per year stopped there leaving the governor to try to police the numerous visitors and to limit the consumption of arrack, made from potatoes. (The mutinies may have been fueled by alcohol.) Because Jamestown was "too raucous with its taverns and brothels", St Paul’s Cathedral was built outside the town. Attempts by governor John Skottowe (1764–1782) to regularise the sale of arrack and punch led to some hostility and desertions by a number of troops who stole boats and were probably mostly lost at sea — however, at least one group of seven soldiers and a slave succeeded in escaping to Brazil in 1770. It was from about this date that the island began, for the first time, to enjoy a prolonged period of prosperity. The first Parish Church in Jamestown had been showing signs of decay for many years, and finally a new building was erected in 1774. St James' is now the oldest Anglican church south of the Equator. Captain James Cook visited the island in 1775 on the final leg of his second circumnavigation of the world. An order by governor Daniel Corneille (1782–1787) banning garrison troops and sailors from punch-taverns, only allowing them to drink at army canteens, led to a mutiny over Christmas 1787 when some 200 troops skirmished with loyal troops over a three-day period. Courts martial condemned 99 mutineers to death. These mutineers were then decimated; lots were drawn, with one in every ten being shot and executed. Saul Solomon is believed to have arrived at the island about 1790, where he eventually formed the Solomon's company, initially based at an emporium. Today the Rose and Crown shop occupies the building. Captain Bligh arrived at St Helena in 1792 during his second attempt to ship a cargo of breadfruit trees to Jamaica. That same year saw the importation of slaves made illegal. In 1795 governor Robert Brooke (1787–1801) was alerted that the French had overrun the Netherlands, forcing the Dutch to become their allies. Some 411 troops were sent from the garrison to support General Sir James Craig in his successful capture of the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope. Fortifications were improved and a new system of visual signalling introduced. Brooke had a battery built at Ladder Hill, and a tower to protect its rearward approaches, known as High Knoll Fort. As a result of a policy of recruiting time-expired