Combat· First Seminole War
Destruction of Negro Fort
The opening action of the First Seminole War and the site of the deadliest single explosion in American military history.
The fort on the Apalachicola River had been built by the British during the War of 1812 and, on their withdrawal, left to a garrison of Black Seminoles and Native allies, many of them escaped slaves, who held it as a refuge and a symbol of defiance on the Florida frontier. An American expedition under Colonel Duncan Clinch moved against it, supported by two Navy gunboats, Nos. 149 and 154, carrying Marines. When the gunboats opened fire, a heated shot from one of them struck the fort's powder magazine, which detonated in a single catastrophic blast that killed most of the roughly 270 people inside almost instantly. The Marines aboard the gunboats provided the supporting fire; the dead were the fort's garrison, not the attackers.
Record no. 285