Crime Scene:

Wallabout Bay, near Bushwick, Brooklyn, aboard British Prison ships from 1776 until 1783

Approximately 11,500

Gunshots, strangulation, starvation, and medical neglect

Still at the scene of the crime

My account of the fate of Brooklyn’s prison ship martyrs is drawn from a report of the 50th United States Congress dated March 27, 1888.

When certain people talk about the history of Brooklyn, their story starts and ends with the Dodgers. Invoking the legacy of Jackie Robinson and the diverse and motley crew that won the 1955 World Series championship barely hints at the central role that African Americans have played in the evolution of Brooklyn or the millennia of human habitation in this land that precedes the 1957 demolition of Ebbets Field. Even superficial reminders of the previous inhabitants of the New York, like place names, are endangered. If real estate developers had their unfettered way, Canarsie, named for a local chief, would become – let’s say – Citi-village – and the job of cleansing the Native American from Kings County would be complete. The last Native American aboriginal to Brooklyn died around 1810.