Philip Freneau, the poet of the Revolution, as he has been called, was of French Huguenot ancestry. The Freneaus came to New York in 1685. His mother was Agnes Watson, a resident of New York, and the poet was born on the second of January, 1752.

In the year 1780 a vessel of which he was the owner, called the Aurora, was taken by the British. Freneau was on board, though he was not the captain of the ship. The British man-of-war, Iris, made the Aurora her prize, after a fight in which the sailing master and many of the crew were killed. This was in May, 1780. The survivors were brought to New York, and confined on board the prison ship, Scorpion. Freneau has left a poem describing the horrors of his captivity in very strong language, and it is easy to conceive that his suffering must have been intense to have aroused such bitter feelings. We give a part of his poem, as it contains the best description of the indignities inflicted upon the prisoners, and their mental and physical sufferings that we have found in any work on the subject.

Conveyed to York we found, at length, too late,
That Death was better than the prisoner's fate
There doomed to famine, shackles, and despair,
Condemned to breathe a foul, infected air,
In sickly hulks, devoted while we lay,--
Successive funerals gloomed each dismal day

The various horrors of these hulks to tell--
These prison ships where Pain and Penance dwell,
Where Death in ten-fold vengeance holds his reign,
And injured ghosts, yet unavenged, complain:
This be my task--ungenerous Britons, you
Conspire to murder whom you can't subdue

* * * * *

So much we suffered from the tribe I hate,
So near they shoved us to the brink of fate,
When two long months in these dark hulks we lay,
Barred down by night, and fainting all the day,
In the fierce fervors of the solar beam
Cooled by no breeze on Hudson's mountain stream,
That not unsung these threescore days shall fall
To black oblivion that would cover all.

No masts or sails these crowded ships adorn,
Dismal to view, neglected and forlorn;
Here mighty ills oppressed the imprisoned throng;
Dull were our slumbers, and our nights were long.
From morn to eve along the decks we lay,
Scorched into fevers by the solar ray;
No friendly awning cast a welcome shade,
Once was it promised, and was never made;
No favors could these sons of Death bestow,
'Twas endless vengeance, and unceasing woe.
Immortal hatred doth their breasts engage,
And this lost empire swells their souls with rage.

Two hulks on Hudson's stormy bosom lie,
Two, on the east, alarm the pitying eye,
There, the black Scorpion at her mooring rides,
And there Strombolo, swinging, yields the tides;
Here bulky Jersey fills a larger space,
And Hunter, to all hospitals disgrace.
Thou Scorpion, fatal to thy crowded throng,
Dire theme of horror to Plutonian song,
Requir'st my lay,--thy sultry decks I know,
And all the torments that exist below!
The briny wave that Hudson's bosom fills
Drained through her bottom in a thousand rills;
Rotten and old, replete with sighs and groans,
Scarce on the water she sustained her bones:

Here, doomed to toil, or founder in the tide,
At the moist pumps incessantly we plied;
Here, doomed to starve, like famished dogs we tore
The scant allowance that our tyrants bore.
Remembrance shudders at this scene of fears,
Still in my view, some tyrant chief appears,
Some base-born Hessian slave walks threatening by,
Some servile Scot with murder in his eye,
Still haunts my sight, as vainly they bemoan
Rebellions managed so unlike their own.
O may I never feel the poignant pain
To live subjected to such fiends again!
Stewards and mates that hostile Britain bore,
Cut from the gallows on their native shore;
Their ghastly looks and vengeance beaming eyes
Still to my view in dismal visions rise,--
O may I ne'er review these dire abodes,
These piles for slaughter floating on the floods!
And you that o'er the troubled ocean go
Strike not your standards to this venomed foe,
Better the greedy wave should swallow all,
Better to meet the death-conducting ball,
Better to sleep on ocean's oozy bed,
At once destroyed and numbered with the dead,
Than thus to perish in the face of day
Where twice ten thousand deaths one death delay.
When to the ocean sinks the western sun,
And the scorched tories fire their evening gun,
"Down, rebels, down!" the angry Scotchmen cry,
"Base dogs, descend, or by our broadswords die!"

Hail, dark abode! What can with thee compare?
Heat, sickness, famine, death, and stagnant air,--

* * * * *

Swift from the guarded decks we rushed along,
And vainly sought repose, so vast our throng.
Three hundred wretches here, denied all light,
In crowded quarters pass the infernal night.
Some for a bed their tattered vestments join,
And some on chest, and some on floors recline;
Shut from the blessings of the evening air
Pensive we lay with mingled corpses there:
Meagre and wan, and scorched with heat below,
We looked like ghosts ere death had made us so:
How could we else, where heat and hunger joined
Thus to debase the body and the mind?
Where cruel thirst the parching throat invades,
Dries up the man and fits him for the shades?
No waters laded from the bubbling spring
To these dire ships these little tyrants bring--
By plank and ponderous beams completely walled
In vain for water, still in vain we called.
No drop was granted to the midnight prayer
To rebels in these regions of despair!
The loathsome cask a deadly dose contains,
Its poison circles through the languid veins.
"Here, generous Briton, generous, as you say,
To my parched tongue one cooling drop convey--
Hell has no mischief like a thirsty throat,
Nor one tormentor like your David Sproat!"

