The Dead of Wallabout Bay

More Americans died on the prison ships in New York's Wallabout Bay than in all the battles of the Revolutionary War combined. This is not a metaphor or an exaggeration. It is a documented fact that remains startling no matter how many times it is stated.

The HMS Jersey was the worst of them — a rotting, decommissioned warship anchored in the shallow waters off Brooklyn. Prisoners were packed below decks in darkness, breathing fetid air, given rations that were often rotten or insufficient. Dysentery, smallpox, and typhus killed with steady efficiency. Each morning, the guards called down the hatch: "Rebels, turn out your dead."

An estimated 11,500 Americans died on the prison ships between 1776 and 1783. They were sailors, soldiers, militiamen, and civilians caught up in the chaos of occupation. Many were buried in shallow graves along the Brooklyn shore, their remains washing out with the tides for decades afterward.

William Cunningham, the British provost marshal who oversaw the prisons, was by multiple accounts a deliberately cruel administrator. He reportedly sold rations meant for prisoners and denied medical care. After the war, just before his execution for an unrelated crime in London, Cunningham allegedly confessed to having starved to death more than 2,000 prisoners.

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, was dedicated in 1908 to honor these dead. It is a 149-foot granite column, the tallest in the world at the time of its construction, and it stands over a crypt containing remains recovered from the Wallabout shore. Most visitors to Fort Greene Park do not know what it commemorates. The prison ship dead remain among the most forgotten casualties of the Revolution.