During the seven years of British occupation, 1776-1783, American soldiers were imprisoned aboard British “prison ships” (the hulls of abandoned ships) anchored in Wallabout Bay Enduring overcrowded conditions, ill-fed, poorly maintained, and ravaged by epidemics of disease, nearly 11,000 prisoners reportedly died aboard the ships, and were either thrown overboard or buried in shallow graves on the marshy shore. The remains of many were later gathered and are now interred in a burial chamber that lies beneath the world’s tallest freestanding Doric column, the Stanford White-designed Prison Ship Martyr’s Monument in Fort Greene Park, a strong point of the American defenses during the Battle of Brooklyn.

Wallabout Bay became the site of the New York Naval Ship Yard, commonly called the Brooklyn Navy Yard, in 1801, and at least one prison ship hulk sank into the East River’s mud below the piers and graving docks.