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SCIENCE STUDIES EVENTS
SINKING FORTS, SLIDING LIGHTHOUSES:
ANTEBELLUM ENGINEERING FAILURES
Ann Johnson
Department of History
Fordham University
March 19, 2003
Wednesday, 3:30pm
Preston Seminar Room
In this paper, I explore problems associated with the construction
of large structures on the US Atlantic and Gulf coasts in the antebellum
period. There are two categories of failures here that interest me:
forts and lighthouses that sank into southern marshes and forts and
lighthouses that either slid off of or were blown off of the rocky
Northeast coast. Focusing on the repeatedly sinking foundation of Fort
Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River and the repeated failure to
construct a wind—and weather—"proof" lighthouse at Minot's
Ledge, off the Massachusetts coast. While ultimately both projects were
completed successfully, the US Army Corps of Engineers clearly learned a
great deal from the initial failures of these projects. One of the
points I want to make is that large-scale engineering projects aren't
simply a matter of "knowing how to do it." Even when methods are
sound, the unpredictable happens. Nature can be very intractable in
unexpected (and sometimes expected) ways. Often historians of science
implicitly criticize past actors for not knowing what they were
doing—for their science or engineering being "wrong." But, in fact,
despite more sophisticated scientific and engineering practices, nature
continues to "resist."
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