Dull flew the hours till, from the East displayed,
Sweet morn dispelled the horrors of the shade:
On every side dire objects met the sight,
And pallid forms, and murders of the night:
The dead were past their pains, the living groan,
Nor dare to hope another morn their own.

* * * * *

O'er distant streams appears the living green,
And leafy trees on mountain tops are seen:
But they no grove or grassy mountain tread,
Marked for a longer journey to the dead.

Black as the clouds that shade St. Kilda's shore,
Wild as the winds that round her mountains roar,
At every post some surly vagrant stands,
Culled from the English, or the Scottish bands.
Dispensing death triumphantly they stand,
Their musquets ready to obey command;
Wounds are their sport, and ruin is their aim;
On their dark souls compassion has no claim,
And discord only can their spirits please,
Such were our tyrants here, such foes as these.

* * * * *

But such a train of endless woes abound
So many mischiefs in these hulks are found
That on them all a poem to prolong
Would swell too high the horrors of our song.
Hunger and thirst to work our woe combine,
And mouldy bread, and flesh of rotten swine;
The mangled carcase and the battered brain;
The doctor's poison, and the captain's cane;
The soldier's musquet, and the steward's debt:
The evening shackle, and the noonday threat.

* * * * *

That charm whose virtue warms the world beside,
Was by these tyrants to our use denied.
While yet they deigned that healthsome balm to lade,
The putrid water felt its powerful aid;
But when refused, to aggravate our pains,
Then fevers raged and revelled through our veins;
Throughout my frame I felt its deadly heat;
I felt my pulse with quicker motions beat;
A pallid hue o'er every face was spread,
Unusual pains attacked the fainting head:
No physic here, no doctor to assist,
With oaths they placed me on the sick man's list:
Twelve wretches more the same dark symptoms took,
And these were entered on the doctor's book.
The loathsome Hunter was our destined place,
The Hunter, to all hospitals disgrace.
With soldiers sent to guard us on the road,
Joyful we left the Scorpion's dire abode:
Some tears we shed for the remaining crew,
Then cursed the hulk, and from her sides withdrew.

THE HOSPITAL PRISON SHIP

Now towards the Hunter's gloomy decks we came,
A slaughter house, yet hospital in name;
For none came there till ruined with their fees,
And half consumed, and dying of disease:--

But when too near, with laboring oar, we plied,
The Mate, with curses, drove us from the side:--
That wretch, who banished from the navy crew,
Grown old in blood did here his trade renew.
His rancorous tongue, when on his charge let loose,
Uttered reproaches, scandal, and abuse;
Gave all to hell who dared his king disown,
And swore mankind were made for George alone.
A thousand times, to irritate our woe,
He wished us foundered in the gulph below:
A thousand times he brandished high his stick,
And swore as often, that we were not sick:--
And yet so pale! that we were thought by some
A freight of ghosts from Death's dominions come.
But, calmed at length, for who can always rage?
Or the fierce war of boundless passion wage?
He pointed to the stairs that led below
To damps, disease, and varied forms of woe:--
Down to the gloom I took my pensive way,
Along the decks the dying captives lay,
Some struck with madness, some with scurvy pained,
But still of putrid fevers most complained.
On the hard floors the wasted objects laid
There tossed and tumbled in the dismal shade:
There no soft voice their bitter fate bemoaned,
But Death strode stately, while his victims groaned.
Of leaky decks I heard them long complain,
Drowned as they were in deluges of rain:
Denied the comforts of a dying bed,
And not a pillow to support the head:
How could they else but pine, and grieve and sigh,
Detest a wretched life, and wish to die?

Scarce had I mingled with this wretched band,
When a thin victim seized me by the hand:--
"And art thou come?"--death heavy on his eyes--
"And art thou come to these abodes?" he cries,
"Why didst thou leave the Scorpion's dark retreat?
And hither haste, a surer death to meet?
Why didst thou leave thy damp, infected cell?
If that was purgatory, this is hell.
We too, grown weary of that horrid shade,
Petitioned early for the Doctor's aid;
His aid denied, more deadly symptoms came,
Weak and yet weaker, glowed the vital flame;
And when disease had worn us down so low
That few could tell if we were ghosts or no,
And all asserted death would be our fate,
Then to the Doctor we were sent, too late"

Ah! rest in peace, each injured, parted shade,
By cruel hands in death's dark weeds arrayed,
The days to come shall to your memory raise
Piles on these shores, to spread through earth your praise.

THE HESSIAN DOCTOR

From Brooklyn heights a Hessian doctor came,
Nor great his skill, nor greater much his fame:
Fair Science never called the wretch her son,
And Art disdained the stupid man to own.

He on his charge the healing work begun
With antmomial mixtures by the tun:
Ten minutes was the time he deigned to stay,
The time of grace allotted once a day:
He drenched us well with bitter draughts, tis true,
Nostrums from hell, and cortex from Peru:
Some with his pills he sent to Pluto's reign,
And some he blistered with his flies of Spain.
His Tartar doses walked their deadly round,
Till the lean patient at the potion frowned,
And swore that hemlock, death, or what you will,
Were nonsense to the drugs that stuffed his bill.
On those refusing he bestowed a kick,
Or menaced vengeance with his walking stick:
Here uncontrolled he exercised his trade,
And grew experienced by the deaths he made.

