I am tremendously excited about this video that I researched and hosted for AOL On’s “What Remains” series. It takes off from my popular blog post about the mass grave in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park. I think the broadcast-quality production these guys put together is phenomenal.
The short version is explained in my post, linked above. But the gist is this: There is a mass grave for 11,500 people under Fort Greene Park.
Here’s another disturbing fact that was trimmed from this telling of the story: The prisoners desperately wrote George Washington to beg him for help, to exchange them or free them. In response, Washington let them die. He didn’t want them to be released so they could spread smallpox to the general population.
There is a first-person account from one of the survivors: the riveting Recollections of Life on the Prison Ship Jersey by Thomas Dring. A really good version is currently in print.
I’m just hugely proud of the whole video, and the topic, as you can already tell, is dear to my heart.
Thank you for the information in this video. I have come across articles in the past that related about bones that would be found on the shore. Do you have a list of names of those deceased? I thought that I saw it in the video.