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Blast From the Past: Docs on the Way
I could read stories about old Governors Island all day long. That’s one of the great things about the newspaper archives in the Library of Congress. Here’s a great tale from July 1893 that made the inside pages of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. At the time, Fort Columbus (today Fort Jay) had a busy post hospital that supported all local soldiers. This included those of Fort Wood, which was the small army garrison on Liberty Island. Remember, the Statue of Liberty had only been erected on it seven years earlier; the Army still manned the guns on the island. In this era before telephone connections, the soldiers used cannons…
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He Swam from Castle Williams to the Battery
When I was researching the book, I came up with way more information than I could ever use. A lot of what I found were tall tales and historical stories that popped up. One was about Captain Billy Web, and it seems like this is the best venue to tell his story. If you’ve ever stood on the shore on Governors Island, think about jumping into the water and swimming towards Manhattan. In the almost 100 years that Castle Williams served as military prison, many attempted to swim to freedom. Most drowned in their attempt, but not Captain William Robert Webb, of the 2nd North Carolina Cavalry. As the tale…
