American Spirit • March/April 2007 43

The Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park honors the forgotten victims of the

AmericanRevolution—the more than 11,500 Americans held captive onBritish prison ships who died of disease, starvation, violence and neglect.

BY SHARON McDONNELL

PHOTO BY CLINTON IRVING JONES.IMAGES PROVIDED BY ABBY WEISSMAN AND THE FORT GREENE PARK CONSERVANCY

Revolutionary Martyrs

American Spirit • March/April 2007 45Daughters of the American Revolution44

Standing almost 150 feet tall at the summit of Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn,N.Y., and flanked by a granite staircase100 feet wide, the Prison Ship Martyrs’Monument overlooks Wallabout Bay, thesite where more than 11,500 Americanprisoners of war were held captive inunspeakable conditions and died on 16British prison ships between 1776 and1783. According to government esti-mates, more than twice as manyAmericans died on the prison ships thanin all the battles of the RevolutionaryWar. The story of the “prison ship mar-tyrs,” as they are called, represent one ofthe most tragic chapters in our nation’searly history—yet one of its least known.

‘Turn Out Your Dead!’In 1776, Fort Greene Park was the site

of Fort Putnam, one of the most impor-

tant defenses built on high land inBrooklyn to protect New York from theBritish. It was one of several defensessupervised by Colonel Rufus Putnam.

“If New York was the key to the con-tinent, then Long Island was the key toNew York, and the key to the defense ofLong Island was Brooklyn Heights,” saysDavid McCullough in his book 1776(Simon & Schuster, 2005). Despitefierce battles waged during the Battle of

Brooklyn (also called the Battle of LongIsland) under the leadership of MajorGeneral Nathanael Greene on August27, 1776, the greatly outnumberedContinental Army lost. Shortly there-after, the British took control of NewYork City and Long Island and occupiedthem until the war ended.

The British needed space to imprisoncaptured seamen and soldiers, as well ascivilians suspected of Revolutionarysympathies, but the churches, the oldCity Hall and Columbia College (thennamed King’s College) weren’t enough.A fire had destroyed many New Yorkbuildings earlier in the year, so the Britishturned to ships to detain their prisoners.Most prison ships were anchored inWallabout Bay on the shore of the futureBrooklyn Navy Yard, directly across theEast River from Manhattan’s Lower EastSide. The ships held American prisonersfrom all over—including seamen impris-oned in Charleston, S.C., after the Britishoccupation in 1780, St. Augustine, Fla.,and Halifax, Nova Scotia. They were alleventually transferred to prison ships inNew York.

Known to their once-inhabitants asfloating horrors, infamous for cattle-likeconditions, merciless treatment byBritish guards and rampant disease,death was a common occurrence on theprison ships.

“Turn out your dead!” British guardsyelled each morning, since the deaths

were so frequent. Bodies were buried inshallow graves along the shore.

Robert Sheffield of Stonington,Conn., one of 350 men jammed in asmall compartment below deck aboard aprison ship, escaped in 1778, telling theConnecticut Gazette:

“Their sickly countenances and ghastlylooks were truly horrible. Some swearingand blaspheming; some crying, praying,and wringing their hands, and stalkingabout like ghosts; others delirious, raving,and storming; some groaning anddying—all panting for breath; some deadand corrupting—air so foul at times that a

lamp could not be kept burning, by reason of which the boys were not missedtill they had been dead 10 days.”

Of the 16 prison ships, the Jersey, whichwas nicknamed “Hell” by its inhabitants,was the most notorious. A prisoner on theJersey, who said the deaths were about 10per day, recalled, “At the time I was onboard, there were about 1,100 prisoners,no berths to lie in, or benches to sit on;many were without clothes. Dysentery,fever, pleurisy, and despair prevailed. Thescantiness and bad quality of provisions,the brutality of the guards, and the sickpining for comforts they could not obtain,

“Turn out your dead!” British guards yelled eachmorning, since the deaths

were so frequent. Bodies wereburied in shallow graves

along the shore.

A 19th-century color engraving illustrates the interior of the HMS Jersey, a prison ship anchored off Brooklyn during the British occupation of New York.

The Jersey was nicknamed “Hell” by its inhabitants.

