Quaint and Historic Forts of North America. John Martin Hammond
There was a dwelling-room on the first floor of this “castle”; a lodging-room above; a gun-room over the latter furnished with “six very good saker guns” and three lesser guns were mounted upon the roof. In this same year occurred an event which gave rise to much curious speculation at the time and is retained in legend. On the 15th of July a stroke of lightning entered one of the rooms of the fort, killed Captain Richard Davenport, the commanding officer, and did not enter the magazine, only a step away, beyond a thin partition, where there was stored enough gunpowder to have blown the fort beyond the seas.
Still the spirit of fire had its due, for in 1673 the fort was burned to the ground. In the year following a new fort of stone was erected. It had four bastions, mounted thirty-eight guns and sixteen culverins, in addition to a water battery of six guns, and was a very imposing work indeed.
In 1689 the people of Boston, favoring the Cromwellians in England, seized the royal governor, Edmund Andros, and placed him in confinement. They took possession of the castle and appointed Mr. John Fairweather commander to succeed Captain John Pipon.
But all dissension is smoothed down by the hand of Time. Under the administration of Sir Williams Phipps, an appointee of King William, the fort was named Castle William and the Crown donated a large sum of money toward the erection of a stronger structure. The ordnance then became 24 nine-pounders, 12 twenty-four pounders, 18 thirty-two pounders, and 18 forty-eight pounders; and the bastions became known by the names of the “Crown,” the “Rose,” the “Royal,” and the “Elizabeth.” This augmentation of strength was the more necessary as a French invasion of the New England colonies was apprehended.
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.
Ordnance presented by the King arrived in 1744; a second magazine was built in 1747; and a third added during Shirley’s administration. In 1747 a riot occurred in Boston and the governor took refuge at the Castle. Upon assurance that his authority would be sustained the governor returned to the city two days after his flight.
On the 15th of August, 1757, Governor Pownal arrived to assume the government of the province. Sir William Pepperell, conqueror of Louisburg, held command of Castle William. In accordance with custom Sir William surrendered the key of the castle to the new executive and said, “Sir, I hand you the key of the province.” Not outdone at all, Governor Pownal replied, “Sir, the interests of the province are in your heart. I shall always be glad, therefore, to see the key of the province in your hands.” Thus the doughty old warrior was maintained in his command until his death in 1759.
In this same year died Captain Lieutenant John Larrabee, who had lived for fifty years on the island in the service of the Crown. In 1764 the Castle was used as an inoculation station during the ravages of a plague of smallpox which swept the little city.
FORT WINTHROP FROM CASTLE ISLAND [top]
Main Entrance
FORT INDEPENDENCE, CASTLE ISLAND, BOSTON, MASS.
It was about this time that the fort began to take part in the events with which Boston is associated before the outbreak of the American Revolution. Stamps by which revenue was expected to be raised from the colonies were brought to Boston in 1765 and for security were lodged in Castle William. Vigorous opposition in America caused the repealment of the act of which they were intended to be the tokens of enforcement and they were taken back to England at the expiration of not many months. These, it will be seen, were not the stamps which figured in the famous Boston Tea Party, but they were of the same nature. The maintenance of a large force of military at Castle William by the Crown in the years immediately following this was a source of irritation to the patriots of the day, and had an influence in determining the events which brought about the separation from the Mother Country.
Captain Sir Thomas Adams, who died on board the frigate Romney, was buried on Castle Island October 8, 1772, and his obsequies were conducted with great pomp. In removing earth to Fort Independence thirty years later his corpse, enclosed in a double coffin highly ornamented, but upon which the inscription had become illegible, was dug out, and, no one discovering at the time whose remains the coffin contained, it was committed to the common burying ground at the south point of the island where its resting-place was soon not to be distinguished from that of the common soldiers which surrounded it.
With this coffin necessarily others were removed, and one was favored with an inscription which betrayed, we may assume, either native simplicity or British sarcasm. It read: “Here lies the body of John, aged fifty years, a faithful soldier and a Desperate Good Gardner”!
It does not appear that the force quartered on the island was engaged in the first two battles of the Revolution. The commandant of the castle had been sent in February, 1776, to seize powder and other military stores at Salem; but he was delayed at the ferry by the militia until the objects of the depredation had been moved beyond his reach. He returned peaceably to the island. The same officer was ordered from Castle William at this time with five hundred men to draw the Americans, by a false attack, from their posts at Roxbury. The attack did not succeed and the burning of five or six houses in Dorchester was the only result.
In the meantime a formidable force of Americans was concentrated in the vicinity of Boston under Washington; so General Howe, the successor of General Gage, evacuated the town March 17, and the British fleet dropped below the Castle. The embarkation had been a scene of confusion and distress, it being the 27th of March before the transports were able to put to sea. At their departure the British troops threw into the water iron balls and shot, broke off the trunnions of the ordnance given to Castle William in 1740, destroyed the military stores and battery apparatus which they could not take with them and finally blew up the citadel, leaving the island a mass of ruins. Part of the British fleet lay in the lower harbor until June, when it was harassed by American troops under General Lincoln and raised the blockade of Boston Harbor after the exact duration of two years. With the British troops the seat of the war was removed from Massachusetts, and Castle Island was thenceforth, unmolested, in American possession.
Colonel John Turnbull was the officer sent by General Washington to take possession of the island after the evacuation. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere was stationed on the island from 1777 to 1779.
At the conclusion of the Revolution it was enacted by the legislature of Massachusetts that all criminals of the State under sentence of confinement should be removed to Castle Island. Pursuant to this law convicts were sent to the island, and though their number never exceeded ninety their audacity taxed the vigilance of the garrison; they made several bold, fruitless efforts to escape, and in their mutinies some were killed and some wounded. Others met their death while endeavoring to form subterranean passages. Stephen Burroughs, whose extensive forgeries gave him great notoriety, here learned the art of a nailer, and in his published memoirs has publicly boasted of his Castle Island exploits.
It was with reluctance that the legislature of Massachusetts could bring itself to the cession of the Castle to the United States government, but the State was nevertheless willing to sacrifice the partial advantage to the public good and, October, 1798, passed an act by which the transfer was accomplished.
In 1799 President Adams visited the fort and was received with due honors. It was at this time that the name was changed to Independence. With regard to this, Captain Nehemiah Freeman wrote: “The baptism was not indecorous and the godfather (President Adams) is certainly unexceptionable; but Fort Independence must count some years before he can entirely divest his elder brother of his birthright; and though the mess of pottage might