[Footnote 108: This storm, which is mentioned by Colonel Douglas, Captain Hale, Chaplain Benedict, and others, hung over the city from seven to ten in the evening, and is described by Pastor Shewkirk as being more terrible than that which "struck into Trinity Church" twenty years before. Captain Van Wyck and two lieutenants of McDougall's regiment and a Connecticut soldier were killed by the lightning.] As soon as the covering frigates were in position, the brigade of light infantry and the reserves of grenadiers and foot, forming an advance corps four thousand strong and headed by Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis, entered the flotilla and were rowed in ten divisions to the Gravesend landing, where they formed upon the plain without opposition.[109] Then followed the remaining troops from the transports, and before noon the fifteen thousand, with guns and baggage, had been safely transferred to Long Island. All who witnessed this naval spectacle that morning were the enemy themselves, a few Dutch farmers in the vicinity, and the pickets of Hand's riflemen, who at once reported the movement at camp. [Footnote 109: The landing-place was at the present village of Bath. No opposition by the Americans would have availed and none was attempted. Washington wrote to Hancock, August 20th: "Nor will it be possible to prevent their landing on the island, as its great extent affords a variety of places favorable for that purpose, and the whole of our works on it are at the end opposite to the city. However, we shall attempt to harass them as much as possible, which will be all that we can do." To the same effect Colonel Reed's letter of August 23d: "As there were so many landing-places, and the people of the island generally so treacherous, we never expected to prevent the landing." General Parsons says (_Document_ 5): "The landing of the troops could not be prevented at the distance of six or seven miles from our lines, in a plain under the cannon of the ships, just within the shore." An American battery had gone down to De Nyse's, earlier in the summer, to annoy the Asia, but there was none there at this date. The particulars of the debarkation and of subsequent movements of the enemy appear in the reports and letters of the two Howes and Sir George Collier. (_Force_, 5th Series, vol. i., pp. 1255-6; and _Naval Chronicle_, 1841.)]