Castle Island
Granite harbor fort built by masons over eighteen years, with a chained skeleton found sealed inside a wall.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Castle Island in Boston opens in 1905, when a repair crew patching salt-air damage broke into a sealed casemate and found a skeleton chained to the stone, still dressed in an early nineteenth-century army uniform. It traces the granite fort's eighteen-year construction under Colonel Sylvanus Thayer starting in 1833, and the story soldiers already told new recruits long before that discovery: a Christmas Day 1817 duel between two lieutenants, and what furious comrades were said to have done to the survivor. A young private who heard that story in the 1820s was hiding his real identity under the name Edgar Perry.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Fort Independence
Granite harbor fort where a dueling legend of wine, drink, and a bricked-up soldier inspired a famous horror tale.
Boston Harbor Islands National & State Park
Windswept island park of forts, trails and tidal shoreline reached by seasonal ferry from the city.
Fort Warren
Granite Civil War-era coastal fort guarding a harbor island, armed with massive fifteen-inch smoothbore cannons.
Dorchester Heights Monument - Boston National Historical Park
Marble monument atop a quiet hilltop where a single overnight fortification forced an army to retreat without a fight.
Bunker Hill Monument
Granite obelisk on a Revolutionary War hilltop, climbed via two hundred ninety-four spiral stairs.
King's Chapel
Colonial granite church raised from boulders gathered off nearby farm fields and cracked open by fire.