Harbor Defense Museum

"It takes a bit of maneuvering just to pass through the strict securing at this hidden museum located right on the Fort Hamilton Army base in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You pass through checkpoints, show IDs, and fill out paperwork if parking a car. Then find your way to a brick-walled, 19th-century caponier, home of the Harbor Defense Museum, where the story of protecting New York's Harbor is told in lively fashion. «We have people on the base who don't know we are here », says museum guide Bob Bruina. "We're the best-kept secret." Begin with the expertly tailored military uniforms from the American Revolutionary War. These recreations of the originals show pure innovation of design. We see a Delaware Regiment Continental Army blue jacket with red facing and a white waistcoat. The buttoned back coat lapels could be secured together in cold weather. Handsome in both form and function. "Soldiers wore bright uniforms so they could see each other on the batdefield," Bruina says, "but they also made them targets." That's the story of the development of camouflage uniforms in years to come. The museum focuses a great deal on weaponry used to protect the harbor from invasion. See the very tall and slender Brown Bess Musket, used during the American Revolutionary War Its razor sharp bayonet looks particularly menacing. Then we see the carronade cannon from 1810, designed to provide ships with devastating firepower at close Tange. There are sabers, World War I rifles, and machine guns on dis play Even a massiv, Flank Howard caesan weighing 1,400 pounds. Day Even a massive, Flank Howitzer cannon weiching 1, 400 pounds Dating from 1864, it shot out 48 get cannon west at one time You villalso sce a building fragment from the World Trade Center tocovered after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack Members of the army here were deployed to Ground Zero, where they manned hospital, a poignant symbol of the modern-day military."