Battery Number One, Near Yorktown, VA (1862)

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When Gen. McClellan undertook to capture the Confederate army on the Peninsula by siege, he commenced to construct a line of works from the York to the James River, across the narrow neck of the Peninsula, in front of Yorktown. The first battery was located on the York River, about a mile and three-quarters from Confederate's wharves and their main works in front of Yorktown. It was built by the First Connecticut artillery and had six of the heaviest rifled guns ever mounted in a land battery. The guns were mounted on heavy wrought-iron carriages, and could only be fired once in fifteen minutes. The muzzles of the guns were about five feet from the ground, and the bottom of the carriages about ten feet below the surface. The dirt thrown out of the excavation was banked up in front of the guns, and kept from falling in by wicker baskets, constructed by Engineer Corps, and filled with earth. On top of these were piled bags of sand, and the whole sodded, making an embankment of thirty feet thick in front of the guns. The enemy fired a number of solid shot and shell into this bank from an English sixty-four rifled gun, but none of them did any damage, or entered over ten feet into the earth.
An immense magazine in the rear was connected with the guns by an underground tunnel, through which the men could pass in carrying ammunition. Experienced officers expressed the opinion that with this battery alone, the enemy could have been driven from their position in Yorktown. No lives were ever lost on our side at this battery from the enemy's fire upon it.

Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War -Plate 12