As for barricades, the city was full of them. Some were built of mahogany logs taken from West India cargoes. Not a street leading to the water on either side that was not obstructed in this manner; so that, had the enemy been able to gain a footing in the city under the fire of their ships, they would still have found it, to use Lee's expression, "a disputable field of battle." The City Hall Park was almost entirely inclosed. There was a barrier across Broadway in front of St. Paul's Church, another at the head of Vesey Street, and others at the head of Barclay, Murray, and Warren. On the Park Row or Chatham Street side a barricade stretched across Beekman Street; another, in the shape of a right angle, stood in Printing House Square, one face opposite Spruce Street, the other looking across the Presbyterian churchyard and Nassau Street;[62] another ran across Frankfort Street; another at the entrance of Centre Street; and still another near it, facing Chatham Street. [Footnote 62: One side of this barricade ran in front of the _Times_, and the other in front of the _Tribune_ building.] Another element in the defence was a motley little fleet, made up of schooners, sloops, row-galleys, and whale-boats, and placed under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Benjamin Tupper,[63] who had distinguished himself by a naval exploit or two in Boston Harbor during the siege. Crews were drafted from the regiments and assigned to the various craft, whose particular mission was to scour the waters along the New Jersey and Long Island coast, to watch for the British fleets, and prevent communication between the Tories and the enemy's ships already lying in the harbor. Tupper, as commodore, appears first in the sloop Hester as his flag-ship, and later in the season in the Lady Washington, while among his fleet were to be found the Spitfire, General Putnam, Shark, and Whiting. The gallant commodore's earliest cruises were made within the Narrows, along the Staten Island shore, and as far down as Sandy Hook, where he attempted the feat of destroying the light-house. But he found this structure, which the enemy had occupied since Major Malcom dismantled it in March, a hard piece of masonry to reduce. He attacked it confidently, June 21st, after demanding its surrender, but retired when he found that an hour's bombardment made no impression upon its walls.[64] He kept a good lookout along these waters, gathered information from deserters, and when reporting on one occasion that the enemy's fleet were short of provisions and the men reduced to half allowance, he added, with unction, "May God increase their wants!" A little later we meet again with the adventuresome Tupper and his flotilla. [Footnote 63: This officer was Lieutenant-Colonel of Jonathan Ward's Massachusetts Regiment, and subsequently became colonel in the Massachusetts Continental Line.] [Footnote 64: _Force_, 4th Series, vol. vi., p. 1011.]