- Wallabout Bay
Wallabout Bay is small body of water in
Upper New York Bay along the northwest shore of theNew York City borough ofBrooklyn , between the present Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges, opposite Corlear's Hook onManhattan to the west, across theEast River . It is now the site of theBrooklyn Navy Yard .History
The Wallabout became the first spot on Long Island settled by Europeans in May
1624 , when several families of French-speakingWalloons opted to build homes there, having come across on the Dutch ship "New Netherland ".Starting in
1637 , the Wallabout served as the landing site of the firstferry across the East River from lower Manhattan.Cornelis Dircksen , the lone ferryman, farmed plots on both sides -- near to where theBrooklyn Bridge now spans -- to best employ his time on either bank of the river.A feudal system of
land tenure was suspended in1638 , and the small settlement became acolony offreeholder s: after a ten-year period of paying theDutch East India Company a tenth of their yield, colonists would own their farmland. ("Bruijk" means "to use" and "leen" means "loan" in Dutch.) The humble "Bruykleen Colonie" expanded out from the Wallabout to become thecity of Brooklyn .The area was the site where the infamous British prison ships moored during the
American Revolutionary War (most horrific of which was the HMS "Jersey"), from about 1776-1783. Over 10,000 soldiers and sailors died due to deliberate neglect on these rotting hulks, more American deaths than from every battle of the war combined. Though their corpses were buried on the eroding shore in shallow graves, or often simply thrown overboard, local women collected remains when they became exposed or washed onshore and many more were discovered with the development of the area and expansion of piers. The nearbyPrison Ship Martyrs' Monument inFort Greene Park houses remains of the prisoners and overlooks the site of their torment and death.The bay eventually became the site of the famous
Brooklyn Navy Yard .Gabriel Furman, in his [http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/30/ "Notes Geographical and Historical, relating to the Town of Brooklyn, in Kings County on Long-Island"] (1824), traces the name from the Dutch "Waal bocht" or "bay (or bight) of the Walloons", referring to the original French-speaking settlers of the local area.
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