Fort Nassau

If the precise chronology of Fort Nassau is uncertain, so is its location. Fort Nassau was constructed on Castle Island (Casteels Eyland) but the exact location is difficult to pinpoint, as the evidence is contradictory. On the 1614 map of New Netherland, a small mark in the middle of the island may indicate its location, but on a later Vingboons map a larger mark can be discerned on the north point of the island. Yet on the ca. 1632 “Gillis van Scheyndel Map” a farmhouse (Welysburg) is located on the north point. These discrepancies are probably due to inaccuracies in cartography as well as to changes in the island’s topography as frequent flooding caused erosion and sedimentation. A flood in April 1640 covered Castle Island with water four feet deep, as the river rose to twelve feet higher than its regular level. The floods that severely damaged Fort Orange in 1647/1648 and 1666 very likely also hit Castle Island. While remnants of the fort were still discernible in 1680, it is likely that flood erosion gradually removed them. On May 22, 1833, the New York Evening Post carried an article about a devastating flood of what was then called Patroon’s Island. The flood “swept every vestige of vegetation of its surface” and “the entire surface of the soil is washed away to the depth of several feet.” The newspaper reported that “Human skeletons, buried after the Indian manner, in a sitting posture, have been exposed” by the flood, but there is no reference to any remains of Fort Nassau. This omission increases the likeliness that at this point in time, almost 220 years after its construction, few if any traces of Fort Nassau remained.