The Landing at Kip's Bay

On September 15, 1776, five British warships anchored off Kip's Bay, on Manhattan's east side around what is now 32nd to 38th Streets, and opened a broadside bombardment around eleven in the morning that flattened the American earthworks along the shore. Roughly 4,000 British and Hessian troops then rowed ashore while the defenders, mostly untested Connecticut militia under Colonel William Douglas, broke and fled without putting up much of a fight. George Washington rode in to rally the retreating men and instead watched them stream past him toward the woods. He was furious enough to throw his hat to the ground and, by multiple accounts, ask his troops if these were the men meant to defend America. The rout nearly trapped General Israel Putnam's forces further south, and it cost the Americans far more than it cost the British.