Assigned to hold all of eastern South Carolina with only a small force, Col. John Watson built Fort Watson to protect the vital transportation corridor between Charleston and Camden, the British inland headquarters. He chose a forty-foot-high, flat-topped pyramid, a religious and political center abandoned a few decades earlier by the Santee Indians, overlooking both the Santee River and the main Charleston-Camden road. With a wooden palisade atop the earthen pyramid and three rows of abatis on its slopes, the fort commanded the surrounding lowlands. In late February or early March 1781, Brig. Gen. Thomas Sumter tried unsuccessfully to take it. On April 16, Brig. Gen. Francis Marion, reinforced by Continental troops under Lt. Col. Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee of Virginia, laid siege to the fort, but lacking needed tools and unable to cut off the defenders’ water supply, the Whigs feared a prolonged standoff. Lt. Col. Hezekiah Maham then proposed building a wooden tower from which Marion’s riflemen could fire down onto the British and Loyalist defenders, and facing that fire, Lt. James McKay surrendered Fort Watson on April 23.