THE

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General Nathanael Greene

Despite fierce battles waged during the Battle of Brooklyn (also called the Battle of Long Island), the greatly outnumbered Continental Army lost. The British occupied New York City and Long Island until the war ended.

S

American Spirit • March/April 2007 47Daughters of the American Revolution46

altogether furnished the cruelest scene ofhorror ever beheld.”

Another Jersey prisoner, CaptainThomas Dring, a 25-year-old fromNewport, R.I., survived—though sur-rounded by men suffering from small-pox—by inoculating himself with a pin.“On looking about me, I soon found aman in the proper stage of the disease,and desired him to favor me with some ofthe matter for the purpose ... The onlyinstrument which I could procure, forthe purpose of inoculation, was a com-mon pin ...

The next morning I found that thewound had begun to fester; a sure symp-tom that the application had taken effect.”

A poem penned by J.M. Scott refer-ences both the Jersey and the Scorpion:

Let the dark Scorpion’s bulk narrateThe dismal tale of English hateHer horrid scenes let Jersey tellAnd mock the shadows where demons dwell.There shrieks of pain, and the dying groan,Unheeded fall on ears of stone.

General George Washington com-plained about the prison ships in aJanuary 13, 1777, letter to British

commander General William Howe.“You may call us rebels, and say that wedeserve no better treatment. But, remem-ber, my Lord, that supposing us rebels, westill have feelings as keen and sensible asLoyalists, and will, if forced to it, mostassuredly retaliate upon those uponwhom we look as the unjust invaders ofour rights, liberties and properties.”

Prisoners could be released if theyrenounced the Revolutionary cause andpledged loyalty to King George III. Somebribed their way to freedom; others wereexchanged for British prisoners. It’sunknown how many escaped the shipsthis way. After the war ended in 1783, theremaining prisoners were freed, and theprison ships abandoned.

The Memorial Gains Allies Long after the war was over, bones and

skulls from ship prisoners kept washingup on the shores of Brooklyn. Some werecollected and stored in a vault funded bythe Tammany Society near the Navy Yardin 1806.

Support grew to honor the ship prisoners with a permanent and moremeaningful monument, but it still took acentury. Poet Walt Whitman, editor ofThe Brooklyn Daily Eagle—the biggest dailynewspaper in Brooklyn, which was thenan independent city—wrote almost dailyin 1846 about how Brooklyn needed apublic park as a “lung” where its densepopulation could relax and breathe freshair. Inspired by the Society of OldBrooklynites, he also rallied support in hispages to build a monument to the prisonship martyrs.

The grandson of a militiaman in theRevolutionary War, Whitman heardmany stories about the war throughouthis childhood. Patriotic heroes permeatehis poems: George Washington weeps forhis dead and his defeat at the Battle ofBrooklyn in the Leaves of Grass poem, “TheSleepers,” and the prison ship martyrsappear in “Song of Myself”:

What sobers the Brooklyn boy as he looksdown the shores of the Wallabout and remembersthe prison ships.

Whitman and other supporters of thepublic park soon got their wish. The Cityof Brooklyn commissioned FrederickLaw Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, freshfrom their success designing Manhattan’sCentral Park, to design several parks in1864, one of which was the 30-acreWashington Park, now known as FortGreene Park. The remains of the prisonship martyrs were temporarily laid to restin nearby Prospect Park, but were trans-ferred to a brick crypt in Fort GreenePark in 1873.

In 1900, workers digging a cellarfor the Brooklyn Navy Yard found atleast a dozen skeletons of ship prison-ers, a story that made front-page newsin The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The storynoted the bones would be placed “withthose of other Revolutionary martyrs”in the crypt.

Bending to the campaign from theSociety of Old Brooklynites and theDAR—whose Fort Greene Chapterwas formed in 1896 in Brooklyn toerect a “suitable memorial to the mem-ory of martyrs, civilian, military and

naval, who perished in the noisomeprison ships anchored in the WallaboutBay during the Revolutionary War”—aswell as city, state and federal officials,Congress finally approved funds tobuild the Prison Ships Martyrs’Memorial, and the architectural firmMcKim, Mead and White won a 1905competition to design it.

