# The Deadliest Prison Ship in History

An episode of [Scary Interesting Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1705969819), 19 Oct 2026, 17 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75837093/the_deadliest_prison_ship_in_history.mp3

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## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: In 1781, a young sailor stood at the top of
[0:03] Speaker 1: some steps aboard an old British warship. As he was
[0:07] Speaker 1: forced down the steps to the darkness below, the smell
[0:10] Speaker 1: and heat were unbearable. When night came, he eventually lay
[0:13] Speaker 1: down beside a stairway below deck where sick men stumbled
[0:16] Speaker 1: over him in the darkness. Many of these men were
[0:19] Speaker 1: suffering from dysentery and lost control of their bowels as
[0:23] Speaker 1: they stepped over him. All of this was merely his
[0:26] Speaker 1: introduction to the deadliest prison ship in American history. As always,
[0:31] Speaker 1: viewer discretion is strongly advised. When the American Revolution began,
[0:44] Speaker 1: Christopher Hawkins was still just a boy. He was born
[0:47] Speaker 1: in 1764 and grew up in North Providence, Rhode Island,
[0:50] Speaker 1: where he spent much of his childhood working on his
[0:52] Speaker 1: family's farm. When he was about 12 years old, he
[0:55] Speaker 1: began learning the Tanner's trade as an apprentice. And in
[0:58] Speaker 1: another version of his life, maybe that would have been
[1:00] Speaker 1: the path he stayed on, but it wasn't the one
[1:02] Speaker 1: he ultimately chose. Like a lot of young men and
[1:05] Speaker 1: boys during the revolution, he was pulled into the conflict
[1:08] Speaker 1: by feelings of patriotism and promises of adventure. So in 1777,
[1:12] Speaker 1: when he was still only a teenager, Christopher ran away
[1:15] Speaker 1: from his apprenticeship and signed on to become a privateer
[1:18] Speaker 1: for the colonies. Now, privateering was one of the strangest
[1:21] Speaker 1: but most important parts of the American war effort at
[1:23] Speaker 1: the time. A privateer attacked British Royal Navy ships with
[1:27] Speaker 1: government permission, During wartime, governments issued documents called Letters of Mark.
[1:32] Speaker 1: This authorized privately owned ships to arm themselves, hunt for
[1:35] Speaker 1: enemy vessels, capture them, and bring them in as prizes.
[1:39] Speaker 1: If a prize court approved the capture, the ship and
[1:41] Speaker 1: cargo could be sold and the money would be divided
[1:43] Speaker 1: up among the owners and the crew, which again seems
[1:45] Speaker 1: very strange as a concept today, but for the Americans,
[1:48] Speaker 1: privateering made a lot of sense. The United States didn't
[1:52] Speaker 1: have a navy capable of standing toe to toe with
[1:54] Speaker 1: the British Royal Navy, which was the most powerful naval
[1:56] Speaker 1: force in the world. American ports though were full of sailors, merchants,
[2:01] Speaker 1: ship owners and vessels that could be weaponized. And over
[2:04] Speaker 1: the course of the war, tens of thousands of American
[2:06] Speaker 1: seamen served aboard merchant ships as privateers. In fact, the
[2:10] Speaker 1: privateer fleet eventually dwarfed that of the official continental Navy.
