To create a National Monument in Washington DC honoring the 11,500 Prison Ship Martyrs who gave their lives aboard British prison ships in New York Harbor during the Revolutionary War.
During the battle for New York, starting in August, 1776 and after New York City fell to the British, thousands of “rebels” came into British hands. It didn’t take long for the prison space to be filled up. At the same time, the British navy had taken a number of derelict vessels and soon turned them into maritime prison ships.
Each ship had more than 1,000 men crammed into the hold. Every morning, the dead would be carried up on deck to be hauled to shore later in the day. The bodies were then dumped into shallow mass graves on the shore of Wallabout Bay in Brooklyn.