(7.25 inch or 184 mm bore) and center-pivot mounting designed by
George Bomford as an experimental coastal defense gun. This gun was built in 1811 as a component of the
Second System of US fortifications. One of the first recorded uses of coastal artillery was in 1381—during the war between
Ferdinand I of Portugal and
Henry II of Castile—when the troops of the
King of Portugal used
cannons to defend
Lisbon against an attack from the Castilian naval fleet. The use of coastal artillery expanded during the
Age of Discoveries, in the 16th century; when a colonial power took over an overseas territory, one of their first tasks was to build a coastal fortress, both to deter rival naval powers and to subjugate the natives. The
Martello tower is an excellent example of a widely used coastal fort that mounted defensive artillery, in this case, muzzle-loading cannon. During the 19th century, the Chinese
Qing Dynasty also built hundreds of coastal fortresses in an attempt to counter Western naval threats. Coastal artillery fortifications generally followed the development of land fortifications; sometimes separate land defence forts were built to protect coastal forts. Through the middle 19th century, coastal forts could be
bastion forts,
star forts,
polygonal forts, or
sea forts, the first three types often with detached gun batteries called "water batteries". Coastal defence weapons throughout history were heavy
naval guns or weapons based on them, often supplemented by lighter weapons. In the late 19th century separate batteries of coastal artillery replaced forts in some countries; in some areas, these became widely separated geographically through the mid-20th century as weapon ranges increased. The amount of landward defence provided began to vary by country from the late 19th century; by 1900 new US forts almost totally neglected these defences.
Booms were also usually part of a protected harbor's defences. In the middle 19th century
underwater minefields and later
controlled mines were often used, or stored in peacetime to be available in wartime. With the rise of the
submarine threat at the beginning of the 20th century,
anti-submarine nets were used extensively, usually added to boom defences, with major warships often being equipped with them (to allow rapid deployment once the ship was anchored or moored) through early World War I. In World War I
railway artillery emerged and soon became part of coastal artillery in some countries; with railway artillery in coast defence some type of revolving mount had to be provided to allow tracking of fast-moving targets. Coastal artillery could be part of the Navy (as in
Scandinavian countries, war-time Germany, and the
Soviet Union), or part of the Army (as in the
Anglosphere alignment for significant English-speaking countries). In English-speaking countries, certain coastal artillery positions were sometimes referred to as 'Land Batteries', distinguishing this form of
artillery battery from for example
floating batteries. In the United Kingdom, in the later 19th and earlier 20th Centuries, the land batteries of the coastal artillery were the responsibility of the
Royal Garrison Artillery. In the United States, coastal artillery was established in 1794 as a branch of the
Army and a
series of construction programs of coastal defenses began: the "First System" in 1794, the "Second System" in 1804, and the "Third System" or "Permanent System" in 1816. Masonry forts were determined to be obsolete following the American Civil War, and a postwar program of earthwork defenses was poorly funded. In 1885 the
Endicott Board recommended an extensive program of new
U.S. harbor defenses, featuring new rifled artillery and minefield defenses; most of the board's recommendations were implemented. Construction on these was initially slow, as new weapons and systems were developed from scratch, but was greatly hastened following the Spanish–American War of 1898. Shortly thereafter, in 1907, Congress split the field artillery and coast artillery into separate branches, creating a separate
Coast Artillery Corps (CAC) The CAC was disbanded as a separate branch in 1950. In the first decade of the 20th century, the United States Marine Corps established the
Advanced Base Force. The force was used for setting up and defending advanced overseas bases, and its close ties to the Navy allowed it to man coast artillery around these bases.
Russo-Japanese War During the
Siege of Port Arthur,
Imperial Japanese forces had captured the vantage point on 203 Meter Hill overlooking Port Arthur harbor. After relocating heavy howitzers with 500 pound (~220 kg) armor-piercing shells to the summit of the Hill, the Japanese bombarded the
Russian fleet in the harbor, systematically sinking the Russian ships within range. The Japanese were attacking the city and the Russian ships were trapped in the harbor due to mines, making this one of the few cases of coastal guns being employed in an offensive action. On December 5, 1904, the
battleship Poltava was destroyed, followed by the battleship
Retvizan on December 7, 1904, the battleships
Pobeda and
Peresvet and the cruisers
Pallada and
Bayan on December 9, 1904. The battleship
Sevastopol, although hit 5 times by shells, managed to move out of range of the guns. Stung by the fact that the Russian Pacific Fleet had been sunk by the
Imperial Japanese Army and not by the
Imperial Japanese Navy, and with a direct order from Tokyo that the
Sevastopol was not to be allowed to escape, Admiral Togo sent in wave after wave of
destroyers in six separate attacks on the sole remaining Russian battleship. After 3 weeks, the
Sevastopol was still afloat, having survived 124
torpedoes fired at her while sinking two Japanese destroyers and damaging six other vessels. The Japanese had meanwhile lost the cruiser
Takasago to a mine outside the harbor.
World War II Poland On September 1, 1939, the
Wehrmacht began their
attack on Poland. The
Artillery Battery No. 31, part of the
Coastal Artillery Division, immediately took over a huge part of the burden of defending the Polish coast, preventing German ships from approaching the
Hel Peninsula. On September 3, an artillery duel took place between the Polish coastal batteries,
ORP Gryf and
ORP Wicher, and the German
destroyers
Leberecht Maass and
Wolfgang Zenker. After a 15-minute exchange of fire, Leberecht Maass was hit in the gun mask, with several wounded sailors (this fact was reported by both the commander of the Laskowski battery, Captain
Zbigniew Przybyszewski, and the German Rear Admiral
Lütjens). The German destroyers set up a
smoke screen and withdrew from the fight.
Post-World War II After
World War II the advent of
jet aircraft and
guided missiles reduced the role of coastal artillery in defending a country against air and sea attacks while also rendering fixed artillery emplacements vulnerable to enemy strikes. The Scandinavian countries, with their long coastlines and relatively weak navies, continued in the development and installation of modern coastal artillery systems, usually hidden in well-camouflaged armored turrets (for example Swedish
12 cm automatic turret gun). In these countries the coastal artillery was part of the naval forces and used naval targeting systems. Both mobile and stationary (e.g.
100 56 TK) systems were used. In countries where coastal artillery has not been disbanded, these forces have acquired
amphibious or
anti-ship missile capabilities. In constricted waters, mobile coastal artillery armed with
surface-to-surface missiles still can be used to deny the use of sea lanes. The
Type 88 surface-to-ship missile is an example of modern mobile coastal artillery. Poland also retains a coastal missile division armed with the
Naval Strike Missile. During the
Croatian War of Independence in 1991, coastal artillery operated by
Croatian forces played an important role in defending Croatian
Adriatic coast from
Yugoslav naval and air strikes, especially around Zadar, Šibenik and Split, defeating the
Yugoslav Navy in the
Battle of the Dalmatian Channels. In practice, there is a distinction between artillery sited to bombard a coastal region and coastal artillery, which has naval-compatible targeting systems and communications that are integrated with the navy rather than the army. ==Examples==