fteenth Street. Parsons was below at Corlears Hook as appears from
_Document_ 32. Silliman himself says that he was in the city. Consult
map of New York, Part II., where the position at the time of the
British attack is given.]

Very early on the morning of the 15th, which was Sunday, the five
British frigates which had anchored under the Long Island shore sailed
up and took position close within musket-shot of our lines at Kip's
Bay, somewhat to the left of Douglas. This officer immediately moved
his brigade abreast of them. The ships were so near, says Martin, one
of Douglas' soldiers, that he could distinctly read the name of the
Phoenix, which was lying "a little quartering." Meanwhile, on the
opposite shore, in Newtown Creek, the British embarked their light
infantry and reserves, and Donop's grenadiers and yagers, all under
Clinton and Cornwallis, in eighty-four boats, and drew up in regular
order on the water ready to cross to the New York side.[181] The
soldier just quoted remembered that they looked like "a large clover
field in full bloom." All along the line our soldiers were watching
these movements with anxious curiosity--that night they would have
been withdrawn from the position--when suddenly between ten and eleven
o'clock the five frigates opened a sweeping fire from their seventy or
eighty guns upon the breastworks where Douglas and his brigade were
drawn up. It came like "a peal of thunder," and the militiamen could
do nothing but keep well under cover. The enemy fired at them at their
pleasure, from "their tops and everywhere," until our men soon found
it impossible to stay in that position. "We kept the lines," says
Martin, "till they were almost levelled upon us, when our officers,
seeing we could make no resistance, and no orders coming from any
superior officer, and that we must soon be entirely exposed to the
rake of the guns, gave the order to leave." At the same time the
flotilla crossed the river, and getting under cover of the smoke of
the ships' guns, struck off to the left of Douglas, where the troops
effected a landing without difficulty. Howe says: "The fire of the
shipping being so well directed and so incessant, the enemy could not
remain in their works, and the descent was made without the least
opposition." The ordeal the militia were subjected to was something
which in similar circumstances veteran troops have been unable to
withstand.[182] Retreating from the lines, Douglas's men s