Note 43 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Some important and interesting information relative to the main line at Brooklyn was brought out in 1779 at the examination of Captain John Montressor, before the Parliamentary Committee which investigated Howe's conduct of the war. Montressor was a British army engineer, acting as Howe's aid on Long Island. Being one of the general's witnesses, he naturally made out the American position as strong as possible, but the main facts of his testimony are to be accepted. The examination was in part as follows:
"Q. Can you give a particular account of the state of those [Brooklyn] lines?
A. Yes—the lines were constructed from Wallabout Bay, on one side to a swamp that intersects the land between the main land and Read Hook, which terminates the lines. The lines were about a mile and a half in extent, including the angles, cannon proof, with a chain of five redoubts, or rather fortresses, with ditches, as had also the lines that formed the intervals, raised on the parapet and the counterscarp, and the whole surrounded with the most formidable abbaties.
Q. Were those lines finished on every part, from the swamp formed by the Wallabout on the left, to the swamp on the right?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know the particulars of the left part of the line towards the Wallabout? Have you any reason for knowing that?
A. The line runs straight from the rising ground where Fort Putnam was constructed, in a straight line to the swamp that terminates itself at the bottom of Wallabout Bay.
Q. Was there a possibility of a single man's passing round the left part of the line?
A. There was not. After entering the lines, Sir William Howe, on the enemy's evacuating, followed the road to the point, to examine and see if he could get out at that part, which he could not do, and we were obliged to return and go out of a sally port of the lines....
Q. Can you say of your own knowledge, that the right redoubt of the lines at Brooklyn had an abattis before it?
A. I have already said that the whole had an abattis before it.
[He produces an actual survey of the lines.]...
Q. If any one of these redoubts were taken, did not they flank the line in such a manner to the right and left that the enemy could not remain in the lines?
A. I have already said, that they could not be taken by assault, but by approaches, as they were rather fortresses than redoubts."—A View of the Evidence Relative to the Conduct of the American War under Sir William Howe, etc.; second edition; London, 1779. Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York, 1870, p. 884.
The maps in the early London editions of Gordon's and Stedman's histories of the war, each put five fortifications on the line from the Wallabout to Gowanus Creek.