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| Fortifications around Mobile.1 |
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| Redoubt and ditch at Mobile.3 |
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V. Sheliha, about half-way between the other two, and included nineteen heavy bastioned forts and eight redoubts, making, in all the fortifications around the city, fifty-eight forts and redoubts, with connecting breast works.
The parapets of the forts were from fifteen to twenty feet in thickness, and the ditches, through which the tide-water of the harbor flowed, were about twenty feet in depth and thirty in width.
Besides these land defenses of Mobile, there were several well-armed batteries along the shore below the city, and in the harbor commanding the channels of approach to the town,
besides several which guarded the entrances to the rivers that flow into the head of Mobile Bay.2
General J. E. Johnston said Mobile was the best fortified place in the Confederacy.
It was garrisoned by about fifteen thousand men, including the troops on the east side of the bay, and a thousand negro laborers, subject to the command of the engineers.
These were under the direct command of General D. H. Maury. General Dick Taylor was then in charge of the Department
1 this shows the position of the defenses near the city, on land and in the harbor the position of the more remote defenses, on the east side of the bay, are indicated on a subsequent page.
2 Along the shore, below the city, were Batteries Missouri, Mound and Buchanan. Just below the latter, and terminating the middle line of fortifications, was Fort Sidney Johnston. In the harbor were two floating batteries and four stationary ones, named, respectively, Tighlman, Gladden, Canal, and McIntosh. The channels were obstructed by piles in many rows.
3 this was the appearance of a portion of the inner line of works, in the suburbs of the city, near Dauphin Street, as it appeared when the writer sketched it in April, 1866. the picket fence indicates the line of Dauphin Street.
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