- August 1776Battle of Long Island, the first major battle of the war following independence
- up to 11,500American prisoners died aboard the British prison ships between 1776 and 1783
- 149-footGranite Doric column of the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument, dedicated in 1908
As the agricultural wealth of Kings County matured, the strategic geographic value of Brooklyn drew the devastating realities of the American Revolutionary War to its shores. Following the Declaration of Independence, the British military directed its formidable naval and ground forces toward securing New York Harbor. The resulting Battle of Long Island (also known as the Battle of Brooklyn) in August 1776 was the first major battle of the war following independence, and the largest in terms of troop deployment.44
The topography of the Harbor Hill Moraine dictated the flow of the battle. American forces under General George Washington attempted to defend the elevated ridge line to prevent the British from seizing Brooklyn Heights. A critical chokepoint was "Battle Pass" (also known as Flatbush Pass), a natural break in the moraine located in what is now Prospect Park. Despite fierce resistance, British and Hessian forces executed a devastating flanking maneuver, overwhelming the American positions. This forced a frantic, miraculous nighttime retreat of the Continental Army across the East River to Manhattan under the cover of fog, leaving Brooklyn under strict, punitive British military occupation for the remainder of the war.45,44
However, the most horrific legacy of the Revolutionary War in Brooklyn did not occur on the battlefield, but offshore, in the stagnant, muddy waters of Wallabout Bay. Following the capture of New York, the British forces faced a severe shortage of prison facilities. After filling the Sugar House and other mainland structures, they resorted to interning captured American soldiers, sailors, and civilians in derelict, rotting warships anchored in the bay.44
The most notorious of these floating dungeons was the HMS Jersey. Originally serving as a hospital ship in 1771, it was repurposed as a prison ship in 1780. Conditions aboard the Jersey—which earned the moniker "Hell"—and its sister ships were apocalyptic. Built to hold 400 men, the British routinely crammed between 1,100 and 2,000 captives into the suffocating, unventilated holds. Starvation, malnutrition, smallpox, and yellow fever ravaged the prisoners. Eyewitness accounts detailed the daily removal of six to eleven corpses, which were unceremoniously thrown overboard or buried in shallow, sandy graves along the Brooklyn shoreline.46,44
It is estimated that up to 11,500 American prisoners died aboard the British prison ships in Wallabout Bay between 1776 and 1783—a catastrophic death toll that vastly exceeded the total number of American combat deaths in all Revolutionary War battles combined. For decades after the war, the bones of the martyrs continually washed up on the shores of Brooklyn, serving as a gruesome reminder of the human cost of independence.44
Initial efforts to memorialize the dead were marred by corruption; in 1808, the Tammany Society laid the cornerstone for a vault and secured $1,000 from the state for a monument, only to pocket the funds. A century later, a proper tribute was realized. In 1908, the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument was dedicated in Fort Greene Park. Designed by the prestigious architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, the monument features a 149-foot granite Doric column—the tallest in the world at the time—topped by a massive, eight-ton bronze funeral urn sculpted by Adolph Alexander Weinman. The column stands above a subterranean crypt containing twenty slate coffins filled with the commingled bone fragments of thousands of the victims. Despite periods of neglect and a 1937 restoration by Park Commissioner Robert Moses, the monument stands today, augmented by a solar-powered eternal beacon installed in 1997, consecrating one of America's largest Revolutionary War burial sites.48,47
