Wolfgang William Romer - Career in The Americas

Career in The Americas

At the beginning of 1697, Romer was ordered to New York, but objected to go on the proposed salary of 20 shillings a day. The Board of Ordnance recommended that his warrant should be cancelled, and that he should be discharged from the King's service. The King was, however, well acquainted with his value, and although the board had suspended him in February, in August the suspension was removed, and Romer accompanied Lord Bellomont, the newly appointed governor, to New York as chief engineer and with pay of 30 shillings a day. Bellamont had so high an opinion of Romer that he was specially allowed to retain his services beyond the term arranged.

Romer made a plan of the Hudson River, New York, and the adjoining country. In 1700, he explored the territories of the Iroquois Confederacy, who were allied with the British, and made a map of his journey among them. From 1701 to 1703, he was engaged in fortifying Boston Harbour. He built Castle William, mounting one hundred guns, on Castle Island. It was destroyed on 17 March l776, when the British evacuated Boston. Many years afterwards, a slate slab with a Latin inscription was found among the ruins, giving the dates when the work was commenced and finished, and stating that it was constructed by Romer, "a military architect of the first rank." Romer constructed defensive posts and forts in the Iroquois territories, and many of them were executed at his own expense, for which he was never reimbursed. He was a member of the Council of New York Province, and his knowledge of the colony, and especially of the Iroquois, was valuable to Lord Bellomont and to his successor Lord Cornbury, who succeeded to the governorship in 1702.

In 1703, Romer, who was suffering from "a distemper not curable in those parts for want of experienced surgeons", applied to return to England. The Board of Ordnance instead ordered him to go to Barbados, and it was only on the intervention of the Council of Trade, who represented his services, that on 14 August 1704 he was ordered home as soon as he should be relieved. He remained in America until 1706. He completed the plans of Castle Island, Boston Bay, which are now in the British Museum.