My name is Michael Quinn and as the president and head of this museum, it is my pleasure to welcome you for a fascinating insight into part of the american revolution. One of the things we pride ourselves here at this museum is telling the stories of the revolution that you do not always know, bringing the life bringing to life the people from all walks of life who took part in the revolution, who took the ideas of the revolution to heart and launched a series of revolutions that has created the american nation. Today, it is my great pleasure to be introducing a noted scholar, historian, political activist, Robert Watson from Lynn University who will be talking about the ghost ship of brooklyn. I am holding the book in my hand. We have had a lot of online orders for this book. He will be signing books after and we still have a few left in our gift shop, if you want to take it home. This is how history should be written. It makes it a story of real people, drama, and excitement. I strongly encourage you to get it. The reason it is such a good book is that Robert Watson is an unusual historian and scholar. He acts on his conviction that understanding the past is important in Civic Engagement and in Political Leadership and decisionmaking. I will first cover some of his scholarly interest. He has written, edited, and published nearly 40 books on a stunning array of topics, from modern history, such as president trumans Foreign Policy in the middle east, to the war of 1812. He has even written a historical novel with his son. He has taken a particular interest in Political Leadership and he has convened a number of conferences on the american presidency. He founded the quarterly journal on white house studies and has founded not one, but two series on american president s. Reflecting his deep insight into president ial politics, he is he has also written a book tracing the unofficial history of the office of first lady. Robert also engages in politics. He is a regular political commentator for media, ranging from cnn to fox news and everything in between. He has written an oped column for the sun sentinel newspaper in palm beach. He has moderated political debates and forums. He speaks frequently to civics and professional organizations and in what still amazes me, he helped bring one of the 2012 president ial debates to the school on which he is the faculty, Lynn University, in florida. He has helped found and support several organizations that champion Civic Engagement and political reform. As you might imagine, he has been honored and recognized by numerous organizations, as diverse as the league of women voters and the independent book publishers. I am certain none are as meaningful to him as the recognition he has received from his students and colleagues at Lynn University who have acclaimed him as the universitys outstanding teacher and outstanding professor. As i said he brings history to , life and one of the things youre going to hear about is that one of the people in our museum that we highlight is james fortin. , you will fortin discover on our privateer ship was later imprisoned on the ghost ship. Ladies and gentlemen, if you were not able to be with us in september, thank you for coming back. There was a hurricane in september. We are delighted to welcome Robert Watson. [applause] robert thank you. Can everyone hear me . This is on . I am not a podium person. Thank you. Are you enjoying the museum . It is extraordinary, isnt it . Although it just opened in late april, this is my fourth visit from florida so i really like this museum. Michael and you are blessed to have such a visionary and extraordinary leader. As you can tell as you walk around this museum, it is unlike most museums. This museum tells the revolution from multiple perspectives and multiple experiences. That of the first americans, that of slaves, that of children. This is unusual for the Traditional Museum and i am a museum rat. Michael does a extraordinary job. Let me encourage you there is a Speaker Series coming up this winter. They have top historians coming in. You want to check those dates on your way out. You do not want to miss them. My students, for almost three decades now, and every class i start off by telling my students, there is more we do not know about history than we do know. Were going to play detective if you will. The only difference is, it is tough to be a detective, but for us, all of the eyewitnesses at the crime scene have been dead. This is a challenge but uncovering these hidden tidbits from history is something i am passionate about. Even though we believe we know a lot about history, there are still stories waiting to be told. For instance, almost any American School kid can tell us about paul reveres midnight ride, thanks to the poem, which is a beautiful poem, but not very good history. Almost any student can tell us about the Boston Tea Party but very few people, virtually no textbook, ever mentions the bloodiest battle of the entire revolutionary war, one that would help change the course of history. That battle was not saratoga or yorktown or germantown, brandywine just down the road. That battle was fought 100 yards , on ae coast of brooklyn rotting, old british warship, called the hms jersey. On that one ship, twice as Many Americans died than died in combat during the entirety of the American Revolutionary war. There is a statistic for you. How did this happen . Let us step back. In the 1730s, the british were launching a fleet of impressive warships and one of those was the jersey. She was a beautiful warship, over 140 feet long, multiple decks. A crew of 400. She carried over 60 cannons, including the largest made at the time. She was a weapon of mass destruction a technological marvel to behold. Unfortunately, it was believed she was cursed. Her captain died of mysterious circumstances. Multiple diseases tore through her halls. She loses almost every battle she is in. She is destroyed off the coast of presentday brazil, colombia, and cuba. She fights in the war of jenkinss ear. There was such a war, you cannot make that up. There was a british sea captain named jenkins who