Dale Fort
Dale Point was fortified in Napoleonic times, with a battery of cannons protected by an earth bank. The present fort was built in the 1850s as part of the defences of Milford Haven.
its garrison of 60 had charge of one 80lb Millar’s Pattern shell gun, seven 68lb guns plus two 32lb guns for landward defences. Together with West Blockhouse and Thorn Island forts, Dale Fort was one of the last built in Great Britain to counter wooden-walled, sail-driven warships and by 1871 it was considered obsolete. The fort was reoccupied in 1892 and was altered to allow the installation of a Zalinski dynamite gun, a new pneumatic coastal defence weapon which could fire a 15” shell weighing 966lb over 4,500 yards using compressed air.
A paddle-steamer called the Harpy was used as a target and the trials proved to be highly successful, but in the meantime a bore-safe high explosive called Lyddite had been invented, rendering the elaborate compressed air system unnecessary. Subsequent to the dismantling of the dynamite gun the fort remained in military hands until it was decommissioned in 1902 and became a private house. It was used as a signal station in the First World War, and was also one end of the Haven’s boom defence (the other end was at Thorn Island). The fort was again pressed into service in WW2 when it was used as a Degaussing Range to measure the magnetic signatures of ships to ensure they were not capable of setting off magnetic mines laid by the Luftwaffe. If the signature was too great the ships would be ordered into Milford Docks to be ‘degaussed’. The fort is now a Field Studies Centre and public access is limited.
