27 August 1776, about noon
Long Island: the Maryland 400
By 11 a.m. Grant, reinforced by 2,000 marines, presses Stirling’s centre, the Hessians close in on his left, and British troops come up the Gowanus Road behind him. The only way out is across Brouwer’s millpond on Gowanus Creek, about 80 yards wide, to the American lines on the far side.
The Vechte–Cortelyou House, the Old Stone House where the Maryland troops attacked, photograph by John L. PierrepontWikimedia Commons, John L. Pierrepont, Public domain (Vechte-Cortelyou House-Brooklyn.jpg)
Stirling sends his men across the creek and keeps back about 260 Marylanders under Mordecai Gist. With them he attacks twice the more than 2,000 British, with two guns, holding the Vechte–Cortelyou House and the ground in front of it. Their attacks give most of Stirling’s 1,600 men time to cross. Some of the Marylanders are caught in the mud or cannot swim and are taken, and Stirling breaks through to the Hessians and surrenders to von Heister. Washington, watching from a redoubt on Cobble Hill, is reported to say “Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose.”
Sources
- Barnet Schecter, The Battle for New York (2002).
- John J. Gallagher, The Battle of Brooklyn 1776 (1995).
- David McCullough, 1776 (2005).
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