It all started after the Battle of Brooklyn and the capture of Fort Washington by the British in the Fall of 1776. During the American Revolution, thousands of soldiers and sailors were captured by each side and the prisoners suffered in many ways. One of the more interesting chapters of this war was the occupation of New York by the British between 1776 and 1783. The conditions were criminal and led to the largest loss of life during the revolution. A special prison camp was set up outside Charleston at Haddrell's Point. She saw action in the War of Jenkins' Ear and the Seven Years' War, before being converted to a hospital ship in 1771. The lists usually contain name, rank, state of residence, and regiment. An inevitable facet of warfare is prisoners. Normal jail facilities soon were filled with political prisoners, both Whigs and Loyalists. HMS Jersey was a 60-gun fourth rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built to the 1733 proposals of the 1719 Establishment of dimensions at Plymouth Dockyard, and launched on 14 June 1736. This statistic might drop your jaw like it did mine: in the Revolutionary War, around 4,500 American soldiers died in combat. Revolutionary War Rolls ___M246, Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783. Some say eleven thousand patriots perished on the ships. Roll 135, jacket 4 of this series contains about thirty pages of names listing American prisoners of war. Co-authored with Don N. Hagist. But we knew little about this number until locals made some gruesome discoveries in the following decades. So great was popular sympathy for them that immediately after the close of the Revolutionary War an attempt was made to gather the testimony of the survivors and to provide a fitting memorial for those who had perished. The premise of the exchange was to be able to exchange a sailor for a sailor, a soldier for a soldier, with the prisoners being of equal rank. DP. Their Distress is Almost Intolerable: The Elias Boudinot Letterbook, 1777-1778; 2002, Heritage Books (paperback), ISBN 0-7884-2210-3. Inside the Jersey prison ship during the Revolutionary War (Library of Congress). The lot of the Revolutionary War prisoner was hard, not solely because of deliberate policy, but also as neither the British nor the Americans were prepared in 1775 to take care of those they caught. Numerous accounts of survivors of the prison ships have been preserved and some of them have been published. On the prison-ships, the death-count was around 11,500. Boyle, Joseph Lee, ed. These lists are mainly centered around 1780, but the dates cover most of the war. A Prisoner Excange Program was used between the British and American forces during the American Revolutionary War. During the war, more military men on the British prison ships than were killed in battle. The Grisly History of Brooklyn’s Revolutionary War Martyrs The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, a crypt in Fort Greene Park, may become part of the national park system British Prison Ships When talking about the atrocities of the British during the Revolutionary War, many times, one of the worst abuses is never mentioned - the British Prison Ships. History.com reports that many young sailors set out as privateers to harass the British Royal Navy during the war, with many of them eventually being captured and interned in British prison ships. The Wallabout Prison Ships: 1776-1783. Burrows, Edwin G. Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War (NY: Basic Books, 2008) A similar prison system existed in Savannah, Georgia, when that city was taken in 1778. Prisons and Prison ShipsPRISONS AND PRISON SHIPS. 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