The Special Relationship

At Sandy Hook, New Jersey is  the Halyburton Memorial:

Sandy Hook is a finger-like peninsula extending north towards New York City, separating Raritan Bay from the Atlantic Ocean.  Location of a lighthouse and several actions during the Revolutionary War, it was also the embarkation point for British General Henry Clinton in the withdrawal across New Jersey following the Battle of Monmouth.

As the British were evacuating American nation following the peace treaty, on December 31, 1783, Lieutenant Hamilton Douglas-Halyburton and twelve or thirteen British crewmen (sources vary) went in search of a group of deserters.  Reports indicate a blizzard enveloped them, and they all died.  They were buried in a mass grave on Sandy Hook, where Halyburton's mother caused a monument to be erected.  Their graves were vandalized; discovered years later, their bones were relocated to Brooklyn and in 1937 the present memorial was erected by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Like the grave of Cornet Geary in Flemington, or the grave of  Lt. Col. Henry Monckton, killed at Monmouth, the American landscape remains the final resting place for these tree British officers.  Each gravesite is marked and respected, despite the fact that the war was so bitter and desperate.

Those who doubt, or fail to understand, the deep links between the United Kingdom and the United States would do well to visit these places.

Sandy Hook and the Absence of Memory

I have not made an exhaustive study, but it would appear that Sandy Hook accounts for perhaps more action than any other sole place during the Revolution.  David C. Munn, in his 1976 Battles and Skirmishes in New Jersey of the Revolutionary War, identifies 29 separate naval actions in or around Sandy Hook, and 18 separate land actions.  Here is the lighthouse as it looks today, farther inland from the tip than it was at the time:

In his study of engagements during the Revolution and American casualties, Howard H. Peckham notes 1331 military (as opposed to naval) engagements.  The first listed land action in New Jersey in his The Toll of Independence was at Sandy Hook on April 23, 1776--prior to the Declaration of Independence--when, as he writes, "Americans captured 35 of a watering party from HMS Asia, Capt. Vandeput." A day later, "[a]nother British watering party fled into lighthouse and was captured by Americans." For a more comprehensive discussion of activity at Sandy Hook, see the article appearing in the U.S. Lighthouse Society publication 

I have noted throughout this blog that the Revolutionary War was a mosaic of many pieces, and that there were many smaller skirmishes and battles that were no less deadly--and in some cases, there were more killed than in some of the more famous actions.  When you look at a place like Sandy Hook and walk its grounds, it is worth thinking about those 18 separate land actions that occurred here.