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→Early life & engineering career
==Early life & engineering career==
Chase was born in what is now [[Wikipedia:Buckfield, Maine|Buckfield, Maine]], then an exclave of Massachusetts. He graduated from West Point in 1815 and was assigned to the Corps of Engineers. He worked in repairing Fort Niagara from 1817 to 1818, then began constructing new defenses for New Orleans and other [[Gulf of Mexico]] ports, which had been shown to be vulnerable during the [[War of 1812]]. He engineered [[Wikipedia:Fort Pike|Fort Pike]], [[Wikipedia:Fort Macomb|Fort Macomb]], and other defenses at the [[Wikipedia:Rigolets|Rigolets]], [[Wikipedia:Chef Menteur Pass|Chef Menteur Pass]], [[Wikipedia:Bayou Bienvenue|Bayou Bienvenue]] and [[Wikipedia:Bayou Dupre|Bayou Dupre]]. He was made captain in 1825.
In [[1828]], the Army transferred Chase to Pensacola to oversee the construction of a fort to protect the new [[Navy Yard]]. The resulting venture, [[Fort Pickens]], was situated on the western end of [[Santa Rosa Island]] and provided easy targeting of any ship entering [[Pensacola Pass]].
