Thursday, October 15, 2026
This Event has been POSTPONED until 2027.
A Maritime Lair: The Royal Navy and Gardiner’s Bay
Gardiner’s Bay, a critical deep-water anchorage at the eastern end of Long Island, was the operational center for the Royal Navy throughout the American Revolution, serving as the indispensable staging ground for the British fleet. This talk will track the continuous flow of warships in and out of the bay, demonstrating its essential role in maintaining naval dominance over the approaches to New York and enabling major troop movements and coastal raids. By analyzing the Navy’s activity in this one location, we can fully appreciate how Gardiner’s Bay underpinned the entire British war effort in the northern theater.
Christopher F. Minty is project director of Naval Documents of the American Revolution at the Center for Digital Editing at the University of Virginia. He is author of Unfriendly to Liberty: Loyalist Networks and the Coming of the American Revolution in New York City, and serves as co-director of the Loyalist Institute at St. Thomas Aquinas College.