It was a happy-go-lucky, careless era. Indeed when one looks back upon the perils of the early colonies and how they were survived it is like looking back upon the perils of childhood and wondering how one ever managed to get through. The colonies “just growed,” which is true of a variety of things in this world, no doubt. During Governor Cornbury’s administration, fifteen thousand pounds (a value in present day terms of far beyond seventy-five thousand dollars) was appropriated for building a fort upon Governor’s Island, but Governor Cornbury used the money to build a pleasure house instead, to which he and succeeding governors might retire from press of business. Governor Cornbury, we may believe, was an edifying addition to the staid burgher circles of old New York. He was a small, shrimpish man, we are told, and inordinately vain. Being a cousin to her most Christian Majesty, Queen Anne, to which circumstance he owed his appointment, and having been assured that he resembled her hugely in appearance, he was in the habit of dressing himself like a woman and posing upon the balcony of his home--that New Yorkers might be thrilled by a reflection of royalty. Despite his royal connections his household was most impecunious and his wife gained a reputation for borrowing things which she had no intention of ever giving back. Whenever the executive coach would be seen going the round of the streets on social duties bent, the good wives who might expect visits from her ladyship would say, it is said, “Quick, put away that fancy work and that vase” (or this and that), “Kathrine! Her ladyship is about to call upon us.” Father Time strolled on through the terms of the various royal governors noting their idiosyncrasies and continually hearing the cry that Governor’s Island should be fortified, but not by any of these gentlemen did he discover action taken. It was not until after the Continental Congress, October 6, 1775, directed that means should be immediately devised to make New York defensible that the little city one morning woke up to find that there were rudimentary fortifications on Governor’s Island. Of course these fortifications were supplementary to the fort on the main island upon which the city chiefly depended, Fort George. This was the name the English had given to Fort Amsterdam’s successor, an enlarged and strengthened edition of its original. Of little avail did all of these works prove, however, for the English, after the battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776, were easily masters of the Americans in that part of the world. On August 30th, Admiral Howe sailed up New York Bay and anchored near the island, and the city of New York passed into British possession, not to be surrendered until the close of the war.