Spitbank—A Solent Seafort

Abstract

The Palmerston Plan, as it was called, proposed in 1860 a massive expansion of the fortifications that guarded the Royal Naval Dockyard of Portsmouth. The plan included three circular seaforts, which were built on the sand shoals in the eastern Solent between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. The two on the seaward station, Horsesands and No Man's Land, were double gun-deck forts, while the landward fort, Spitbank, was a smaller single gun-deck built at the end of Spithead, from which many a naval event took its name. Spitbank was decommissioned in 1956, passed into private ownership in 1982, and was opened to the public as the nearest and most accessible of the three scheduled monuments. This paper follows its history, from the technological feat of its construction through to the present difficulties of restoring a monument that stands 2.4 km offshore in 7.3 metres of swiftly flowing tidal water.