Fort Wellington
| Fort Wellington | |
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Postcard of Fort Wellington, circa 1930
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| Location | Prescott, Ontario, Canada |
| Built | 1813 |
| Original use | Military fortification |
| Governing body | Parks Canada |
| Website | Fort Wellington in the War of 1812 site |
Fort Wellington National Historic Site is a historic military fortification located on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River at Prescott, Ontario. It was originally built in 1813 on land owned by Major Edward Jessup, a prominent Loyalist from Connecticut who founded Prescott in 1784.
Fort Wellington was commissioned by the British government during the War of 1812 to protect the head of the Gallop Rapids in the St. Lawrence River. Prior to the creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s, a series of rapids ran downriver from Prescott to Montreal. Shipping of freight and passengers on regular lake ships was impossible through these rapids, and so freight and passengers who travelled downriver to Prescott from Kingston would be "forwarded" to smaller bateaux which could travel through the rapids. Likewise, freight travelling upriver from Montreal would be unloaded from smaller bateaux and loaded onto larger lake ships for carriage upriver. At the time, the Rideau Canal had not been constructed and the colony's road network was primitive. The only means of shipping heavy cargo and passengers into the Great Lakes from the lower St. Lawrence was by way of Prescott.
Since Prescott is located only a mile from the town of Ogdensburg, New York, it was especially vulnerable to military action by the United States Army. As a communications hub upon which the rest of the colony of Upper Canada relied, the town had to be defended.
The fort was built with earthen ramparts reinforced with horizontal freize pickets. The ramparts were surrounded on the east, west and south facades by a dry ditch with a vertical palisade fence and a glacis. A masonry gate on the north facade of the fort was the only entryway. Inside the fort, timber buildings were constructed and designed to be concealed behind the ramparts. Casemates were tunnelled into the inside of the ramparts and these were used for storage.
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