Gravesend was granted, allowing the men of the town to operate boats between London and the town; these became known as the "Long Ferry". It became the preferred form of passage, because of the perils of road travel (see below). On Gravesend's river front are the remains of a Tudor fort built by command of King Henry VIII in 1543. On 21 March 1617, John Rolfe and Rebecca (aka Princess Pocahontas) with their two-year-old son, Thomas, boarded a ship in London bound for the Commonwealth of Virginia; the ship had only sailed as far as Gravesend before Rebecca fell fatally ill,
Gravesend, Brooklyn Gravesend, Brooklyn Gravesend is a neighborhood in the south-central section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, on the southwestern edge of Long Island in the U.S. state of New York. As of 2010, Gravesend had a population of 29,436. Gravesend was one of the original towns in the Dutch colony of New Netherland. After the English took over, it was one of the six original towns of Kings County in colonial New York. It was the only English chartered town in what became Kings County. It was designated as the "Shire Town" when the English assumed control in