Moultrie's Furnace and Sally Port

In the foreground stands a brick furnace under the wreck of its wooden shed — a long vault bound with iron rods, its arched mouth open toward the camera, round shot stacked beside it. Across the parade, past piles of projectiles and timber, the arched sally port opens through the battered brick of the fort's wall.

The furnace is a hot-shot furnace: an oven for bringing solid shot to red heat before it was carried to the gun, so that what struck a wooden ship or a barracks roof would also set it afire. Moultrie's hot shot has a particular place in this harbor's story. In April 1861 the battery here put forty rounds of red-heated shot into Fort Sumter's officers' quarters and set the fort burning over the heads of its garrison — so says the 1893 sketch of Colonel Rhett, who commanded the battery, in this site's primary sources.

By the time this plate was made the furnace's shed had collapsed across it and the shot stood stacked and cold. The wall behind carries the marks of the Federal bombardments from Morris Island; the sally port arch survived them.