Dedicated in 1908 in a ceremonyattended by newly elected PresidentWilliam Howard Taft, the monumentwas the last public work designed byStanford White. Featuring an eight-tonbronze urn and four 300-pound bronzeeagles, the monument was the world’stallest freestanding Doric column. Aplaza, flanked at each corner by thecrowning granite shafts and guarded bytwo cannons, covered the tomb beneathit. Sculptor Alexander Weinman, best known for his statue of “CivicFame” that tops the Municipal Buildingin Manhattan, designed the monu-ment’s two eagles.

A Neglected MonumentIn the century since it was built, the

Prison Ship Martyrs’ Memorial hasoften been as neglected as the history it commemorates. In the 1930s, the mon-ument fell into disrepair due to lack offunding and community interest.However, the monument may finallywin the attention it so sorely deserves: arestoration funded by the New YorkCity Parks and Recreation Departmentis under way and expected to be com-pleted in fall 2007, and a rededication is anticipated in 2008.

“It’s the largest single crypt ofRevolutionary War veterans in theUnited States,” says Margaret Skinner,Regent of Fort Greene Chapter,Brooklyn, N.Y. “This should be a nationalshrine, like Valley Forge in Pennsylvaniaor the Andersonville Civil War PrisonCamp in Georgia.”

Renewing the Interest Members of the Daughters of the

American Revolution attending their1939 Continental Congress passed a res-olution approving the memorial and FortGreene Park as a national shrine. “TheA vintage postcard from the collection of the Fort Greene Park Conservancy shows Fort Greene Park and the old Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument.

Daughters of the American Revolution48

Battle of Brooklyn was our firstmajor battle after declaring ourindependence. Bunker Hill getslots of attention, and during theBicentennial Philadelphia gotmost of the attention, butBrooklyn gets neglected,” Skinnersays. “Someone said, ‘what theywrote in ink in Philadelphia theywrote in blood in Brooklyn.’”

However, it remains an uphillbattle getting the memorialdeclared a National Historic Site.“Nothing was done because WorldWar II started, and nothing since,”Skinner adds. “Someone has tofight for it. It needs a will to makeit a national shrine. Money is not the issue—the work on it hasbeen done.” Skinner wrote to the U.S. Department of theInterior to seek a national designation, but got a letter back that

noted that the prisoners didn’t dieat the site itself.

During the 1960s and 1970s, itseemed that nobody cared that thePrison Ship Martyrs’ Monument

was on the verge of extinction. New York was in the throes of afiscal crisis—the famous headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead”ran front-page in the New York Daily News on October 30,1975—and crime rates soared, especially in poorer neighbor-hoods like Fort Greene. Vandals often attacked the monumentand stole the bronze eagles, which have since been recoveredand put in storage for safety. Two now grace the ParksDepartment headquarters on Fifth Avenue. An elevator andstairs to the top were removed in 1948, and a plaque honoringthe prison martyrs—presented by the King of Spain, whoattended a Bicentennial celebration—was stolen.

As New York rebounded in the late 1990s and Fort Greeneand Clinton Hill, landmarked city Historic Districts filled with19th-century brownstones that surround Fort Greene Park,became desirable places to live, the Parks Department announceda $3.5 million renovation of the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Memorial in2004. Today, the monument and granite staircase are beingcleaned, the eagles and bronze urn are being replaced (two withreplicas), and lighting and landscaping are being improved.

In May 2006, the Fort Greene Park Visitor Center openednext to the monument, where exhibits explain the history ofthe prison ships and the Battle of Brooklyn and list the namesof the 8,000 known prison ship martyrs. The list of prisoners,copied from records in the British War Department in 1888 bythe Society of Old Brooklynites, can also be found on a Website maintained by U.S. Merchant Marine veterans(www.usmm.net/revdead.html). The site is on track to berededicated next year, thus beginning the latest chapter in theprison ship martyrs’ history.

To learn more about the Fort Green Park Conservancy, call(718) 222–1461 or visit www.fortgreenepark.org.

Sharon McDonnell profiled American astronomer Maria Mitchell forthe July/August 2006 issue of American Spirit.

“The Battle of Brooklyn was ourfirst major battleafter declaringindependence ...Someone said,‘What they wrote inink in Philadelphia,they wrote in bloodin Brooklyn.’”

A 1911 postcard from the collection of the

Fort Greene Park Conservancy features a close-up shot of

the old monument.