On this episode of Our American Stories, during the American Revolution, the British converted the HMS Jersey into a floating prison off Brooklyn, New York. Disease, starvation, contaminated water, and deliberate cruelty turned the ship into what its prisoners called “Hell Afloat,” where more Americans died than in all the war’s battles combined.

Historian Robert P. Watson, author of The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn: An Untold Story of the American Revolution, shares the forgotten story of the prisoners who suffered aboard the HMS Jersey and the remarkable discovery of a 13-year-old survivor’s diary more than two centuries later.

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