The Shadow
Not far from Key West, the southernmost land mass in the continental U.S., the Dry Tortugas National Park & Fort Jefferson are located in the Gulf of Mexico.
The fort was built by the U.S. 68 miles west of Key West to provide a strategic military base to neutralize pirates who attacked and plundered ships in the waters off the coast of Florida, the territory that the U.S. purchased from Spain in 1819.
Spanish Explorer Ponce De Leon discovered Florida in 1513, and Florida has the longest coastline of any of the lower 48 states.
Thus, as settlements grew prior to the War Between the States, pirates became a growing threat, and Fort Jefferson was designed to provide a fortress and resupplying base for U.S. warships.
The national park there consists of 97 acres of land situated on seven islands. Although the park covers 100 square miles, 98% lies under water.
Fort Jefferson is situated on 10 acres of a 16 acre island, and the bricks used to build the fort came from Mexico and Fla. until 1861, the year Fla. joined the Confederacy and refused to provide bricks for the completion of the fort during the War Between the States.
Bricks from Maine were then shipped to finish the fort where construction had been underway since 1846. The bricks from Maine were darker. That is why Fort Jefferson features different colors, the darker bricks marking construction that took place during and after the American Civil War.
Paid Irish workers from Key West and war prisoners were used to build the fort as were slaves who represented 20% of the labor force until they were freed.
After John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, he broke his leg by jumping from the box seats in Ford’s Theatre to the stage, and Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd treated Booth by setting his broken leg. However, Mudd did so without reporting the injury to the authorities.
Mudd missed being sentenced to death by a single vote. Instead of receiving the death penalty, he was sentenced to hard labor at Fort Jefferson.
During the building of the fort, trenches to catch rain were cut into the concrete to channel fresh water into round bowls that served as the water fort’s water source for its soldiers, prisoners, slaves and Irish workers.
However, those trenches drew mosquitoes, and the mosquitoes bit the soldiers and workers, causing a deadly outbreak of yellow fever that killed 30, including the fort’s doctor.
Mudd, given his background as a physician, was recruited as the fort’s doctor in 1867, and he realized that the mosquitoes were the culprits and that they tended to stay close to the ground.
He helped stop the outbreak by moving men to the second story of the fort where larger breezeways kept the mosquitoes away, saving many lives via Mudd’s medical expertise and leadership.
In fact, his actions resulted in a pardon from President Andrew Johnson in 1869, and Mudd was released to practice medicine. He did so until his death in 1883.
Like Medieval castles, Fort Jefferson has a moat, and one crocodile occupied the moat until the U.S. Park Service decided it was too dangerous for tourists who are allowed to take a four-hour trip by ferry to the Fort or camp overnight on the island, depending on arrangements made.
At the beginning of the war, a Confederate ship from Fla. sailed to the fort. The ship’s captain demanded that Major Lewis Arnold, the fort’s commander, surrender, but Lewis, despite not having any of the 175 cannons that were soon to be delivered to the fort, decided upon a bluff that worked.
He told the ship’s captain to sail away or that his guns would destroy the ship. The ship sailed away without engaging the fort in battle. As it turned out, not one of the cannons that eventually arrived to defend the fort was ever fired at an enemy during the fort’s occupancy that ended in 1875.
Recently, a 45’ high cactus was photographed growing on the roof of Fort Jefferson where visitors are allowed to take tours. Scuba divers are also permitted to explore the adjacent waters that are teaming with fish, including barracudas.
One of the signs at Fort Jefferson has Doctor Mudd’s name printed on it with a white arrow pointing the way above the message: “Dr. Samuel Mudd’s cell.”
The fort is constructed of 16 million bricks that form six sides with walls 8’ thick and 50’ high, walls with slots to accommodate 450 cannons that eventually were positioned to protect the barracks suitable to house 1,500 soldiers.
Fort Jefferson once held 2,500 prisoners, and only Fort Monroe in Va. and Fort Adams in R.I. are larger
