Ghost Ship of Brooklyn: Revolutionary War Story Worth Remembering

Historians have written so much about the American Revolution that it’s hard to believe there’s anything left to uncover. But historian Robert Watson stumbled upon a story that rivals any of the well-documented stories from the Revolutionary War in its importance. One he chronicled in his 2017 book, The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn.

"Not only were some secrets waiting, but some were real shockers," Watson told Our American Stories. "One of them involved an infamous ship known as the Ghost Ship, on which twice as many Americans died than died in the entirety of combat during the Revolutionary War [estimates range from roughly 6,800 to 8,600]."

How did it happen and why? Watson unfurled the tale, which began with the construction of the British ship HMS Jersey in 1776.

"It was a weapon of mass destruction for its day, with multiple decks and masts," Watson gushed. "Despite those advanced technologies, she lost virtually every battle she’d been in. The crew caught a tropical disease and was wiped out. The captain died mysteriously. So it got a reputation as a cursed ship. No one wanted to serve on her-or captain her."

But there was one final mission for the HMS Jersey. After British General Sir William Howe seized the city of New York, he took on thousands of prisoners of war.

"They weren't building prisons because the British believed the war would be over in months," Watson noted.

Then they had an idea: Why not get an old massive warship and turn it into a prison?

"And which ship were they gonna pick? The Jersey. She was already cursed and she was massive," Watson added.

The Jersey was gutted and turned into a floating prison, moored in Wallabout Bay, near the Brooklyn, New York, waterfront.

"It was about a hundred yards off the coast and looked like a coffin," Watson described. "They loaded her up with one thousand American prisoners of war, nailed down the hatches, bored up the portholes, and disease soon tore through the ship. And virtually everybody on board died."

From that initial tragedy, the British hatched an absolutely evil idea: Why not use the ship as a propaganda tool? Broadsides–a kind of poster meets newsletter–were published in mass by the British and tacked to New York City pub doors and public spaces with a stark message.

"If you pick up arms against the British and get caught, you’re going to hell," Watson said, describing the message of those broadsides. "You're going to the Ghost Ship. And there’s only one way off it: horizontal."

After most of the first thousand men died, the British loaded up the Jersey with another thousand-and the pattern repeated itself again and again. The ship was moored for years in Brooklyn, and the man handpicked to oversee the prison ship was the notorious commissary of naval prisoners, David Sprout, a man known for his ruthlessness and sadistic streak.

"Sproat would row everybody out to the ship and point and say, ‘There is your hell.' And they'd look at the ghostly, gaunt faces looking through the portholes and he'd say, ‘That’s your future,'" Watson explained.

To say the ship was crowded would be an understatement.

"Men were literally on top of one another, and the weakest, the youngest, the sickest ended up lying down by the portholes," Watson noted. "And even though they were boarded up, it snowed a lot and many prisoners froze to death."

That was just the surface of the depths of depravity the HMS Jersey embodied.

"There was a big tub used for human waste. And they would dump the tub in the water, and that would be their water supply," Watson explained. "So if you didn't drink on the Ghost Ship, you died. And if you did, you died. Because you’re basically drinking foul human excrement."

Many of the dead were buried on nearby beaches in graves so shallow corpses soon rose up through the sand. Remnants-bones and skulls-could be seen by the ship's prisoners.

"They would watch as a pig or a coyote or a dog or a buzzard would come out and start to eat their comrades," Watson groaned.

Bones and skulls of those buried prisoners would wash up on shore years later.

There was also the matter of food.

"The caloric intake the prisoners got was about two-thirds to three-quarters of the calories needed to stay alive,” he said. “If you didn’t eat, you died on the ghost ship. If you did eat, you died slower."

There was a tactical reason for all the degradation.

"Many were actually starved to death in hope of making them enroll themselves in the British Army," wrote Ebenezer Fox, a prisoner on the Ghost Ship.

But few American sailors took up the offer.

"I never knew, while I was on board, but one instance of defection, and that person was hooted at and abused by the prisoners till the boat was out of hearing," wrote Alexander Coffin Jr., imprisoned on the Ghost Ship when he was 18 years old.

When General George Washington learned of the abuse of his men aboard the Jersey, he wrote to his adversaries demanding better treatment of the POWs. And reminded them that he held thousands of British POWs. His letters were ignored.

There were stories of patriotism on the Ghost Ship, none better than the on-deck celebration on July 4, 1782-replete with singing and storytelling-staged by some of the prisoners. By this time, many British troops had surrendered, and the guards were more dour than usual, using their weapons to drive the partying prisoners below deck. When they continued their celebrating, the British slashed them with their bayonets. In the morning, 10 Americans were dead.

Then men who died on that ship did not die traditional heroes' deaths on the battlefield. Many died nameless. But the survivors who lived to tell their story memorialized those men. In an 1807 letter, Coffin wrote these words: "The patriotism in preferring such treatment, and even death in its most frightful shapes, to the serving [of] the British, and fighting against their own country, has seldom been equalled, certainly never excelled."

The American spirit could not be extinguished by the reprobates running the Ghost Ship of Brooklyn. And to General Washington's credit, he never resorted to reciprocal abuse of the British prisoners of war, of which there were from 5,000-6,000.

As our nation approaches our 250th birthday, these stories from our past are enduring testimonies of the country America was about to become.

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This story was originally published June 19, 2026 at 4:09 PM.