Bastion Fort | Hacker News Reader

Bastion Fort

en.wikipedia.org

60 pointsMemosyne20 comments

Star Forts were built in the US as well. During the Revolutionary War, soldiers loyal to the English King built an earthen 8-point fort near the town of Ninety Six South Carolina. It successfully repulsed an attack by 50 Patriots under the command of General Nathanael Greene.

The British commander Sir Francis Rawdon, 1st Marquess of Hastings, relieved the forces there shortly afterwards and abandoned it as part of a general retreat to Charleston.

https://www.nps.gov/nisi/learn/historyculture/the-star-fort....

The wiki article points out a pretty familiar American star fort: the pedistal of the statue of liberty.

and by aesthetic (i.e., non-convex) inspiration, Fort Sumter and the Pentagon.

Fort Ticonderoga in New York is a surviving star fort that's in good condition and open to tourists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Ticonderoga

It's fascinating how advances in siege technology resemble fast Darwinian evolution until of course the bigger fish in planes and tanks come in and eat everything else up.

But the bastion - as in the HESCO Bastion - has made a comeback:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesco_bastion

Thanks to the wars in Afghanistan the founder got rich enough to buy Segway. Then he drove off a cliff in his Segway ending his life.

Camp Bastion in Afghanistan is a big base that is named after the HESCO Bastions it is made of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Shorabak

There is a surprising amount of money to be made in making containers for rocks, making black plastic bags for refuse and other things where you would not imagine a fortune could be made. As per the HESCO example it is a gruff Northerner with a 'where there is muck there is brass' attitude that inevitably exploits the potential. Shame about the Segway incident though.

If someone happen to care, there is a small bastion fort in Berlin (small as it only has 4 bastions):

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zitadelle_Spandau (German Wikipedia has nice images)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandau_Citadel (English, pretty short)

PS: It ~400 Years old, had been redesigned into a bastion fort at same point and doubled as a prison later on.

We have an even smaller one (still 4 bastions) in my hometown. This one was designed as a bastion fort from day one, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forte_Spagnolo,_L%27Aquila

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forte_spagnolo (the Italian wiki has some additional photos)

A truly beautiful design. Functional, but clearly communicates its purpose. Citadels that take on this design look intimidating, strong, quiet, calm.

From the air. From the ground they look like an irregular and haphazard series of corners, which is part of the point.

I visited Fort George in Scotland recently as I have family in the area and its interesting how little of the fort you can actually see from immediately in front of it - just the very top of the main walls - even though there are a lot of fortifications between those two areas.

You can see this in Google streetview if you go to the car park for visitor access - you can see almost nothing of the enormous fort even though it is only a couple of hundred metres away.

One of the things I really enjoy about living in Europe is the frequently encountered remains of relatively ancient structures, including forts and bastions.

I currently live 10 minutes by bike from a village that still has its star defense structures standing, and there's a nice walking path around part of it. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IJzendijke#/media/File:IJzendi...

There are also several towns in this country which still have impressive walls and gates. I still admire them when I see them.

This is pretty interesting. Now I know where the term bastion host used in devops came from.

related 3-mth old discussion : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18482590

Nerf Bastion!

Just take my upvote.

Call me a bastion against the ungaming heathens here

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