Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/376

 31G TUE CA.NNONADE OF CHAP, await hostile fiuets, and i'urbid. their approach to _: the roadstead, the batteries of the Quarantine Sea- fort were so placed as to be competent to help with f^reat means towards the same end ; but, standing on a double-tongued promontory, with a command over the water in many directions, the fort also secured to its holders their control of the Quaran- tine Bay — a dominion of high importance to the land defence of Sebastopol. The fort was at the water's edge, and so formed that it tlu'ew out a salient upon each of the two tongues of land which it occupied ; and, the two salients being connected by a curtain fronting towards the sea, and having retours towards the gorge, a newly constructed redan, which now closed the whole work on the side of the country, gave it the character of a completed redoubt of small profile.* Unlike the great castles at the mouth of the roadstead, this Quarantine Sea-fort had no casemated tier ; so that the 58 guns with which it stoud armed were all in open-air bat- teries, and fired from over the parapet.f There were 48 of its pieces that could be brought to bear on the Allied fleets, and of those as many as 33 could be used against the French. I It is true that the conquest of the fort would not, like the conquest of Tort Constantine or Fort Alexander, be an e'ent carrying bodily with it
 * Todleben, p. 95. t Ibid. p. 33 1.
 * Ibid. p. 332, 333. The Quarantine Sea-fort is the one which

the Russians call 'Number Ten.' The details of the armament of the three forts spoken of in this section will be found in the Appendix.