The Trustees having surrendered their charter, Captain John Reynolds was, in 1754, appointed by the King, Governor of Georgia, with the title of “Captain General and Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s Province of Georgia, and Vice-Admiral of the same.” He entered upon his duties in October of that year, and early, the following Spring, made a tour of inspection through the southern portion of the Province. Arriving at Frederica, he found the town “in ruins,” the fortifications “decayed,” and the “houses falling down.” Twenty pieces of cannon were lying dismounted and “spoiled for want of care.” The melancholy prospect was presented of “houses without inhabitants, barracks without soldiers, guns without carriages, and streets grown over with weeds.”[151] Fort Frederick was entirely dismantled. Not a gun was mounted, and neither powder nor ball could be found. Among his recommendations for the defense of the Colony, the Governor suggested the construction of a work at Frederica “in the form of half a hexagon, nine hundred and sixty feet each, with two whole and two demi-bastions towards the land, and two demi-bastions and a citadel towards the sea, on which were to be placed fifty cannon manned by three hundred regulars.” This fortification was never built, and no effort was made to repair the works then crumbling and abandoned. This dilapidation and neglect continued without any effort on the part of the Colonial authorities to check their annihilating influences. Frederica had now ceased to be a place of any note. In his report of the condition of the Province of Georgia, submitted to the Earl of Dartmouth on the 20th of December, 1773, Sir James Wright, then Governor of the Colony, represents Fort Frederick at Frederica as “going to decay very fast.” “There is still,”—such is the language of the report,—“some Remains of good Tabby Walls, &c., but there has been no men there since the Independent Company were broke in the Year 1767.”[152]