Fort William

“ A wonderful place is Fort William, and a hard nut it will be for the enemies of Old England to crack, if they should ever be induced to attempt it, whether it be the wily Russian, the gallant Frenchman, or Brother Jonathan himself. ”

“ After many cheers we marched into our barracks in Fort William. For the first ten days we had an increase of sick, but most of them recovered, though two or three poor men died. Our missing boat and the one left to pick it up both arrived in safety, about a fortnight after us; they were getting near the end of their provisions when they discovered their relief.
In Fort William we found the 16th Bengal Grenadiers, a regiment which wavered and held back to a man at the battle of Ferozeshah, leaving their English colonel to advance alone with our troops. ”

“ I mean Fort William. The fort itself was at this date of no great size or consequence; but in the neighbourhood along the river bank were many fine warehouses erected by the English. In the rear of these was built the native town, which the Moors call Calcutta. Here the houses are generally mean and dirty; but some of the rich Indians lived in very noble style, having fine gardens round their houses, ornamented with fountains and groves of tulip trees and mangoes.
Marian and I were put ashore in the ship’s gig, having first bid adieu to the officers, and set about inquiring the way to Mr. ”

“ The country in which the fort was situated was then the common hunting-ground of several buffalo tribes, unfriendly alike to one another and the whites. The Utaws and Cheyennes, the Pawnees and the Comanches gathered here in summer to hunt the buffalo; and thus, in the neighborhood of the post, there might be from fifteen to twenty thousand savages, “ready and panting for plunder and blood.” If the Indians engaged in fighting had their own battles among themselves, the people of Bent’s Fort felt safe; but if the Indians kept the peace among themselves, there was great anxiety at Fort William. ”

“ A lieutenant and about fifty men of the regiment had, in the mean time, assembled at Edinburgh: some of these men had escaped from captivity, others were the remains of the two companies which had fought at Preston-pans, and they were directed to proceed, by forced marches, to Inverlochy, and throw themselves into Fort William: [68] a drummer and three men of the regiment, who were made prisoners at Fort Augustus, also escaped from custody and took refuge in Fort William. In March, 1746, the enemy besieged the fort, and the garrison made a most resolute defence. ”

“ Certainly, all the sagacity of the fort would seem to have been concentrated in the person of the Indian. How much of this improbability might have been avoided, if the action had been reversed, and the young ladies, in view of the gathering cloud of war, had been sent from the more exposed and less strongly guarded point of Fort William Henry to the safe fortress of Fort Edward! ”

“ The monument, part of a larger 1985 National Historic Landmark District designation, contains two important historical objects, Castle William and Fort Jay. Between 1806 and 1811, these fortifications were constructed as part of the First and Second American Systems of Coastal Fortification. Castle William and Fort Jay represent two of the finest types of defensive structures in use from the Renaissance to the American Civil War. ”

“ We employed it in exploring the ground about Fort William Henry, which stands on an eminence a little way back from the water, and is now merely an insignificant heap of ruins. The French and Indians used to pour down upon the settlements in the plains by the passes of the Lakes Champlain and George, and near these passes were fought some of the severest battles recorded in American history. ”

“ The Fur Loft at a Hudson's Bay Post.
The day following their departure, a party of North-West company clerks, servants and half-breeds gathered at the spot, and setting fire to the houses, the mill and the other buildings, burned them to the ground.
Great joy filled the breasts of the North-Westers assembled at Fort William when these brave tidings were conveyed to their ear. These tidings were accompanied by convincing proofs of the great victory gained over the enemy, in the persons of one hundred and thirty-four settlers, including men, women and children. ”

“ Provisions, equal to six months’ consumption, are always kept in the fort. The native corps, intended to aid in the defence, and of which the amount may be from four to five thousand, are cantoned at Barrackpore, a station about sixteen miles from Calcutta, on the banks of the river, and exactly facing the Danish town of Serampore. Of these troops, about twelve hundred constantly do duty in the fort; being relieved monthly in regular rotation. Fort-William 220is the grand depôt of Bengal, and may be considered as the key to that part of the Company’s possessions, if not to the whole ”

“ From A set of plans and forts in America, reduced from actual surveys, 1763, published in London. Cf. the plan in Lossing’s Field-Book of the Revolution, i. p. 95.
The campaign of the next year (1757) opened in March with an attempt to surprise Fort William Henry. The French under Rigaud came up on the ice, 1,600 strong, by night. The surprise failed. They burned, however, two sloops and some bateaux. The next day they summoned Major Eyre, the English commander, but he felt that his four hundred men were enough to hold the fort, and declined to surrender. ”

“ At length, finding his army increased by the addition of subsidies from Spain to twenty-four thousand men, William determined to infuse new vigor into the public mind by the commencement of offensive hostilities. He first formed the design of surprising Naarden and Woerden, both of which attempts, however, proved unsuccessful. He then marched toward Maestricht, captured and demolished the fort of Valckenburg, by which that town was straitened, and, with the view of diverting the force of the enemy by carrying the war into his own territory, advanced to the siege of Charleroi. ”

“ Here the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company have a yard, containing marine stores, coals, and other requisites. The superintendent resides close by, in a very neat and classic building.
Fort William, which next demands our atten [Pg 476] tion, was projected by Lord Clive soon after the Battle of Plassey, in 1757; but it was not finished till the year 1773. It mounts 619 guns, and is said to have cost, from first to last, £2,000,000 sterling, half of which sum was paid by Mir Jaffier, whom the British seated on the throne of Moorshedabad, after the Battle of Plassey. ”

