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Governors Island has over 200 years of history as a military outpost. It began as a colonial militia base in 1755 and defended the harbor entrance to New York City during The War of 1812. During the Civil War, Confederate prisoners were held here. In peacetime, it was a training ground and administrative base for first the US Army and then the Coast Guard.

I visited the island with a local community school with Mario as our tour guide. We boarded the ferry at the Battery Maritime Building in lower Manhattan and disembarked eight minutes later at Soissons Landing.

Soissons Landing was named after a town in France that was the site…