Letters and Journals relating to the War of the American Revolution, and the Capture of the German Troops at Saratoga , by Mrs. General Riedesel.  Translated from the original German, by William L. Stone. 

"ALBANY: J. 1779, we reached New York, where my husband, who had gone ahead of us, had already arrived before me.  A soldier who, at the gateway, had been ordered to show us the way, conducted us to a very great and used as a store-ship, then employed as a hospital-ship, and was finally, in the winter of 1779-'80, fitted up as a prison-ship, and anchored near the Wallabout in the East River, near what is now the Navy Yard, where she lay until the close of the war, when the day of retribution arrived, and she was broken up and sunk beneath the muddy waters of the East River to rise no more.  Dismantled of her sails and stripped of her rigging, with port-holes closed, with no spar but the bowsprit, and a derrick to take in supplies, her small lone flag at the stern became the appropriate but unconscious signal of the dreadful suffering that raged within. Hundreds of captured prisoners were packed into this small vessel, where, with but one meal of coarse and filthy food per diem, without hammocks, or physician, or medicines, or means of cleanliness, they wretchedly perished. Thousands of emaciated skeletons were, during these perilous years, cast into the billows of the bay, or left half covered in the sandbanks and trenches. The bones of the dead lay exposed along the beach, drying.  and bleaching in the sun, whitening the shore until washed away by the surging tides. About twelve thousand prisoners are believed to have died on these vessels, most of whom were young men, the strength and flower of their country." - "History of New York City from discovery to Present Day, by William Stone. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by VIRTUE & YORSTON, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington . Anderson & Ramsay, Printers, 28 Frankfort Street ,  New York .

The Prison Ship Martyrs Memorial at Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, New York

"Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses,
More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander,
Those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of mouldy bones,
Once living men--once resolute courage, aspiration, strength,
The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America."

Walt Whitman

07/02/2006