[2:14] Speaker 1: Despite the numbers though, it wasn't the safest endeavor. A
[2:17] Speaker 1: failed mission could end with the American ship captured and
[2:20] Speaker 1: the privateers either being killed or taken as prisoners. The
[2:23] Speaker 1: Royal Navy captured or destroyed many privateer vessels and when
[2:26] Speaker 1: the British took their crews, the prisoners didn't always end
[2:29] Speaker 1: up in ordinary jails. Some were pressured to join the
[2:32] Speaker 1: Royal Navy, while others were sent in the prison system
[2:34] Speaker 1: around British-occupied New York, where captivity could be a death sentence. Christopher, though,
[2:39] Speaker 1: probably didn't understand the full danger of that yet, as
[2:41] Speaker 1: he began his first privateering voyage aboard a schooner called
[2:44] Speaker 1: the Eagle. He served as a cabin boy, which meant
[2:47] Speaker 1: he lived near the bottom of the ship's hierarchy. It
[2:50] Speaker 1: wasn't glamorous work, as Christopher would be asked to do
[2:52] Speaker 1: the jobs no one else in the crew wanted to,
[2:54] Speaker 1: but it taught him valuable lessons about life at sea,
[2:57] Speaker 1: The Eagle would go on to cross the Atlantic, but
[2:59] Speaker 1: came back without capturing a prize, and for a privateer,
[3:02] Speaker 1: that meant the voyage hadn't produced the reward everyone hoped for.
[3:05] Speaker 1: The greater problem, however, came later when the Eagle encountered
[3:08] Speaker 1: a British sloop of war. Known as the Sphinx, the
[3:12] Speaker 1: Royal Navy ship was larger and stronger, and the Eagle
[3:14] Speaker 1: was in no position to win that fight. So the
[3:17] Speaker 1: British ship quickly captured the Eagle, and Christopher was taken
[3:19] Speaker 1: prisoner along with the rest of the officers and crew.
[3:22] Speaker 1: Early on, he was held for a time on an
[3:24] Speaker 1: old transport ship, but the British eventually removed him and
[3:26] Speaker 1: put him to work serving their officers. For about a
[3:29] Speaker 1: year afterward, Christopher served them well enough to earn their trust,
[3:32] Speaker 1: and when he did, he was sent to shore to
[3:34] Speaker 1: deliver a message. This proved to be a short-sighted mistake
[3:37] Speaker 1: on the part of the British, because instead of doing
[3:39] Speaker 1: as he was instructed, Christopher met another boy from another
[3:42] Speaker 1: vessel and the two of them ran away. Christopher then
[3:44] Speaker 1: made it back home to Providence, having already done more
[3:47] Speaker 1: before adulthood than many did in their entire lifetimes. And
[3:51] Speaker 1: for some people, that would have been enough, but not
[3:52] Speaker 1: for Christopher. In 1781, he left Providence to go profiteering again.
[3:57] Speaker 1: This time, he signed on to a 16-gun brig that
[4:00] Speaker 1: could be a serious threat to British merchant vessels, but
[4:02] Speaker 1: it was still vulnerable if it crossed paths with the
[4:04] Speaker 1: Royal Navy's warships. And as it turned out, that's exactly
[4:07] Speaker 1: what happened. After only five days at sea, Christopher's ship
[4:11] Speaker 1: encountered two British frigates, and he soon found himself once
[4:14] Speaker 1: again in British hands. This time, though, the British sent
[4:17] Speaker 1: him to a far worse fate than during his first
[4:19] Speaker 1: stint as a prisoner of war He was first forced
[4:22] Speaker 1: onto a transport ship that was so overcrowded that the
[4:24] Speaker 1: men aboard couldn't even sit down for several days. Unfortunately,
[4:28] Speaker 1: this was a preview of what waited for him, although
[4:30] Speaker 1: Christopher could not have known yet just how bad it
[4:32] Speaker 1: was about to become. As the transport ship sailed the
[4:35] Speaker 1: Atlantic back toward the colonies, he was being carried into
[4:38] Speaker 1: one of the darkest corners of the American Revolution. Anchored
[4:41] Speaker 1: in Wallabout Bay near New York was a ship known
[4:44] Speaker 1: as the HMS Jersey. The men who knew it best
[4:47] Speaker 1: had another name for it, though. They called it Hell
[4:50] Speaker 1: on Earth. The bay where the HMS Jersey was located
[4:53] Speaker 1: sat along the Brooklyn side of the New York Harbor,
[4:56] Speaker 1: near the area that would later become the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
[4:59] Speaker 1: During the war, the British used the waters there as
[5:01] Speaker 1: a holding ground for old ships that had been stripped
[5:03] Speaker 1: of their earlier purpose and turned into floating prisons. And
[5:06] Speaker 1: as a result of this, they were not designed to
[5:08] Speaker 1: preserve the lives of the men inside them and were
[5:10] Speaker 1: instead a cheap and convenient answer to a growing problem.
