The young rifleman recounts what happens next: “[I] was upstairs in an out-house and spied as I peeped out the bay something resembling a wood of pine trees trimmed … I could not believe my eyes.” What McCurtin actually sees are vertical masts, basically a forest of them, spread wide across the harbor. As he describes further, “In about ten minutes the whole bay was full of ship[s] as ever it could be. I declare that I thought all London was afloat.” This first wave of General Howe’s fleet is between forty and fifty ships, sailing just above Sandy Hook, and east of Staten Island. Soon,
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