Forts Clinton and Montgomery fall in an hour; the Hudson chain goes down with them
For months the Hudson Highlands had held, their iron chain and river batteries built to stop any British warship from sailing north. On October 6, 1777, Sir Henry Clinton landed 2,100 troops at Stony Point and pushed them through the hills behind Forts Clinton and Montgomery, where the landward defenses stood unfinished. Both forts fell by nightfall after a brief, fierce fight; General James Clinton was wounded and escaped through Popolopen Gorge. The British burned the ruins and cut loose the chain they had come to destroy.
The battle proved to the young Continental Congress that fortifications alone could not hold a river against a determined amphibious force, a lesson that shaped how West Point was sited and defended for the rest of the war. The Americans rebuilt their chain farther upriver within weeks, a decision that kept the Hudson closed to British shipping for the rest of the war.
QHow many cannons did Fort Montgomery's river battery carry before the attack?
Six 32-pound guns, positioned to rake any British ship that tried to force the cable chain and boom stretched across the Hudson below the fort. That armament was the reason Clinton's force avoided a river approach entirely and marched overland from Stony Point instead, hitting the forts from the one side their builders had not finished fortifying. The guns never got the chance to fire on a warship; Fort Montgomery's own gun crew, under Captain John Lamb, spiked them rather than let them fall into British hands intact.
QWhat happened to the physical site of Fort Clinton after the Revolution?
It no longer exists in any recognizable form. Construction crews building U.S. Route 9W and the Bear Mountain Bridge in the 1920s destroyed the ground where Fort Clinton once stood. Fort Montgomery, just to the north, had a different fate entirely: it survives today as a National Historic Landmark, meaning one half of the twin disaster of October 6, 1777 can still be walked, while the other lies under a highway.
QWhat decoy maneuvers did Sir Henry Clinton stage before the real attack, and where?
Weeks before landing at Stony Point, Clinton sent troops on feinting maneuvers near Tarrytown and Verplanck's Point, far south of the actual target. The ruse was aimed squarely at General Israel Putnam, who commanded the overall American defense of the Hudson Highlands and controlled reinforcements that could have strengthened the forts. Putnam took the bait and shifted his attention toward the false threats, leaving Forts Clinton and Montgomery thinner on manpower than they might have been. Putnam's own force never reached the real battle in time to matter. The feint cost Clinton only marching time, and it left Putnam looking south when the real landing happened at Stony Point.
