By Jessica Easthope
Would people still stop to read an email, or would children keep playing, if they knew they were sitting on a crypt? Remains of 11,500 people are buried below a nearly 150-foot monument in the center of Fort Greene Park. They died gruesome deaths aboard British prison ships anchored in Wallabout Bay during the Revolutionary War.
“The living conditions were grotesque, horror and horrific, which they were so bad that every day they would come around and between 5 and 10 bodies would have, you know, people would have died overnight and they’d have to drag them, and they either they either threw them into the, into the and just into the East River, or they buried them in very sandy soil along the coast,” said Father Anthony Andreassi, administrative vicar at the Oratory Church of St. Boniface and an American historian.
More Americans died on those ships than in all the battles of the war combined. Many could have walked free if they swore loyalty to the Crown. Father Andreassi says they refused.
“You could have gotten off those ships very easily if you just pledged loyalty to the Crown. You were off the ship. It was that easy,” he said.
The British held thousands of captives in squalor for the entire duration of the Revolution. They died of starvation, disease and overcrowding. The prisoners represented all 13 colonies.
“And there are more people who died in Brooklyn, if you will, than, because of the American Revolution and the rest of the war,” Fr. Andreassi said.
In 1808 remains were gathered and buried. But by the early 20th century there was a renewed effort to recognize these people. And today the towering monument in the first public park in Brooklyn serves as a reminder of their deaths — and that freedom has never been free.
“It’s very easy to be patriotic when we put a flag out in front of our house on the 4th of July, and then we sit in the backyard grilling some hot dogs with family and friends, it’s much harder when it comes at an immense cost,” Fr. Andreassi said.
We know only some of their names but most of the 11,500 have been lost to history.
“Martyr means a witness to witness to your faith. These people witness to their to the love of this country they were trying to build from scratch and they paid the highest price for that witness, which is death,” Fr. Andreassi said.
As the early Christians said, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. In Brooklyn, the blood of the prison ship martyrs helped plant the seed of a nation.