Visiting the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Brooklyn

I recently had the opportunity to visit the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, New York. I wasn't prepared for how beautiful it is. And dare I say haunting? But why is the monument there, and what does it honor? The patriots under General George Washington made a valiant attempt to take and hold New York City in the spring of 1776, however the city became the property of the British that summer. The British would continue to hold and occupy New York until the end of the American revolution in 1783. Both sides knew the city's critical military value in winning the war. Its location was essential for trade, commerce, and strategic control. It was also half way between the north and south colonies and its waterways provided necessary access to transport and shelter in the age of sail. On August 27, 1776, the patriots lost the Battle of Long Island and the British captured thousands of American prisoners. Prisons, churches, and sugar houses in New York City designated for prisoners (under the loyalists) were already overcrowded and bursting at the seams. The prison ships, decommissioned Royal Navy vessels held in Wallabout Bay on the East River, were used to confine American prisoners. This area is now the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Conditions on the prison ships were notoriously horrendous. A staggering number of men lost their lives in the bowels of these British prison ships from (almost deliberate) starvation and disease. Fort Greene Park lists the total deaths at more than 11,500 souls. Many were buried furtively in graves along the shore. In 1808, many of these human remains were buried in a tomb on Jackson Street in Brooklyn. According to Fort Greene Park, in 1867 landscape architects were hired to a design a park and a crypt for the prison ship fatalities. The remains of the prisoners were moved to a vault at the bottom of the monument in 1873. In 1905 the architectural firm McKim, Mead and White was hired to design a new entrance and wide granite staircase. President Taft attended in the dedication in 1908. Restoration of the site took place in 2008. It's a little known fact that more men lost their lives in the prison ships than in all battles during the American Revolution. When we think of the revolution we tend to think of Boston, areas around Philadelphia, Princeton and Trenton in New Jersey, and the 1781 showdown in Yorktown, Virginia. Yet it was the Battle of Brooklyn that was the largest battle in the war. Standing at the base of the 149-foot high central column of the monument is humbling, even more so when you realize that underneath the column is the crypt holding 22 boxes of human remains, a small portion of those who lost their lives in such a miserable, dehumanizing way. The site is solemnly flanked by four bronze eagles mounted to corner posts. Those eagles continue to quietly watch over the doors to the crypt as they have through the decades. I found the Prison Ships Martyrs Monument thought-provoking, timeless, and elegant. It's hard to reconcile the suffering the monument honors with the serene setting of the surrounding park filled with children at play and summer picnics. The monument is topped with a bronze urn that seems to burn with an imaginary flame. Or maybe that's just me who fancied I could see it. I can only imagine who wanders the park after dark, and from what century. My upcoming novel brings this tumultuous and frightening period in American history to life. New York City vibrated with loyalists, patriots, and spies...many who switched sides. Some more than once.