nnection with batteries on the
New York side, was designed to command the East River channel. Its
exact site has been a point of dispute. Several writers and old
inhabitants associate the name with the remains of a large
fortification which stood at the corner of Henry and Pierrepont
streets as late as 1836. It is clear, however, that this was a work
erected by the British during the latter part of the Revolution.
General Robertson, acting as Governor of New York in 1780, wrote to
Lord Germaine, May 18th, that, among other works thrown up to make New
York more secure against an attack by the Americans, "a large square
fort is built at Brooklyn Heights."[46] The traveller Smyth, writing
in the same year, says, "The town [New York] is entirely commanded by
a considerable eminence in Long Island, directly opposite to it, named
Brookland Heights, on which a strong regular fort with four bastions
has lately been erected by the British troops." This exactly describes
the work in question.[47] The corner of Henry and Pierrepont streets,
moreover, being a thousand feet back from the river's edge, could not
have been selected at that time as the site for a strictly water
battery intended for effective resistance. The fort must be looked for
nearer the edge of the bluff, and there we find it. Both the Stiles
and the Hessian maps place it directly on the bank of the river--the
latter, a little north of what was then known as the Bamper House, or
at about the intersection of Clark and Columbia streets.[48]

[Footnote 46: _Documents, Col. Hist. of New York_, vol. viii., p.
792.]

[Footnote 47: The recollections and incidents preserved by Stiles and
Furman go to show that this was not an American-built fort.--_Stiles'
Brooklyn_, vol. i., pp. 314, 315.]

[Footnote 48: A return of the batteries around New York, March 24th,
describes Fort Stirling as opposite the "Fly Market" in Maiden Lane
[_Force_, Fourth Series, vol. v., p. 480]. Clark, Pineapple, and
Orange streets, Brooklyn, can all be called "opposite" Maiden Lane in
New York. The Hessian map puts the fort nearest the line of Clark.]

The fort was a strong inclosed work, mounting eight guns. Ward's men
broke ground for it about the 1st of March, and continued digging, as
their major, Douglas, writes, through "cold, tedious weather," until
other troops took their place.[49]

[Footnote 49: The work, which was to be known as the _Citadel_, was in
all probability the "redoubte c