Generally Speaking: 11,500 American Revolutionary POWs remembered
The actual remains of 11,500 sailors, soldiers and merchant mariners from the American Revolutionary War are entombed in a large crypt under the 149-foot-tall Prison Ship Martyrs Monument on the top of the hill in Fort Greene Park.
This past Saturday morning, August 27, officers, directors and members of the Society of Old Brooklynites gathered at the base of this historic, towering edifice. It was designed by famed architect Stanford White. When erected in 1908, it was the highest free-standing Doric column in the world!
On these hallowed grounds, the society paid tribute to the unsung patriots who were captured and incarcerated aboard decrepit British prison ships under the most horrendous, and almost sub-human conditions for their failure to swear allegiance to the British Crown. When they died, they were tossed overboard or placed in shallow sandy graves along Wallabout Bay. Please see the website www.prisonshipmartyrs.com for an extended history of this site.