was in spanish waters and was not supposed to be there. The spanish captain cut off his ear and the story goes he pickled his ear and held it up in parliament and a bunch of hotheads in parliament and spain went to war. Were not sure how true that is but that is the story. This ship is cursed. By 1776, she is four decadesold. Her prime as a warship. Because she was thought to be cursed, not a lot of crew or captains wanted to be stationed to her so they did not retrofit or renovate her. They would let her rot. She would have one more mission the revolutionary war. We tell the story upstairs brilliantly of yorktown. In 76, general william howe and his brother, admiral richard howe, set sail with around 32,000 men in the armada, a flotilla of warships and they go to new york city. With them, are roughly 9000 has sian mercenaries, the germanic mercenaries, some of the most feared warriors of their time. An army of 32,000 may not sound like a lot to us today that that but that was, at the time, the largest Expeditionary Force ever to set sail from english shores. They wanted to put down this revolution, once and for all. We got off to a pretty good start. And the story is upstairs, we had a pretty darn good firstquarter but the british were ready to end all that. So they set sail. George washington guessed they were going to pick new york city as their beachhead for this counterattack and washington went there, dug in to try to prevent the british from getting a toehold. As we know, new york city has so many water access points, it is impossible. The british found beach area in Staten Island and long island unprotected so that is where ho we landed. On august 22, that is where they started. On august 27, they annihilated washingtons army. They drive washington almost into the river. Howe issues a rather mysterious halt order, sort of like hitlers order at dunkirk. This allows washington to sneak across the river at night. Washington is a sly fellow so he lights campfires at night, leading howe to believe he is still there. Howe arrives in the morning to find cold embers and no army. An unsung hero of the war, a colonel from marblehead, massachusetts, named john glover, took the whole army across the river at night. He would be the same fellow who would transport washington across the Delaware River in the battle of trenton. Washington crosses the lower manhattan. The british follow and they chase washington up manhattan. He is racing for his life. He does not have time to get tickets for hamilton. [laughter] they get up to white plains and theyre still being chased and washington is leaving behind cannons. He is running short on powder. He realizes they could chase them to canada so washington pulls a trick. He swings around and cuts south across new jersey, being chased. He crosses the delaware into pennsylvania and you know where the story goes from there. Meanwhile, back in new york city, general howe and admiral howe have a new problem and that is, they have well over 4000 prisoners of war. There are only two functioning prisons in new york city. They can accommodate a few dozen prisoners. Part of the city was burned. Howe does not want to use barns or farms are the prisoners because he needs all of the food and space to feed an army of 32,000 because all of the british loyalists and royalists are racing to be safe in new york city. They come up with an idea. They do not want to build prisons. They do not want to take the time and energy and resources. They believe the war is going to end. They decide to hock prison ships. What does it mean to hock a ship . They take the masts and sails off and take the rudder off and take the wheel house off, leaving just a wooden box, a floating coffin, or dungeon. They moor these ships with cables from the bow and stern, like a beast in the water, about 100 yards off the brooklyn shoreline. Why there . They knew disease was going to run rampant through the ships because they were going to use them as floating prisons and they did not want the diseases to come ashore and annihilate the British Military and no one gave a darn about brooklyn. Initially, the british tried to keep this under wraps. Theyre trying to seek an end to the war. The last thing they want to do is aggravate us. Three years later, they changed their tactics. They then have so many prisoners, they decide to hock one of these massive warships, the hms jersey. They put 1000 american prisoners in her hulls. They hammer shut the portholes, they nail down the hatch and almost all 1000 of them died. This is when the british get a plan. A shocking plan. A plan that is contemporary and that is this why dont we use this warship as a psychological weapon of terror . If we announce, if you pick up arms against these colonists or like the privateers and the replica of the privateer ship upstairs, if you pick up weapons against us or if you dare to sail on a privateer and you get caught, you are going to that ship. There is only one way off the ship and we know what that is. The british thought this warm of this form of psychological weapon of terror would deter us from picking up arms against them and would help expedite the end of the war. Long story short, it has the opposite effect. As a few young boys managed to escape from the ship and like every pirate story, lived to tell the tale, when they told of the horrors and brutality and the 90 plus mortality rate, it rallied people to the cause of the war. We did not have Public Opinion polls back then. The story instilled the bait. What percentage of the population was prorevolution . There is something historians call the adams theory. In one of his letters, he be one third of the folks were patriots, one third were loyalists and the other third had no idea. Think about it. You are a recent immigrant and you are eking out an existence on three acres of land. Governing o is why do you care who is governing you . We do not know if that is accurate. One of the things ive found in writing books on military history and the revolution is we have this notion that most men and boys went off to war for pride and patriotism and flag and country. Some