Battery Glover / Watermelon Battery (James Island)

This James Island property was settled by Benjamin Stiles, who was one of the earliest planters on James Island. During the Revolutionary War, his son, Benjamin Stiles Jr., served as captain of a James Island company of militia. When the British seized James Island in 1780, they established two siege batteries, one at Stiles Point (referred to as the Watermelon Battery) and the other at Lightwood Plantation on the Wappoo Creek. The Watermelon Battery, a two-gun earthworks fortification, was located north of the Stiles home. During the Siege of Charles Town, the Watermelon Battery fired into the Patriot-held city, spreading panic amongst the city’s civilians. On April 16, a shot from the Stiles Point battery hit the statue of William Pitt located at the intersection of Broad and Meeting streets. The shot ripped the arm from the statue, causing the residents to relocate the memorial erected to Pitt in commemoration of his defense of    American rights during the Stamp Act confrontationIn 1863, Confederates erected Battery Glover at Stiles Point Plantation overtop the same location as the Revolutionary War Watermelon Battery. The earthwork fortification was 110 yards in length and 70 yards deep. The parapets were ten feet tall and it included a powder magazine, 75 by 25 feet in size. Battery Glover was built for four to five guns. In March 1863, reports reflect that it was armed with one rifled 32-pound gun, three 32-pound smoothbore guns, and one unmounted 8-inch shell gun.