The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument

November 15 was gray and rainy, but the rain held off long enough for the rededication of the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park. The original eagles have been restored to the corners of the square that surrounds Stanford White’s Doric column, and at the climax of the ceremony an electric light was turned on to illuminate the urn at the top of the column — a somewhat underwhelming substitute for the original eternal flame.

The monument, dedicated one hundred years before, was built to honor more than 11,500 American rebels who died on British prison ships in Wallabout Bay, where the Brooklyn Navy Yard was later built. More soldiers and sailors died of starvation, dysentery, and ill treatment on these ships than were killed in all the battles of the Revolution combined.

As historian Edwin Burroughs described it at the ceremony, a dozen or more prisoners might die each day on a ship like the infamous Jersey. Their bodies would be unceremoniously carried to a wharf, loaded onto wheelbarrows, and dumped in shallow water. For years the bones washed up on the shore, and as Burroughs quoted one source, the skulls were “as thick as pumpkins in an autumn cornfield.”