8. For Years After the Revolution, Skulls and Bones of Dead Soldiers Would Wash Up on the Beaches of Williamsburg

The most tragic story of the Revolutionary War was the thousands of American soldiers who died in captivity, many aboard awful British prison ships. Some estimates put the death tolls at 11,000, more than the number who died in combat. Some of the most notorious prison ships, where men were packed like sardines and malnourished until they passed away from disease or starvation, were anchored in Wallabout Bay, where the Brooklyn Navy Yard is today. The daily accumulation of dead bodies would be dumped into the East River or hastily buried on its eastern shores. For years after theRevolution, people walking the sandy beaches of Williamsburg might stumble across skulls and other bones of the departed. Many skeletons were given proper burials following a donation by the young Society of Tammany, and a monument to the soldiers sits in Fort Greene Park.