Yet we trust
that it is exaggerated. It would give an average of more than three
thousand deaths a year. The whole number of names copied from the
English War Records of prisoners on board the Jersey is about
8,000. This, however, is an incomplete list. You will in vain search
through its pages to find the recorded names of many prisoners who
have left well attested accounts of their captivity on board that
fatal vessel. All that we can say now is that the number who perished
there is very great.
As late as 1841 the bones of many of these victims were still to be
found on the shores of Walabout Bay, in and around the Navy Yard. On
the 4th of February of that year some workmen, while engaged in
digging away an embankment in Jackson Street, Brooklyn, near the Navy
Yard, accidentally uncovered a quantity of human bones, among which
was a skeleton having a pair of iron manacles still upon the
wrists. (See Thompson's History of Long Island, Vol. 1, page 247.)
In a paper published at Fishkill on the 18th of May, 1783, is the
following card: "To All Printers, of Public Newspapers:--Tell it to
the world, and let it be published in every Newspaper throughout
America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, to the everlasting disgrace and
infamy of the British King's commanders at New York: That during the
late war it is said that 11,644 American prisoners have suffered death
by their inhuman, cruel, savage, and barbarous usage on board the
filthy and malignant British prison ship called the Jersey, lying at
New York.
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