[5:13] Speaker 1: The British by then had thousands of prisoners and not
[5:16] Speaker 1: enough room or willingness to keep them properly on land.
[5:19] Speaker 1: When Christopher finally reached the HMS Jersey, he was stepping
[5:22] Speaker 1: into a place that already had a reputation. It had
[5:24] Speaker 1: once been a warship, but by then it was old
[5:26] Speaker 1: and worn down. After being converted for imprisonment, it quickly
[5:30] Speaker 1: became a hot, stinking wreck where thousands of Americans had
[5:33] Speaker 1: passed through, with many never coming out alive. There were
[5:36] Speaker 1: about 800 prisoners aboard the Jersey when Christopher arrived, but
[5:39] Speaker 1: the ship had only been designed to hold about 400.
[5:42] Speaker 1: The prisoners weren't living in organized quarters with enough space
[5:45] Speaker 1: to sleep, sit, eat, breathe, and keep themselves clean. They
[5:49] Speaker 1: were crammed into what amounted to a floating wooden box
[5:51] Speaker 1: where sickness moved easily from body to body, and the
[5:54] Speaker 1: air below deck could feel almost impossible to inhale. Christopher
[5:57] Speaker 1: learned how bad it could get almost immediately. On his
[6:00] Speaker 1: very first night aboard the Jersey, he couldn't find anything
[6:02] Speaker 1: resembling a proper place to sleep, so he ended up
[6:05] Speaker 1: lying just a few feet away from the gangway, which
[6:07] Speaker 1: is the naval term for the stairs leading on or
[6:09] Speaker 1: off the ship. This was also close enough that other
[6:12] Speaker 1: men had to pass over him as they moved between decks.
[6:15] Speaker 1: Some of these men were sick with dysentery, a horrible
[6:18] Speaker 1: disease known then as the bloody flux. And many of
[6:21] Speaker 1: the men who were forced to climb over Christopher to
[6:23] Speaker 1: reach the decks were weakened by the disease, the hallmark
[6:25] Speaker 1: of which is an inability to control the bowels. As
[6:29] Speaker 1: they stumbled past him in the dark, Christopher was sometimes
[6:31] Speaker 1: sprayed as he tried to sleep. This was his introduction
[6:35] Speaker 1: to the deadliest prison ship in history. To understand how
[6:39] Speaker 1: Christopher and many like him ended up aboard the Jersey,
[6:41] Speaker 1: it helps to know what New York had become by
[6:43] Speaker 1: that point in the war. The American Revolution is often
[6:46] Speaker 1: remembered through places like Lexington, Concord, Saratoga, Valley Forge, and Yorktown.
[6:51] Speaker 1: But for most of the war, New York City was
[6:53] Speaker 1: one of the most important sites. Whoever controlled New York
[6:56] Speaker 1: controlled one of the best harbors in North America. This
[6:58] Speaker 1: city gave the British a base for troops, ships, supplies, intelligence,
[7:02] Speaker 1: and prison operations. And after 1776, it was firmly in
[7:06] Speaker 1: English hands. That year, the war was still young. The
[7:09] Speaker 1: Declaration of Independence had only just been adopted. and the
[7:12] Speaker 1: Americans were still trying to prove that their rebellion could
[7:14] Speaker 1: survive more than a few months. Britain responded by sending
[7:18] Speaker 1: an enormous force to New York under General William Howe.
