now, motorboat visitors are limited to high-tide hours only. And at their own risk.
“Typically the wind comes out of that direction and you notice that part of the pier that’s all washed out? That’s been a big part of the problem too,” he says. “The winter storms really do a big number on it.”
On the way back to the Portland peninsula, the conversation about potential art happenings at the fort continues — maybe project images on the outer wall so they can be seen from the city, maybe a dinner play held in the dark, cavernous magazine, lit with LEDs. Or maybe, as Knight and Johnson discuss with Claremont, a site specific installation of sheep, or goats.
“Let’s see if we can get them out there, ‘cause that’s the thing,” Knight says.
“I would stick with goats,” Claremont says. “Sheep are needy. Goats, I mean, they could climb all over. They’d be on top mowing the lawn. That’d be fun. I’ll bring them out any time.”
Once, that is, the fort is made safe for frequent visitors — and from them, for that matter, be they goat or human.
The Friends of Fort Gorges, the city, the state historical society and the federal Army Corps of Engineers are working on it. The Corps says it’s ready to invest upwards of $100,000 to reduce hazards on the site, whether by repairs, removal or simply gating off certain areas.
After that, it’s a matter of raising hundreds of thousands more needed to stabilize and rehabilitate the site, and complete a master-planning process that’s just now getting underway.