There were also accusations of laxness and fraud in the erecting and management of the public industrial plants. Very grievous taxes have been laid on the poor people, it was claimed, "for building work houses and stoare houses and other houses for the propogating & encouragem't of handicraft and manufactury, which were by our Burgesses to our great charge and burthen by their long and frequent sitting invented and proposed. Yet for want of due care the said houses were never finished or made useful, and the propagating & manufactury wholy in a short time neglected, and noe good ever effected ... save the particular profitt of the Undertakers, who (as is usually in such cases) were largely rewarded for thus defrauding us."[455]
Even more frequent and bitter complaints originated with the construction of forts upon the various rivers to protect the colony and the merchant ships from foreign foes. At the outbreak of the war of 1664 it was resolved to build a fortress at Jamestown. The ships' masters were not satisfied with the selection of this site, for obviously it afforded no protection to vessels trading upon the Potomac, York or Rappahannock, and very little to those upon the lower James. After one hundred pounds sterling had been expended at Jamestown, the structure partly completed and fourteen guns brought up, the merchants procured orders from the English government that the fort be transferred to Old Point. The Governor and Council were most reluctant to make this change, but the commands were so positive they dared not disobey. So the guns were conveyed back down the river and the work begun again. But many serious difficulties were encountered. "We have been at 70,000lb tobacco charge," wrote Thomas Ludwell in 1667, "and have lost several men in the worke and many of the materials by storms breaking our rafts whereon we float the timber to that place.... After all (we) were forced to quit the work as of impossible manage, for great were the difficulties, and so insupportable would the charge have been."[456] A few months after, when the Dutch captured the tobacco fleet in the mouth of the James, this fort seems to have been deserted. It was utterly destroyed by the great hurricane of the following August.