History
One of the first registered uses of coastal artillery was in 1381 - during the war between Ferdinand I of Portugal and Henry II of Castile - when the troops of the King of Portugal used cannons to defend Lisbon against an attack from the Castilian naval fleet.
The use of coastal artillery expanded during the Age of Discoveries, in the 16th century; when a colonial power took over an overseas territory, one of their first tasks was to build a coastal fortress, both to deter rival naval powers and to subjugate the natives. The Martello tower is an excellent example of a widely used coastal fort which mounted defensive artillery, in this case muzzle-loading cannon. During the 19th century China also built hundreds of coastal fortresses in an attempt to counter Western naval threats.
Coastal artillery could be part of the Navy (as in Scandinavian countries, war-time Germany, and the Soviet Union), or part of the Army (as in Anglophone countries). In the United Kingdom, in the later 19th and earlier 20th Centuries, coastal artillery was the responsibility of the Royal Garrison Artillery.
In the United States, coastal artillery was established in 1794 as a branch of the Army and a series of construction programs of coastal defences began: the "First System" in 1794, the "Second System" in 1804, and the "Third System" or "Permanent System" in 1816. Then, following the Spanish American War and the report of the Endicott Board, U.S. harbor defenses were greatly strengthened and provided with new, rifled artillery and minefield defenses. Shortly thereafter, in 1907, Congress split the field artillery and coast artillery into two separate branches, and created a separate Coast Artillery Corps (CAC).
The first decade of the 20th Century, the United States Marine Corps established the Advanced Base Force. The force was used for setting up and defending advanced bases, and its close ties to the Navy allowed it to man coast artillery around these bases.
Read more about this topic: Coastal Artillery
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the workers body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (18151902)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (17351826)