“ Augustine, annually visited by thousands of people, and that at Pensacola, Florida. The French are best remembered by their [vi] works at Quebec. Of the defensive works of the Dutch, on the Hudson, or the Swedes, on the Delaware, nothing remains. The English were not great builders of forts; they were essentially tillers of the soil. The most important English military work of early Colonial days in America was Castle William (Fort Independence) , Boston harbor. ”

“ The elder church has given way to a structure strangely made up of modern buildings and ancient fragments. The tower of the Conqueror still gives its name to the Place of the Fort; but there are no such remains as we see in the shattered keep of Domfront, hardly such remains as may be traced out at Saint Cenery and on the Rock of Mabel. A line of wall to the south, strengthening the scarped hill-side like the oldest walls of Rome, is all that is left to speak to us of the castle which was William’s most famous work on that border of his dominions. ”

“ The French are men; they are fortifying everywhere. But you are all like women, bare and open, without fortifications." Not one representative of seven colonies had authority to reassure him. Sir William Johnson did, indeed, negotiate a treaty of alliance with the Iroquois and the western Indians; and the Virginia assembly, yielding at last to Governor Dinwiddie's insistent demands, appropriated some money for maintaining the wooden fort, well named Fort Necessity, which Colonel Washington had built on the Ohio. ”

“ And so we run on through the years: In 1716 Lieutenant Governor William Dummer, a well-known name in the history of Massachusetts, assumed command of Castle William, agreeable to orders from the Crown, and thereby incurred the ill-feeling of the general court of the province which heretofore had had prerogative in the appointment of a commandant. In 1740 the fort was repaired in anticipation of war with France and a new bastion mounting 20 forty-two pounders was created and named Shirley bastion. ”

“ The fortifications in the monument were built on the most strategic defensive positions on the island. Fort Jay, constructed between 1806 and 1809, is on the highest point of the island from which its glacis originally sloped down to the waterfront on all sides. Castle William, constructed between 1807 and 1811, occupies a rocky promontory as close as possible to the harbor channels and served as the most important strategic defensive point in the entrance to the New York Harbor. ”

“ How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and the waves sparkling and the sea-gulls circling around Fort Wagner's ancient site. But the great earthworks and their thundering cannon, the commanders and their followers, the wild assault and repulse that for a brief space made night hideous on that far-off evening, have all sunk into the blue gulf of the past, and for the majority of this generation are hardly more than an abstract name, a picture, a tale that is told. ”

“ William went cautiously along the shore to Hastings, where he erected his fortifications, and refreshed his troops. In the Tapestry we see them seizing the sheep and cattle in the fields, cooking their food, and afterwards seating themselves at table. Wace says “Before evening had set in they had finished a fort. Then you might see them make their kitchens, light their fires, and cook their meat. The Duke sat down to eat, and the barons and knights had food in{115} plenty ”

“ It is worthy of remark, that as military posts, all those lately established by the British are far superior, in point of situation, to those delivered up. The ground on which the new block house is building, on the British side of Niagara River, is nine feet higher than the top of the stone house in the American fort, and it commands every part of the fort. The chief strength of the old fort is on the land side; towards the water the works are very weak, and the whole might be battered down by a single twelve pounder judiciously planted on the British side of the river. ”

“ Like all American forts, it was formed with earthen ramparts, covered by rich green turf, and defended by tall stockades of dry white timber. Within were seen the shingle-covered roofs of the low barrack buildings, tarred and painted black, and all glistening in the sunshine. Two of the lower bastions were faced with stone and washed by the azure water of Lake George, while a deep fosse secured the fort on the landward, and dangerous morasses protected its flanks. Beyond lay a cleared space, where the timber of the old primeval forest had been cut down for garrison purposes. ”

“ Morning bugle call, the evening gun, grey ships of war stealing in from a misty sea with long plumes of soft black smoke, military uniforms on the streets and trig bright houses are, probably, the average civilian’s impressions of a stay at Old Point Comfort where is located Fort Monroe. “Fort” or “Fortress,” for the place changes its sex indifferently according to the state of mind of the speaker, it probably satisfies the popular conception of a mighty stronghold of defence more completely than any other such establishment in the United States. ”

“ Wayne's column scales the ramparts.
The first man over shouts, "The fort's our own," and pulls down the British flag.
The second main column follows.
"The fort's our own!" "The fort's our own!" echoes and reëchoes over the hills.
The bayonet is now doing its grim work. The darkness is lighted only by the flashes from the guns of the redcoats. The bewildered British are driven at the point of the bayonet into the corners of the fort, and cry, "Mercy, mercy, dear Americans!" "Quarter! quarter!" "Don't kill us! we surrender!" ”

“ The post was transferred to the United States in 1796, with the other frontier posts which Great Britain had held. From then until the outbreak of the War of 1812 it was allowed to fall into decay, and at the beginning of that conflict was but partially armed and quite unable to withstand an enemy. The English, hearing of its condition, and hearing, moreover, of the presence in the fort of large quantities of stores of all kinds, sent a fleet with 3000 men against the place. ”

“ There I left Gist, and, buying a horse, pushed on, passing packhorses carrying stores for the new fort begun at the Forks.
I had no more appetite for adventure, and was glad to reach Williamsburg on January 16, 1754, where I delivered my sealed reply, and conveyed to the governor my views, and remembrance of what I had seen and heard, with maps I had made and drawings of the forts.
Looking back from the hilltop, as General Hamilton once said to me, must often surprise a man with knowledge of mistakes made by the way ”