[Footnote 45: "Our fort [Defiance] is much strengthened by new works and more troops, and it is in so good a posture of defence, that it would be almost impossible to take it either by attack or surprise. To guard against the latter, each man is every other night on duty."--_Memoir of Samuel Shaw_, p. 17.]
FORT STIRLING.--The first work laid out on Long Island, as we have seen, was Fort Stirling, which, in connection 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.]