The Deadliest Hot Shot

July 27, 1816 - An old British fort sat on a bluff along the Apalachicola River. The site had been handed over to fugitive and liberated slaves, as well as Choctaw and Creek Indians who had supported the British during the War of 1812. On this day, American forces surrounded the fort as part of General Andrew Jackson’s conquest of Florida.

The American’s were under the command of General Edmund Gaines, whose request for surrender was rejected by the ragtag forces holding the fort. A battle quickly ensued and a U.S. Navy Gunboat trained its cannon on the fort’s powder magazine. This was a “hot shot,” meaning the cannonball was heated before firing in hopes of igniting a blaze. The first shot was a bullseye, and a massive explosion obliterated the fort. As many as 274 of the fort’s 334 occupants were killed instantly. The thundering boom was heard 100 miles away in Pensacola.

General Gaines wrote this account of the aftermath:

The explosion was awful and the scene horrible beyond description. You cannot conceive, nor I describe the horrors of the scene. In an instant lifeless bodies were stretched upon the plain, buried in sand or rubbish, or suspended from the tops of the surrounding pines. Here lay an innocent babe, there a helpless mother; on the one side a sturdy warrior, on the other a bleeding squaw. Piles of bodies, large heaps of sand, broken glass, accoutrements, etc., covered the site of the fort... Our first care, on arriving at the scene of the destruction, was to rescue and relieve the unfortunate beings who survived the explosion.

For those that did survive, almost all were either executed, tortured or enslaved.