News From Fort Schuyler

October 29, 1998 - Volume 2, No. 50

HAVE A BALL - Final reminder that Rear Admiral ROBERT C. NORTH, Class of 1966, will be honored at the Admiral's Ball, Saturday, November 7, at the New York Hilton. Bob is the U.S. Coast Guard's Assistant Commandant for Marine Safety and Environmental Protection. Check the Alumni Association web page for full details at: http://www.fsmaa.org

EARLY LINE ON SST 1999 - According to the latest information the odds are good that the Training Ship EMPIRE STATE VI will be visiting one or more of the following ports this summer: Bridgetown, Charleston, Cardiff, Genoa or Naples. BTW - Mass Maritime will be borrowing the TSES for their cruise. The ship will be away from the pier between December 8 - February 28. Now, what about SST 2000 - Domers to the Millennium Dome at Greenwich, England perhaps?

GREEN CARD LOTTERY - The payoff for this lottery is lifelong. The current Plan of the Week informs foreign students at the college of the availability of information about this opportunity to win permanent residency in the U.S.

RECOMMENDED READING - It is so seldom that general interest magazines feature maritime-related articles that their appearance is worth noting. "The Ships of Port Revel" deals with the ship-handling training facility near Grenoble, France. It can be found in the October issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The author is the gifted and prolific John McPhee, who also wrote "Looking for a Ship" which was published in book form in 1990 after being serialized in the New Yorker.

WELCOME BACK - The newest member of the Regimental Staff is LISA CHIU, Class of 1994. Lisa will be the Battalion Officer in Second Battalion.

SHE HE WED - Congratulations to DEREK FERNON, Class of 1994, on his marriage to Jennifer on July 25. Jennifer and Derek, a Marine Analyst at the National Imagery and Mapping Center's Marine Navigation Department, live in Lake Ridge VA. Classmates CHRIS AVERSANO (Best Man) and KEN HARRIS, attended this ceremony in Medford Lakes, NJ, as did DAVE and MAUREEN COUGHLIN (Class of 1988.)

FORTLORE - The following was copied to me by BRENDAN THOMPSON, Class of 1991, from a posting he sent to a Bronx in History web page this summer.

"Perhaps I can clear up a little of the mystery concerning the Fort Schuyler/Fort Totten "tunnel." I am a graduate of the SUNY Maritime College at Fort Schuyler, and one might say I have an inside knowledge of the fort. The tunnel in question was actually part of the Endicott fortification period

(1890 - 1910) which included in its defense scheme, electric torpedoes. The modern day terminology is underwater minefield. Don't worry, they're no longer there!

A section of Fort Schuyler's southwest casement was designated as the control station for the underwater mine field that stretched across to Fort Totten. This casement was fitted with either large batteries or generators for the electric firing of the mines. The cables that serviced these mines were protected via an underground tunnel that stretched from the interior of Fort Schuyler to the seawall.

At the seawall, the cables were routed underwater to the minefield. The tunnel only existed to protect the cables and terminated at the seawall. The southwest casement was additionally strengthened due to a study that fire from City Island (taken over by hypothetical enemy and fortified with large rifled cannon) could breach the Fort's walls and render the minefield useless. Adjacent casements were filled with sand and concrete to guard against this bombardment. The college has since emptied one of these casements for use as a classroom space. The corner of the fort is still cemented-in, however, as well as a "blister" on the side of the fort that also afforded protection. There are documents in the Fort's library that show a plan and profile view of the mining casement and its tunnel.

I have found reference to the fact that the entrance to this tunnel was covered over during the conversion of the Fort to SUNY Maritime College. The entrance to this tunnel was covered over by a concrete slab, upon which now sits a large transformer. There is a new service tunnel from the boiler plant exterior to the fort that supplies the steam for heating. This is of concrete construction though and dates back only a few decades and should not be confused with the older tunnel."