The HMS Jersey never fired a shot in battle that mattered. Its deadliest weapon was confinement. Between 1776 and 1783, the British Royal Navy anchored this decommissioned 64-gun warship in Wallabout Bay, off the Brooklyn shore of occupied New York City, and converted it into a floating prison. Inmates called it simply “Hell.” By the time the war ended, roughly 11,000 American prisoners had died aboard the British prison ship fleet — more than double the estimated 4,500 Continental soldiers killed in actual combat. The Jersey was the worst of them, a rotting hulk where a dozen men died every night from smallpox, dysentery, typhoid, and starvation.
The story of the Jersey sits at the intersection of naval warfare, colonial occupation, and the overlooked human cost of the American Revolution. For descendant communities — including the Lenape (Delaware) people whose ancestral homeland encompasses Wallabout Bay and greater Brooklyn — the prison ships remain a tangible reminder of how the war’s violence reshaped Indigenous and colonial landscapes alike. Understanding Wallabout Bay requires acknowledging whose land it was before the first mast was raised.
Wallabout Bay: Lenape Territory Turned Prison Anchorage
Before the British ever dropped anchor, Wallabout Bay was part of Lenapehoking, the ancestral territory of the Lenape people. The name itself derives from the Dutch Waal Boght — “Welsh Bay” — a colonial renaming of an Indigenous shoreline that had supported Lenape fishing, shellfishing, and seasonal settlement for millennia. The Dutch, and later the English, displaced the Lenape through a series of coercive land transactions and violence throughout the 17th century, transforming the bay into a shipbuilding and maritime zone. By 1776, that same water had become the British military’s dumping ground for captured Americans.
The shell middens and wampum wealth of coastal Lenape communities — the quahog and whelk shells worked into diplomatic belts that recorded treaties and alliances — had already made this region central to cross-cultural negotiation. That legacy of wampum diplomacy offers a stark contrast to what the British did in the same waters: they built no lasting covenant with the people they imprisoned, only a death ledger. For deeper context on the region’s pre-colonial and Revolutionary-era Indigenous politics, see how the Proclamation of 1763 reshaped Native sovereignty.
How the Prison Ships Came to Be
In mid-1776, the British government dispatched General William Howe to New York with roughly 34,000 troops and a formidable fleet. Howe was authorized to negotiate peace; when those talks collapsed, he invaded Long Island and defeated General George Washington’s forces on August 27, 1776. Washington’s army escaped across the East River under cover of fog — a critical twist of fate — but Manhattan fell by October, and the British would occupy New York City for the remainder of the war, departing only in November 1783.
The Capture of Soldiers, Sailors, and Civilians
During the occupation, British forces captured or arrested thousands. Some were taken in battle; others were seized for refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown. The Continental Congress had commissioned privateers — privately armed vessels authorized to raid British shipping — and when the Royal Navy captured these men, they were offered a brutal choice: join the Royal Navy, or go to prison. Approximately 55,000 American seamen eventually served as merchant marines or privateers, and many of those captured ended up in Wallabout Bay.
Land jails in New York quickly overflowed. The British solution was to convert decommissioned warships — the Jersey, the Whitby, the Good Hope, the Falmouth, and others — into floating prison hulks moored in the bay between the present-day Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges.
Life and Death Aboard the HMS Jersey
The Jersey, a former 64-gun ship of the line, was the most notorious. More than 1,000 men were confined aboard at any one time. Food and fresh water were scarce and frequently spoiled. Smallpox raged unchecked. Dysentery, typhoid, and yellow fever swept through the holds in recurring waves. Prisoners slept in tiers of bunks below deck with almost no ventilation; many suffocated overnight or were found dead at morning roll call. Roughly a dozen men died every night.
Even after the British surrender at Yorktown in October 1781, prisoners continued to be held aboard the Jersey and its sister ships until the war formally ended in 1783. Of the entire prison ship fleet, only about 1,400 men survived. The remainder — roughly 11,000 soldiers, sailors, and civilians — died in captivity.
This disproportionate mortality is one of the Revolution’s least-taught facts. When comparative casualty data are studied, the prison ships sit alongside other mass-consequence events of the era, from the battlefield losses catalogued in Revolutionary War deaths and casualty statistics to the displacement patterns of Indigenous nations during the same conflict.
From Bones to Obelisk: The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument
When the United States Navy took over Wallabout Bay and began expanding the Brooklyn Navy Yard on the mudflats, workers unearthed the remains of thousands who had died aboard the prison ships. Those remains were gathered and buried on the grounds of a nearby estate, with the intention of eventually building a permanent memorial.
