Wilmington was the last major port open to the Confederacy, and the destination of steamers which smuggled provisions into the southern states and supplied General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. These ships traveled from Bermuda, the Bahamas, and Nova Scotia where southern cotton and tobacco were exchanged for food, clothing, and munitions from British traders.
For most of the Civil War, Fort Fisher kept the port of Wilmington open to the blockade-runners that supplied the Confederate armies and the people of the Confederate States.
Colonel William Lamb took over the design of Fort Fisher in 1962 and began to model the fort after Malakoff Tower, a Crimean War fortification in Sevastopol, Russia. More than 500 Negroes, both slave and free, worked with Confederate soldiers on construction.
Fort Fisher was made mostly of earth and sand, which was ideal for absorbing the shock of heavy explosives. The sea face, equipped with 22 guns, consisted of a series of twelve foot high larger batteries bounded on the south side by two larger batteries forty-five and sixty feet high. One of the smaller mounds one served as a telegraph office and another was converted into a hospital.
The Fort was protected against land attack by 25 guns distributed among its fifteen mounds. Each mound was 32 feet high with interior rooms used as bombproofs or powder magazines and connected by an underground passageway. Extending across the entire land face was a nine foot high palisade fence.
In 1964, Fort Fisher was attacked by Union Forces but were repelled and the fort was considered to strong. In January of 1865, a large combined attack by Union Army and Navy overtook the fort and Wilmington came under Union Control, helping to seal the fate of the Confederate rebellion.
Today
Today, Fort Fisher is a wounderful place for tourist to visit the Fort Fisher Civil War Museum and discover the amazing world of the sea at The North Carolina Aquarium all in one day.
