Across the Marsh

Marsh grass fills the bottom two-thirds of the frame. On the horizon, small: a line of figures, a low work, and a covered structure that reads like a shelter or a wagon.

The Library of Congress catalogs this as the Swamp Angel with a question mark, and the question mark is the honest part of the record. At this distance the battery cannot be identified from the photograph alone, and it is not identified here.

What the picture does show plainly is the ground. This is the terrain that made the Marsh Battery an engineering feat and a standing joke at once — miles of it, chest-high, tidal, and impossible to build on without floating the work.