Position of the Union Monitors, Fort McAllister

From positions across the marsh in the direction this marker points, between nine hundred and twelve hundred yards from the Confederate earthworks, Union ironclad monitors made repeated attempts to reduce Fort McAllister during eighteen sixty-three. The U.S.

S. Montauk attacked on January twenty-seventh, February first, and February twenty-eighth. She was joined in later bombardments by the Passaic, the Nahant, and other vessels of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron.

Despite their heavy iron armor and powerful guns, the monitors could not silence the fort. Fort McAllister's earthen walls simply absorbed the shells. The soil gave way and then settled back.

This resilience made the fort famous in Confederate military circles as proof that earthworks could withstand ironclad fire, a lesson that influenced fortification design for the rest of the war.