did. I believe most went off to war because they wanted food. They have found letters and diaries of a couple of folks who survived this ship and some of the teenage boys who lived through this ordeal said they joined because they had not eaten. The idea of three meals a day is contemporary. Most people ate when they had a chance. Another boy that joined and survived the ship said he went to war because it was the winter and he did not have a jacket and they would give him a coat. These are the situations. The british thought it would deter us but it drove us toward independence. If you were to take a time machine and go back to the year 1780 and pick almost any community in new england or new york and you were to mention the theey, everyone knew about ship but today, she has been forgotten. It was almost like the boogie man. Everyone knew about the ship. Mothers would tell their sons, do not go off to fight because you might end up on the os ghost ship. The british put 10002000 men on board at one time. It was shocking what was happening on board. The other thing about the ship that is interesting from a british perspective. I apologize for mentioning his name mel gibson had the movie the patriot. I remember some folks were dismissing the film when it came out because the british were shown as putting people in a church and burning it to the ground. The british were aggressive to civilians. There was this view that the british could not possibly have done that they were gentlemen. They would fight a prim war. There is an exhibit upstairs you ought to look at. The green dragon he and several other bloodthirsty british officers put civilians to death at an alarming rate. This ship shows the british consciously, clinton, amherst, other commanders, consciously used the ship as a psychological weapon of terror and put thousands to the death. There were three wardens that oversaw prisoners. Commissaries by the lingo at the time. These men were diabolical. My last book was about the final days of the holocaust so i do not say this lightly but in reading about some of the things they did, it reminded me of some of the concentration camp commandants and i say that with respect. For example, cunningham, when a mother or a daughter or a wife would show up to see her loved one and maybe bring an apple or warm clothing, he would do the same thing he would make the prisoners watch and they knew what would happen he would have her stripped, put against the pole, and whipped. Then, he would take everything for himself. I estimate cunningham killed at least 250 american prisoners during the war. It seemed like about every two weeks he would be board. Bored. He would have six prisoners brought out around midnight and he would sit in a chair, as if it was entertainment, and he would have his guards torture them until they died. Then, they would dispose of the bodies and he would go to bed. This is cunningham. Sproat, the scotsman who was directly overseeing this ghost ship. At one point there is a Prisoner Exchange. It was always one for one. It was always equivalent. Sproat gives his charges, his prisoners, a last meal. It turns out to be a last meal. Unbeknownst to the prisoners, he poisons the food. Almost every american prisoner died on the schooners taking them home. These were the men in charge of these ships. Life on the ghost ship is unimaginable. First off, as i said they would , nail down the hatch, hammer up the portholes. Some of the men that died died from a lack of hygiene and health care. Some died from a lack of clean water. Hyxiation. Asp there was one man who described at night trying to light a candle and he could not. Every morning, it was the same scene. Every morning, the british would take the nails out of the hatch. They would yell the same thing rebels. Turn out your dead. Those that survived would say that at sunup, they would carry between six and 12 deceased prisoners up to the top deck where they would either be thrown in the water, at the time, a putrid bay, or they would be put in what the guards called a dead boat and those go and two of the prisoners would row the boat to shore. Those that stayed on the ship would say the guards would allow 1, 2, or three shovels of sand over the bodies before they would be bayoneted back to row back. Wild pigs, dogs, later at night, coyotes would come and eat the dead. At the next high tide, the bones would wash away. This was every day. There was no accommodation for human waste. There was a tub below decks and thats a open tub constantly overflowed. There was so little room below deck imagine 1200 men below decks. There was so little room that men were almost piled up on top of one another that in order to have a place to lie down, the weakest, the oldest, the youngest would have to bunk around the tub in open urine. Every few days, the british guards would announce it was time to carry it up and you did not want to be picked. Can you imagine trying to carry a large, heavy tub and you are dehydrated and weak, up a ladder . It spilled all over everyone. When they would take it up, they would dump it overboard and then sproat would tell the guards to drop a bucket in the water and bring it up and say, this is your water rations. If you did not drink, you died. If you drank, you died. If you did not eat, you died. If you ate, you died. I estimated they were given about two thirds of the caloric intake you needed to stay alive per day. They would dump it over and the men that had to carry the tub up were not allowed to bathe. The only chance to bathe would be if you happen to be on the top deck when it was raining, you could strip down and bathe. If not, you lived in that. Those folks typically died from disease, as well. They got water from two sources. For the crew and guards, they would send soldiers to find a creek to bring a barrel back for them. The prisoners got theirs from this putrid source. It was highly polluted. Some prisoners would say when they would try to drink, they could not get it passed their nose, even though they were dying of thirst. The food, they ate a variety of things, including hard tack, which would be basically a bi