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Barnwell's crew built a raggedy Fort King George at Altamaha
Source: The Southern Frontier #86
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Meanwhile, in that vast expanse of marshland and cypress swamps, he had selected a site for the post. Several branches of the estuary were explored before he found a suitable bluff on the north bank of the northern branch, five miles below its exit from the principal stream, and near the town occupied by the Huspaw people in 1715. 5 [Note 5 C.O. Maps, Georgia] There he made ready to erect the temporary fort, save for the warehouses of the traders the first English establishment in the land which became Georgia. It was well that Barnwell had brought such seasoned frontiersmen as the Port Royal scouts. No timber could be found within three miles of Garrison Point, so he decided to build with cypress plank, four inches thick and musket-proof, instead of logs. 'This cypress,' he wrote in his journal, 'can't be gott out of the Swamp without wading naked up to the waist or sometimes to the neck, which is a Terrible Slavery, especially now in the dog days, when the Musquetos are in their Vigour.' By such herculean labors was built the Altamaha Fort, a 'planked house,' or gabled blockhouse, twenty-six feet square. There were three floors: a magazine floor, a gun-floor at six feet from the ground, with walls pierced for cannon and musketry, and above a 'jetting floor to clear the sides,' with more loopholes for small arms. High in the gable a lookout window commanded a wide view of river and marsh and old Indian fields, and of St. Simon's Island to the east and southeast. On the land side the blockhouse was defended by an earthen parapet, five to six feet high, with a bastion, and surrounding palisades and a moat. Another parapet of fascines fronted the river, and the palisades were continued along the marsh on the northeast. Within this irregular triangle, in a space measuring two hundred by three hundred feet, stood several palmetto-roofed huts and barracks. 6 [Note 6 Barnwell's journal; C.O. Maps, Georgia. Several of these maps and plans are reproduced in Crown Collection, series III. See also P.R.O., M.P., G 13 (plan, 1726). WinsQr, in Mississippi Basin, .p. 135, incorrectly described the post as located at the forks of the Altamaha, and has been followed by others, as Heinrich, La Louisiane, p. 158.] Such was Altamaha Fort, or Fort King George as it was grandly named, a frontier improvisation which the King's officers mocked and reviled. 7 Barnwell himself thought it serviceable only as a temporary shelter, until a strong fort could be constructed on St. Simon's Island to command all the mouths of the Altamaha and the sea-approach. 8 [Note 8 Barnwell's journal, loco cit.; endorsed by assembly in instructions to Yonge and Lloyd, in C.O. 5 :358, A 48. See C.O. Maps, Georgia 3, for Barnwell's chart of St. Simon's harbor, September 2, 1721.]
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