MEMORIAL TO JERSEY PRISON SHIP HEROES.
Since many prominent Irish Americans played an important part in the success of the project for a fitting memorial to the heroes of the British prison-ships of the Revolution, it is fit that reference be made here to this noble tribute and the manner of its accomplishment.
The magnificent monument, costing in the neighborhood of $200,000, was dedicated at Fort Greene Park, Borough of Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1908, in the presence of one of the most distinguished and representative gatherings which ever honored a like occasion in this country. Addresses were made by President-elect Taft, by Governor Hughes of New York, Secretary Luke E. Wright of the Navy, and by other distinguished men, including Patrick F. McGowan, Chairman of the Board of Aldermen of the City of New York, and Daniel F. Cohalan, Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society of New York, an organization which did much toward the success of the project and which contributed a substantial amount.
The monument itself is one of the finest memorials in the world. It stands in the center of a broad plaza, reached by three flights of 34 steps each, 100 feet in width. The height from the bottom of the plaza to the top of the monument is nearly 200 feet. The top is accessible and is reached by an electric elevator. The monument is constructed of white granite from New York state, and the steps from granite quarried at Stonington, Penobscot Bay, Maine. The architects were McKim, Mead and White, and the work is said to have been the last of an extensive nature by the late Stanford White.
The funds for the erection of this noteworthy tribute were obtained through a government appropriation of half the amount, a state appropriation of $25,000, an appropriation by the city of twice that amount, and the rest through subscriptions from societies and historical and patriotic organizations. The Tammany Society contributed the final $1,000 to complete the required amount. This well-known organization was the very first to secure a proper recognition of the courage and patriotism of the prison ship martyrs more than one hundred years ago.
Among the heroes of the British prison-ships were many of Irish birth or extraction, and it is therefore a subject for pride and satisfaction to us as a race that their valor has at last been recognized, and especially that an organization largely controlled by our people has played so important a part in the accomplishment of such recognition. Never in the history of the world have prisoners of war been made the victims of such unexampled cruelties as those practised on the Americans by the British in the Revolution, and it is a striking and never-to-be-forgotten commentary on British methods toward their enemies in war that the record of the prison-ships of the Revolution is deemed by all the world a black mark on English history.