[7:21] Speaker 1: He arrived with tens of thousands of troops and a
[7:23] Speaker 1: powerful fleet, and while he had some authority to negotiate peace,
[7:26] Speaker 1: the military objective was clear enough. If Britain could destroy
[7:30] Speaker 1: George Washington's army and seize New York, the rebellion might
[7:33] Speaker 1: collapse before it had a chance to take root. The
[7:35] Speaker 1: campaign began in August of 1776, and shortly after, Washington's
[7:40] Speaker 1: army was defeated on Long Island and forced to retreat,
[7:42] Speaker 1: narrowly escaping destruction. Within weeks, New York had fallen into
[7:46] Speaker 1: British hands, and they would hold the city for the
[7:48] Speaker 1: rest of the war. Britain's occupation changed the city's role completely.
[7:53] Speaker 1: New York became the British military capital in America, and
[7:56] Speaker 1: with that came a steady flow of prisoners. Some were
[7:59] Speaker 1: continental soldiers taken in battle, while others were sailors and
[8:02] Speaker 1: privateers captured at sea. There were even simple civilians arrested
[8:05] Speaker 1: on land, including people whose lone infraction was refusing to
[8:08] Speaker 1: swear loyalty to the British crown. As the war continued,
[8:12] Speaker 1: the number of captives grew into a serious problem. The
[8:15] Speaker 1: British needed somewhere to put them, and the jails on
[8:16] Speaker 1: land could only hold so many people. And there was
[8:19] Speaker 1: also another issue. Britain didn't want to spend unnecessary resources
[8:22] Speaker 1: caring for enemy prisoners. Sending large numbers of captives across
[8:26] Speaker 1: the Atlantic would have taken ships, guards, provisions, and time.
[8:30] Speaker 1: Keeping them in proper quarters in occupied New York would
[8:32] Speaker 1: have also required space and time, so prison ships offered
[8:35] Speaker 1: a grimly convenient alternative. The British could take damaged, decommissioned,
[8:40] Speaker 1: or otherwise unwanted vessels, anchor them offshore, and use them
[8:43] Speaker 1: as floating jails. During the British occupation, Wallabout Bay became
[8:47] Speaker 1: one of the most notorious prison areas of the Revolution.
[8:50] Speaker 1: The ships anchored there were close enough to British-controlled New
[8:53] Speaker 1: York to be guarded and supplied, but isolated enough to
[8:55] Speaker 1: make escape difficult. A prisoner who somehow got out still
[8:59] Speaker 1: had to survive the cold water, the guards, the harbor,
[9:01] Speaker 1: and the occupied territory beyond it. The British hadn't exactly
[9:04] Speaker 1: intended misery board ships, but the prison ships in Walba
[9:07] Speaker 1: Bay became infamous because of the scale of the suffering anyway. Again,
[9:11] Speaker 1: these vessels were never meant to hold large numbers of prisoners,
[9:14] Speaker 1: and once they filled up, conditions deteriorated quickly. Men were
[9:17] Speaker 1: packed into spaces without enough air, light, food, water, or sanitation.
[9:23] Speaker 1: The HMS Jersey was not the only prison ship in
[9:25] Speaker 1: the bay. but it became the most infamous in the
[9:28] Speaker 1: British prison ship system. Packed far beyond what it had
[9:32] Speaker 1: been meant to hold, the jersey earned every bit of
[9:34] Speaker 1: its reputation and nickname among American prisoners as Hell. Below deck,
[9:38] Speaker 1: the prisoners existed in darkness and closeness. There was little
[9:42] Speaker 1: natural light or fresh air, some men crowded near openings
[9:45] Speaker 1: just to get away from the smell of sweat, waste,
[9:47] Speaker 1: damp wood, sickness, and decay. On hot days, the temperature
[9:51] Speaker 1: below deck could become unbearable, especially when the sun beat
[9:54] Speaker 1: down on the upper decks. and the crowding made everything worse.
