Ship Island, a long sandbar twelve miles south of Gulfport, functions as a breakwater for the only deep channel into the Mississippi Sound. To guard this strategic route, construction of a fort on the island’s western end began in 1859 as part of federal coastal fortification systems after the War of 1812. After Mississippi seceded from the Union in 1861, Confederate soldiers occupied the incomplete fort but soon abandoned it. Union forces returned later that year, resumed construction, and used the island as a base of operations for the capture of New Orleans in 1862. In 1903, oversight of the fort passed to the keeper of the Ship Island Lighthouse (destroyed), and after becoming a tourist attraction in the 1930s, the fort was incorporated into the National Park Service’s Gulf Islands National Seashore in 1971.
Shaped like a D, the fort measures approximately 155 by 180 feet, with a courtyard surrounded by an arcade supporting ramparts where the cannon mounts remain. Brick walls 11 feet thick at their bases narrow to 5 feet at their tops. The lone entrance is an archway on the east side. Decades of storms have eroded the island, and the fort’s rounded side now projects into the water.