Fort Washington's chevaux-de-frise (1776)
As part of the barriers erected across the river, the Army constructed a chevaux-de-frise, an array of logs sunk underwater, between Fort Washington on the island of Manhattan, and Fort Lee across the river in New Jersey. The logs were intended to pierce and sink any British ships that passed over it. An opening was left for the passage of American ships. As the British learned of the opening from a local resident, they successfully passed through the barrier several times. The British captured Fort Washington on November 16, 1776, rendering the defensive barrier moot.
Read more about this topic: Hudson River Chain
Famous quotes containing the words fort and/or washington:
“‘Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)
“I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidents—or at least their staffs—never stop making mischief.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)