[9:57] Speaker 1: As mentioned, the jersey had been built for a crew
[9:59] Speaker 1: of a few hundred sailors, but at times, more than
[10:01] Speaker 1: a thousand prisoners were kept aboard it. A man couldn't
[10:05] Speaker 1: simply step away from the sick, dying, angry, delirious, or
[10:08] Speaker 1: filthy among him because there was simply nowhere to go. Sleep,
[10:11] Speaker 1: when it came at all, was fragile. A prisoner might
[10:14] Speaker 1: lie down exhausted and be woken up by another man
[10:16] Speaker 1: stepping over him. He might hear coughing, groaning, praying, cursing,
[10:20] Speaker 1: or begging in the dark. He might wake up wet
[10:23] Speaker 1: with sweat or covered by someone too sick to control
[10:25] Speaker 1: his own bowels. He might even open his eyes and
[10:28] Speaker 1: find that the man beside him had died during the night,
[10:31] Speaker 1: and disease spread exactly the way you would expect in
[10:33] Speaker 1: a place like it. Dysentery was one of the most
[10:35] Speaker 1: destructive illnesses aboard the prison ships, and the men suffering
[10:38] Speaker 1: from it were stricken by diarrhea, dehydration, pain, and loss
[10:41] Speaker 1: of bodily control. This would have been miserable and dangerous
[10:45] Speaker 1: in the best of conditions, but aboard the Jersey, it
[10:47] Speaker 1: was a disaster for everyone. Sick men eliminated their waste
[10:50] Speaker 1: on the decks, in the sleeping spaces, and sometimes on
[10:53] Speaker 1: the people around them. This added to the stench and
[10:55] Speaker 1: helped turn the ship into a breeding ground for more illness.
[10:58] Speaker 1: And so other diseases swept through as well. Smallpox, typhoid,
[11:02] Speaker 1: yellow fever, and other infections found easy victims among men
[11:05] Speaker 1: who were already malnourished. And once sickness took hold, there
[11:08] Speaker 1: was little chance of real care. A prisoner who got
[11:11] Speaker 1: sick often had to endure the sickness where he lay,
[11:13] Speaker 1: surrounded by others who were suffering themselves. And food didn't
[11:16] Speaker 1: provide much in the way of nourishment. The rations were meager,
[11:19] Speaker 1: to say the least, and the quality of the food
[11:21] Speaker 1: was often poor. Hunger became part of daily life and
[11:24] Speaker 1: it changed the men aboard the Jersey. Some prisoners became
[11:27] Speaker 1: so hungry that they ate the vermin that could be
[11:29] Speaker 1: found in abundance aboard the ship. Others tried to steal food,
[11:32] Speaker 1: but theft could bring violence from the guards. And speaking
[11:35] Speaker 1: of the guards, they added another layer of fear to
[11:37] Speaker 1: the ship. that prisoners lived under men who could insult them,
[11:40] Speaker 1: strike them, reduce their rations for no reason at all,
[11:42] Speaker 1: or punish them just for trying to survive. British defeats
[11:46] Speaker 1: elsewhere in the war could even make conditions aboard the
[11:48] Speaker 1: ship worse. When the war went badly for the British,
[11:51] Speaker 1: the anger didn't remain confined to some distant battlefield. Prisoners
[11:54] Speaker 1: on the Jersey could feel it in the treatment they
[11:56] Speaker 1: received afterward. And to top off everything else, when a
[11:59] Speaker 1: prisoner died, the body was not always removed immediately. Sometimes
[12:02] Speaker 1: the dead remained among the living long enough for days
[12:04] Speaker 1: or even weeks to pass. Eventually, bodies were taken up
[12:08] Speaker 1: and moved off the ship, often with little ceremony. They
[12:11] Speaker 1: would be lowered over the side with ropes, brought ashore,
[12:13] Speaker 1: and tossed into shallow graves along the bank. Survivors later
[12:16] Speaker 1: described scenes that sound almost unreal in their misery. One
[12:20] Speaker 1: former prisoner remembered the dead being gathered and lowered from
[12:22] Speaker 1: the ship as if they were cargo rather than human beings.
