Update: We’ve just been advised that the re-enactment event has been cancelled because the group doing the re-enactment has a schedule conflict. This Saturday, August 23, from noon to 2:00 p.m. there will be a re-enactment of the evacuation of the Continental Army, under the command of General George Washington, from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The event will be at the site where the original evacuation began, now the “pebble beach” near the Main Street entrance to Brooklyn Bridge Park, in DUMBO (see photo). The re-enactors will be members of Glover’s Marblehead Regiment, from Marblehead, Massachusetts, who carry on the tradition of the fishermen whose boats carried Washington’s troops across the East River to the temporary safety of Manhattan, and would later carry them across the Delaware to the Americans’ first victories, at Trenton and Princeton.
The evacuation took place on the night of August 29 and morning of August 30, 1776. It followed what could have been a crushing blow to the cause of independence; the near rout of American forces in the Battle of Brooklyn, the first time Washington’s army had faced British troops. There’s more about the evacuation here. The Massachusetts sailors may fairly claim to have saved the Revolution, as can the brave Marylanders who fought, with terrible casualties, at the Old Stone House to cover Washington’s retreat to Brooklyn Heights.
The event is free; there’s more information here.
