The HMS Rose was a British ship that we first discussed a little over a year ago. Her job was largely to patrol the waters off southern New England to prevent smuggling activity on the part of the Americans.

In July 1776 the Rose was dispatched—like many, many other British ships—to New York Harbor for the invasion of Long Island and, later, New York City. And today we look at some of her activity in the East River.

For those of you who know the area at all, the Kip’s Bay neighborhood is where the Midtown Tunnel opens at the Manhattan end; presumably it was an especially good place to do this because unlike much of Manhattan, the land that needed digging up wasn’t solid bedrock; it was a combination of wetland and fill material from construction projects. In fact, for a while there was a cement factory nearby and a lot of their castoffs were thrown in there. Cement is tough but it’s easier to get through than bedrock, especially when it’s not one big solid chunk.

At any rate, this move on the part of the Rose was just the beginning to what became known as the Battle of Kip’s Bay. So we’ll be coming back to this place a couple of times in the near future.

Not long after this action, the Rose moved down to the Chesapeake Bay and then to Georgia, where she was eventually deemed unfit for service and scuttled in the Savannah River, making ship passage impossible until the war’s end.

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