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a remarkable clay, as the effects of that negli­ gence which suffered the battery to go to decay, were most severely felt on the same day in 1801 . To replace this battery, the Elephant, the Sound, and the Princess Vilhelmina were cut down, fdled with ballast, and grounded in the ruins to raise a foundation for a new fort. This undertaking is pursued most zealously, and a few years, will, I hope, exhibit as fine a battery there, as that we have to the north of the city, called the Three Crowns. This last battery was constructed at tile distance of two miles from shore, on the plan of our ingenious Com­ modore Gerner,* who dying before it was com­ pleted, the battery was suffered to go almost * Commodore Gerner died in 1784. Pie invented a ma­ chine worked by eight horses, which drains the Royal Dock in 24 hours; a task which formerly employed 500 sailors, incessantly for three days. I remember once to have been in this dock with two English Sea Captains, who paid many obliging compliments to the ingenuity of Gerner, and spoke in very high terms of the dock itself, altogether the labor of art; the tides not permitting us to establish similar Docks to fiiosp in England.