File:View-of-Deer-Island.jpg

This image, made in 2010, looks out (northerly) from Battery Basinger towards Deer Island. In WW2, Deer Island was the site of Fort Dawes and the Harbor Entry Control Point (HECP) for the Boston Harbor defenses. Today, the development of the massive sewage treatment plant of the Massachusetts Water Resources Agency (MWRA) has wiped away all traces of Fort Dawes. The egg-shaped sewage treatment tanks of the plant can be seen at right.

This view, with a modern cargo ship threading its way through the channel toward Boston, gives an idea of what the gunners of Battery Basinger must have seen during WW2 as they guarded the channel and its mine fields. The seawall is about 50 feet in front of this gun position (one of the guns was just to the left rear of the camera), and a visitor gets a feeling of being able to reach out and touch the water.

During WW2, the battery was accessed by driving north and east (probably by Jeep) from the location of the old mining wharf (now the wharf for the ferry to the island from Boston), along a roadway of granite pavers, many of which survive atop the seawall.

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