Note 257 — Chapter XXII

Goat Island was the site of a colonial fortress. During the reign of King William, Colonel Romer advised the fortification of Rhode Island, which he says had never been done "by reason of the mean condition and refractoriness of the inhabitants." In 1744 the fort on Goat Island mounted twelve cannon. At the beginning of the Revolution General Lee, and afterward Colonel Knox, marked out defensive works; but they do not appear to have been executed when the British, on the same day that Washington crossed the Delaware, took possession of the island. The Whigs, in 1775, removed the cannon from the batteries in the harbor. Major L'Enfant, the engineer of West Point, was the author of Fort Wolcott.