[12:26] Speaker 1: Another described men below deck in the heat, many of
[12:28] Speaker 1: them stripped down because of the temperature and the vermin.
[12:31] Speaker 1: Others remembered the hunger, the rotten provisions, the cruelty of
[12:33] Speaker 1: the guards, and the constant sight of sick men wasting away.
[12:37] Speaker 1: The men aboard were reduced slowly and their clothes wore
[12:39] Speaker 1: away or became infested with lice and other vermin. Their
[12:42] Speaker 1: bodies thinned until some looked skeletal and the sick struggled
[12:45] Speaker 1: beside the healthy, giving the healthy a chance to look
[12:47] Speaker 1: into their own futures. A prisoner might arrive with strength
[12:51] Speaker 1: and patriotic resolve and within days or weeks become almost unrecognizable.
[12:56] Speaker 1: Christopher was aboard the Jersey for only a short time
[12:58] Speaker 1: before he understood that it couldn't be sustained in the
[13:00] Speaker 1: long term. That made his next choice brutally simple. He
[13:03] Speaker 1: could either stay where he was and hope that he
[13:05] Speaker 1: survived the conditions, or he could try to escape and
[13:07] Speaker 1: risk being killed outright. Neither option was preferable, but doing
[13:11] Speaker 1: nothing meant dying anyway. Christopher did have one advantage though.
[13:15] Speaker 1: He had escaped British custody before. The problem was finding
[13:18] Speaker 1: the opportunity. Unlike his previous escape, he was given no
[13:21] Speaker 1: freedom aboard the Jersey, so if he and his new friend,
[13:23] Speaker 1: William Waterman, were going to get out, they would have
[13:25] Speaker 1: to create their own exit. They began by looking for
[13:28] Speaker 1: tools and somehow managed to steal an old axe from
[13:30] Speaker 1: the cook's room and a crowbar from the upper deck.
[13:33] Speaker 1: They then hid these until the moment was right to
[13:35] Speaker 1: use them. This would end up coming in the form
[13:38] Speaker 1: of an early autumn thunderstorm. As lightning lit up the sky,
[13:41] Speaker 1: Christopher and William used the tools and began whacking away
[13:44] Speaker 1: at the lower deck gun ports, timing their strikes with
[13:46] Speaker 1: the thunder overheads so the guards wouldn't hear them. It
[13:49] Speaker 1: was slow and agonizing work, but they eventually damaged the
[13:51] Speaker 1: gun port enough to create a way out. Once the
[13:54] Speaker 1: hole was large enough for them to fit through, they
[13:56] Speaker 1: concealed it as best they could and waited for the
[13:58] Speaker 1: next opportunity. On only Christopher's third day in confinement, he
[14:01] Speaker 1: saw their best chance of making a dash for land.
[14:04] Speaker 1: The night was dark and foggy over the water, so
[14:06] Speaker 1: with that as the setting, they made their way to
[14:08] Speaker 1: the gunport. Slipping through the hole they created, Christopher and
[14:11] Speaker 1: William entered the cold New York harbor and began a
[14:13] Speaker 1: swim toward land that stretched two and a half miles
[14:16] Speaker 1: or four kilometers. Somewhere along the way, Christopher and William
[14:19] Speaker 1: were separated, and it's unknown if William ever made it
[14:21] Speaker 1: to shore, but Christopher did. Incredibly, he went on to
[14:25] Speaker 1: live a full life and tell his harrowing story of
[14:27] Speaker 1: escape and survival both orally and in a memoir he wrote.