By the late 19th century, the first monument — erected on Hudson Avenue in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Vinegar Hill — had fallen into disrepair. Plans were made for a grander memorial in Fort Greene Park, a public space designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the landscape architects behind Central Park. Funds were raised by century’s end, and the firm McKim, Mead & White was commissioned to design the structure.
In 1908, President William Howard Taft dedicated the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument — a 150-foot granite obelisk at the center of Fort Greene Park, on the former site of the Revolutionary War-era Fort Putnam. Beneath it lies a crypt containing 20 coffins filled with bone fragments recovered from the Jersey and other prison ships.
The Sailors’ Legacy and Indigenous Service
The prison ships were not the only place where Americans suffered disproportionately. Native nations across the eastern seaboard were drawn into the same conflict on both sides. Many Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Lenape warriors fought alongside the British in the hope of protecting their homelands from colonial expansion; others served the American cause. Their sacrifices — and the resulting loss of land after the Treaty of Paris in 1783 — echo the suffering of the men who died aboard the Jersey. Both stories are essential to understanding the true cost of America’s founding war. The broader revolutionary timeline is laid out in Revolutionary War timeline: facts and key battles.
Historical Context & Key Cultural Takeaways
The HMS Jersey stands as one of the deadliest sites of the American Revolution and a painful case study in wartime captivity. Its most important takeaways are:
- Death toll exceeded combat casualties: Roughly 11,000 American prisoners died aboard British prison ships between 1776 and 1783, compared to approximately 4,500 battlefield deaths — a fact rarely emphasized in popular histories.
- New York’s occupation was the enabling condition: British control of New York City for the entire war made Wallabout Bay a permanent detention zone, which the Royal Navy exploited as an expedient solution to overcrowded land jails.
- Smallest survivors’ group: Only about 1,400 of the prison-ship population survived the war — a mortality rate of roughly 87% among the most severely affected cohorts.
- Remains were exhumed rather than abandoned: The discovery of bones during Brooklyn Navy Yard construction led directly to the creation of the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, converting an industrial site into a commemorative landscape.
- Indigenous context matters: Wallabout Bay sits on Lenape homeland. Understanding the prison ships without acknowledging the Lenape presence both before and during the Revolution gives an incomplete picture of the region’s colonial history.
- Commemoration is ongoing: The 1908 monument remains a centerpiece of Fort Greene Park, and the crypt beneath it still holds the remains of the men who died aboard the Jersey and its sister ships.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the HMS Jersey and why was it called “Hell”?
The HMS Jersey was a British 64-gun warship decommissioned from active service and converted into a prison hulk anchored in Wallabout Bay, Brooklyn, during the American Revolution. It earned the nickname “Hell” from its inmates because of the extreme overcrowding — over 1,000 prisoners at peak — the lack of food, water, and ventilation, and the extraordinarily high death rate, with roughly a dozen men dying each night from disease, starvation, and neglect.
How many Americans died on the British prison ships?
Historians estimate that approximately 11,000 American soldiers, sailors, and civilians died aboard the British prison ship fleet between 1776 and 1783, with the Jersey accounting for the largest share. That figure is significantly higher than the roughly 4,500 Continental troops believed killed in actual combat during the war.
Why were so many Americans held in prison ships rather than land jails?
The British occupying force captured or arrested thousands of prisoners during their occupation of New York City beginning in 1776. When land-based jails were overwhelmed, the British repurposed decommissioned warships as floating prisons. The hulks required no new construction and could be anchored offshore, isolated from the civilian population.
What is the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument?
The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument is a 150-foot granite obelisk at the center of Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, New York. Designed by the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, it was dedicated in 1908 by President William Howard Taft. Beneath the monument is a crypt holding 20 coffins with bone fragments recovered from the Jersey and other prison ships.
Where were the remains of prison ship victims found?
When the U.S. Navy began expanding the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the early 19th century on the mudflats of Wallabout Bay, workers uncovered the remains of thousands of men who had died aboard the prison ships. Those remains were collected and eventually interred beneath the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park.
Conclusion: Preserving a Painful Chapter
Few Revolutionary War stories are as stark as the HMS Jersey. It represents a dimension of the war rarely emphasized: the suffering of prisoners of war in the hands of an occupying military, on the same shore where the Lenape had lived for centuries before European colonization. The men who died below decks at Wallabout Bay are remembered today through the obelisk in Fort Greene Park, whose crypt preserves their remains. Visitors to Brooklyn Heights, Vinegar Hill, and Fort Greene today walk above ground that once held prison hulks and Indigenous villages alike.
To fully understand the American Revolution, one must look beyond battles and treaties to the prisoners, the dispossessed Indigenous nations, and the ordinary people caught between empires — the legacy still visible in Brooklyn’s landmarks, archives, and memorials.
