West Point Cemetery Wall.

I also managed to scramble down the bank and get a couple of shots of the cemetery wall that we completed back in November.

No mean feat for a man of my age, and certainly more difficult than the build itself.

 

The Great Chain

This afternoon while waiting for three colour samples of parapet wall mortar to dry, I took the opportunity to do a little West Point sightseeing. This is the view of the Hudson river with West Point to the left and constitution island to the right. The great chain was floated across the river at its narrowest point far right of this picture.

 

The chain -a small section can be seen below- measured 600 yds or 550 meters in length, each link weighed 114 lbs or 52 kg and was 2 feet in length. In total the chain weighed 65 tons. The chain was floated on wooden rafts made up of four 16ft logs fastened together with 12 foot timbers.

The chain was floated out onto the river every spring after the river ice had cleared and then pulled in every fall before the river froze, for 5 years between 1778 and 1783.