[14:31] Speaker 1: There were other survivors who carried on the memory of
[14:33] Speaker 1: what life was like aboard prison ships too. James Fortin,
[14:37] Speaker 1: who later became an important abolitionist, was another man who
[14:39] Speaker 1: endured imprisonment aboard the Jersey after being captured while serving
[14:42] Speaker 1: as a privateer. Other men as well left behind written
[14:45] Speaker 1: accounts that helped later generations understand what the ships had
[14:47] Speaker 1: been like, but many of the dead never had a
[14:49] Speaker 1: chance to leave their testimonies. Their stories ended in shallow
[14:53] Speaker 1: graves beside Wallabout Bay. Long after the British departed New York,
[14:57] Speaker 1: once the war ended, the area around the bay still
[14:59] Speaker 1: had the remains of men who had died aboard the
[15:01] Speaker 1: Jersey and other prison ships. As Brooklyn grew over time
[15:04] Speaker 1: and the waterfront changed, human remains of those buried were
[15:07] Speaker 1: constantly dug up. The response at first was nowhere near
[15:10] Speaker 1: the scale of loss that occurred in New York Harbor
[15:12] Speaker 1: aboard these ships, but the remains were collected and moved
[15:14] Speaker 1: all the same. In 1808, a burial vault was created
[15:18] Speaker 1: near the Brooklyn Navy Yard to hold remains connected to
[15:20] Speaker 1: the prison ship dead. Over the decades that followed, the
[15:23] Speaker 1: first memorial deteriorated and the need for a larger, more
[15:26] Speaker 1: permanent tribute was apparent. By the late 19th century, people
[15:29] Speaker 1: began pushing for a better monument and that effort eventually
[15:32] Speaker 1: centered on Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. The park itself
[15:35] Speaker 1: had become an important public space and it offered a
[15:37] Speaker 1: more fitting location for a memorial that could match the
[15:40] Speaker 1: scale of what happened in Wallabout Bay. Dedicated in 1908,
[15:44] Speaker 1: a monument that rose roughly 150 feet or 46 meters
[15:47] Speaker 1: was erected to honor those who lost their lives aboard
[15:49] Speaker 1: prison ships during the American Revolution. President William Howard Taft
[15:53] Speaker 1: even took part in the dedication ceremony of what is
[15:55] Speaker 1: known as the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument. Underneath it, a
[15:59] Speaker 1: crypt holds 20 coffins filled with bone fragments dug up
[16:02] Speaker 1: during Brooklyn's waterfront development. As for the HMS Jersey itself,
[16:06] Speaker 1: it was abandoned and burned right before the British left.
[16:09] Speaker 1: For more than 100 years afterward, the wreck's exact whereabouts
[16:11] Speaker 1: were largely unknown, but that changed in 1902. While construction
[16:15] Speaker 1: was being done at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, workers struck
[16:17] Speaker 1: old timbers in the mud. According to contemporary reporting, the
[16:21] Speaker 1: wood was found in the area where the burned remains
[16:22] Speaker 1: of the jersey were believed to have settled. The estimated 11,000
[16:26] Speaker 1: Americans who died aboard the HMS Jersey and other prison
[16:29] Speaker 1: ships during the Revolutionary War places the tragedy on the
[16:32] Speaker 1: scale of a major national disaster. It was far smaller
[16:35] Speaker 1: than the death tolls of the Civil War, World War II,
[16:38] Speaker 1: or even the 1918 influenza pandemic, but it exceeded the
[16:41] Speaker 1: total losses from Pearl Harbor, the Jonestown Flood, and the
[16:44] Speaker 1: 1900 Galveston Hurricane. More strikingly though, the estimated figure is
[16:49] Speaker 1: more than double the number of Americans killed in battle
[16:51] Speaker 1: during the Revolutionary War itself. That figure is officially recognized
[16:55] Speaker 1: as 4,435 combat-related deaths by the Department of Defense, making
[16:59] Speaker 1: prison ships the deadliest theater of the war for the
[17:02] Speaker 1: men fighting for the colonies.

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