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in the streets of New York on one of our Bowery Boys walks. Our licensed New York City tour guides

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One of the most tragic sites associated with the American Revolutionary War is not a battlefield,

but a body of water on the western shore of Long Island. An east of the small village of Brooklyn.

It was here that the British Army, who occupied New York for most of the duration of the war,

built prison ships with captives from George Washington's army and civilians who

happened to run a foul of the occupying army's whims. For the duration of the war,

hundreds of men, women, and children were thrown onto these wretched ships forced to endure

a litany of brutal and torturous conditions. Over 11,000 people died of hunger,

dysentery, or typhoid. Most perishing aboard the largest of these prison ships,

the HMS Jersey. More deaths than on any single battlefield from America's war for independence.

For years after the British left New York, the ghosts of those who perished aboard these ships

would make themselves known to those along the shoreline, today's flushing avenue,

with frequent discoveries of human remains washing ashore after stormy nights,

and many more discovered when the swampy grounds were excavated. In later years,

these remains would haunt the imagination of Walt Whitman. In verse, he wrote,

those cartloads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of moldy bones, once living men,

once resolute courage, aspiration, strength, the stepping stones to thee, today, and here, America.

But this isn't a ghost story, but a surprising tale of reinvention, symbolism and might.

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