Fort Howard

And so we continue with the men in uniform series, today going a bit back in time from the last post, to the World War 1 era.  Written on the back, "Baltimore, Maryland, Fort Howard."  Fort Howard started out as an unnamed coast artillery battery, built in 1896,  at North Point, in Baltimore County.  One would think that in 1896 the United States would have little fear from a naval attack, but we had just gone through a crisis with the nation of Chili.  And no, it's not as silly as it sounds.  In the 1890s, Chili had the largest navy in the Pacific and was thought  a formidable threat to our security.  More so on the west coast, but still, the Chesapeake is the gateway to Washington, D.C.  In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of War, Elihu Root renamed the battery, Fort Howard, after Revolutionary War general, John Edgar Howard.  In 1940, Fort Howard was closed and the property was turned over to The Veteran's Administration.  In 1975, the portions of the property that contained the original battery was turned over to Baltimore County for use as a park.  The rest of the property is still owned and used by The Department of Veteran's Affairs.  And if anyone cares about our dispute with Chili, I'd suggest looking up the Baltimore incident, which had nothing to do with the city of Baltimore.

Voyage 5

Is the family in the first photo the photographer's family?  I would think so, but of course, we'll never know for sure.  All photos are labeled "Magellan Straights."

Voyage 4

This grouping has the one really, really dull photo of the lot.  Palm trees?  Who takes pictures of palm trees when there are so many seascapes around.  It also has the worst caption of the lot.  Something unreadable, then Tal, Chili.  I went to an online gazetteer and couldn't find anything even close.  If it's the name of a settlement, it might be one that has faded from history.  Maybe the settlement failed because of the palm trees. The top photo is of a town called Tocopilla, yet another small port in the Antafogasta section of Chili that has grown quite a bit since the photo was taken.  In the 2002 census, 23,986 people.   In 2007, an earthquake made 4,000 people homeless out of a population that had grown to 27,000.  Tocopilla is also the hometown of film maker and artist, Alejandro Jodorowsky, director of cult classic, El Topo.  The bottom photo...look beyond the sailboat, and the town that is off in the distance is Punta Arenas, misspelled Arrenas.  Punta Arenas was founded as a penal colony in 1848.  Today it's the capitol of Magellanes & Antarctic Chilena, and is the major resupply port for science stations in Antarctica.

Written on the backs of the photos, top to bottom.  "Tocopilla, Chili," "Straights of Magellan,"  "Straights of Magellan," "(Unreadable) Tal, Chili,"  and "Punta Arrenas near Straights of Magellan."