What is a 15-story-tall granite column topped by a big metal urn doing in the middle of a park in Brooklyn? It marks the burial site of the so-called prison ship martyrs, or what's left of them.
You never heard of the prison ship martyrs? That's because they were the American losers during the Revolutionary War.
After the Yanks had been kicked out of New York City by the British, the redcoats used it as their headquarters. They had a lot of American POWs: soldiers, sailors, civilians, pretty much anyone who wasn't an ally. The Brits crammed them into prison ships moored in the East River. An estimated 11,500 people died in the ships (only 6,800 died in combat during the entire war). Perhaps 1,000 survived. That's a mortality rate that not even the notorious Andersonville Civil War prison could match.
In the decades after the war, bones of dead prisoners turned up whenever anyone dug a hole near the river or threw a net into it. They were collected and interred in a crypt cut into a hill that had overlooked the prison ships. The hill became Fort Greene Park, and the crypt was surrounded by a sweeping staircase and topped with an eternal flame and the big pole.
That was in 1908. But as the years passed, people forgot about the pole, as they had forgotten about the dead prisoners. The Brits became our pals. The plaque explaining their bad behavior was taken down. The stairs to the top were closed. The flame went out.
But in 2008, after many false starts, the Prison Ship Martyrs Memorial was restored. Its top is still off-limits, but the exterior has been cleaned and its plaque has reappeared. The flame -- now an electric light bounced upward from a mirror -- is turned on at night.
A park ranger told us that 21 bodies in the hillside crypt were complete enough to be identified, and that the only people allowed into the vault are those who can prove that they are related. In a city that prizes status, the Prison Ship Martyrs Memorial crypt is now the most exclusive club in town.
