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Fort Winfield Scott: Battery Lancaster
by Gordon Chappell
Regional Historian, Pacific West Region
National Park Service
 
Battery Lancaster'. Image provided by Chuck Woffard
 
Beginning at the Golden Gate Bridge toll plaza and extending southward along the bluffs at the northwestern edge of the Presidio of San Francisco are five post-Endicott Board (1885) seacoast defense batteries. They include some of the earliest Endicott-type artillery defenses of San Francisco Bay. When begun, and for some time after completion, these batteries remained unnamed, and during construction were known simply by emplacement numbers assigned by the New York Board of Engineers in preparing the first Endicott-type plan for San Francisco Bay in 1890. The defenses of San Francisco were nationally second in priority, preceded only by those of New York Harbor. Sequentially the first five emplacements were to be five 10-inch guns mounted on the bluff above Fort Point. These were never built.
 
Northernmost of the complex of batteries were emplacements 6, 7 and 8, which now have been almost entirely covered by the Golden Gate Bridge toll plaza, built many years later. Here were three 12-inch breechloading rifled guns on Buffington-Crozier so-called 'disappearing' carriages, which rotated backwards and downwards with the recoil of the gun so that it could be reloaded behind protection of earthworks and concrete from low trajectory enemy naval gunfire. (There were no aircraft then.) Emplacement No. 3 was the first of this battery to be constructed, and it was commenced in 1896, being completed two years later. Emplacements Nos. I and 2 were begun in 1898 and finished in 1900. Four 15-inch Rodman guns of Battery West had to be removed and their emplacements, dating from the 1870s, were destroyed to accommodate construction of the two later The 12-inch breechloading rifles were all manufactured by the Watervliet Arsenal. One, probably in Emplacement No. 3, was Model 1888 Mark I No. 40, and the others were Model 1895 Numbers 5 and 6. The carriage in emplacement 3 was the Model 1896 and was manufactured by the Moran Engineering Company and given serial number 25. The other Buffington-Crozier carriages were manufactured by Robert Poole & Sons, and were serial numbers 6 and 7. Emplacement 3 was transferred to the artillery in June 1899 and the other two in April 1900. (These later emplacement numbers were numbers in each individual battery, rather than in the overall plan.) The battery was named on February 14, 1902 in honor of Lt. Colonel James M. Lancaster, 3rd Artillery, who died at Fort Monroe, Virginia, in 1900. Battery Lancaster was unusual in that it was the only major rifle battery on the south shore of the Golden Gate that bore directly on the narrowest part of the strait, and a major concern during its construction was that it was vulnerable to flanking fire due to the topography, so the traverses were carried well back and the road behind the battery led through tunnels beneath two of them. Battery Lancaster was determined obsolete by the end of World War I and its guns were removed in 1918. Planning was already in progress for a bridge across the Golden Gate, although construction did not begin until January 5, 1933, and Battery Lancaster's empty emplacements were soon incorporated beneath the bridge toll plaza.
 
For more information concerning Battery Lancaster, CLICK HERE
 
Battery Lancaster's Number 2 Gun and crew
 
 
Layout of Battery Lancaster, 1919
 
 
Drawings Courtesy of Mark Berhow
 
Battery Lancaster Today
Battery Lancaster'. Image provided by Chuck Woffard
 
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