Knave though he was, yet candor must confess
Not chief physician was this man of Hesse:
One master o'er the murdering tribe was placed,
By him the rest were honored or disgraced
Once, and but once, by some strange fortune led,
He came to see the dying and the dead.
He came, but anger so inflamed his eye,
And such a faulchion glittered on his thigh,
And such a gloom his visage darkened o'er,
And two such pistols in his hands he bore,
That, by the gods, with such a load of steel,
We thought he came to murder, not to heal.
Rage in his heart, and mischief in his head,
He gloomed destruction, and had smote us dead
Had he so dared, but fear withheld his hand,
He came, blasphemed, and turned again to land

THE BENEVOLENT CAPTAIN

From this poor vessel, and her sickly crew
A british seaman all his titles drew,
Captain, Esquire, Commander, too, in chief,
And hence he gained his bread and hence his beef:
But sir, you might have searched creation round,
And such another ruffian not have found
Though unprovoked an angry face he bore,--
All were astonished at the oaths he swore
He swore, till every prisoner stood aghast,
And thought him Satan in a brimstone blast
He wished us banished from the public light;
He wished us shrouded in perpetual night;

* * * * *

He swore, besides, that should the ship take fire
We, too, must in the pitchy flames expire--
That if we wretches did not scrub the decks
His staff should break our base, rebellious necks;

* * * * *

If, where he walked, a murdered carcase lay,
Still dreadful was the language of the day;
He called us dogs, and would have held us so,
But terror checked the meditated blow
Of vengeance, from our injured nation due,
To him, and all the base, unmanly crew
Such food they sent to make complete our woes
It looked like carrion torn from hungry crows
Such vermin vile on every joint were seen,
So black, corrupted, mortified, and lean,
That once we tried to move our flinty chief,
And thus addressed him, holding up the beef--
"See, Captain, see, what rotten bones we pick,
What kills the healthy cannot cure the sick,
Not dogs on such by Christian men are fed,
And see, good master, see, what lousy bread!"
"Your meat or bread," this man of death replied,
"Tis not my care to manage or provide
But this, base rebel dogs I'd have you know,
That better than you merit we bestow--
Out of my sight!" nor more he deigned to say,
But whisked about, and frowning, strode away

CONCLUSION

Each day at least six carcases we bore
And scratched them graves along the sandy shore
By feeble hands the shallow graves were made,
No stone memorial o'er the corpses laid
In barren sands and far from home they lie,
No friend to shed a tear when passing by
O'er the mean tombs insulting Britons tread,
Spurn at the sand, and curse the rebel dead.
When to your arms these fatal islands fall--
For first or last, they must be conquered, all,
Americans! to rites sepulchral just
With gentlest footstep press this kindred dust,
And o'er the tombs, if tombs can then be found,
Place the green turf, and plant the myrtle round

This poem was written in 1780, the year that Freneau was captured. He was on board the Scorpion and Hunter about two months, and was then exchanged. We fear that he has not in the least exaggerated the horrors of his situation. In fact there seem to have been many bloody pages torn from the book of history, that can never be perused. Many dark deeds were done in these foul prisons, of which we can only give hints, and the details of many crimes committed against the helpless prisoners are left to our imaginations. But enough and more than enough is known to make us fear thatinhumanity, a species of cruelty unknown to the lower animals, is really one of the most prominent characteristics of men. History is a long and bloody record of battles, massacres, torture chambers; greed and violence; bigotry and sin. The root of all crimes is selfishness. What we call inhumanity is we fear notinhuman, buthuman nature unrestrained. It is true that some progress is made, and it is no longer the custom to kill all captives, at least not in civilized countries. But war will always be "horrida bella," chiefly because war means license, when the unrestrained, wolfish passions of man get for the time the upper hand. Our task, however, is not that of a moralist, but of a narrator of facts, from which all who read can draw the obvious moral for themselves.

Of all the ships that were ever launched the "Old Jersey" is the most notorious. Never before or since, in the dark annals of human sufferings, has so small a space enclosed such a heavy weight of misery. No other prison has destroyed so many human beings in so short a space of time. And yet the Jersey was once as staunch and beautiful a vessel as ever formed a part of the Royal Navy of one of the proudest nations of the world. How little did her builders imagine that she would go down to history accompanied by the execrations of all who are acquainted with her terrible record!

It is said that it was in the late spring of 1780 that the Old Jersey, as she was then called, was first moored in Wallabout Bay, off the coast of Long Island. We can find no record to prove that she was used as a prison ship until the winter of that year. She was, at first, a hospital ship for British soldiers.

The reason for the removal of the unfortunate prisoners from the ships in New York Harbor was that pestilential sickness was fast destroying them, and it was feared that the inhabitants of New York would suffer from the prevailing epidemics. They were therefore placed in rotten hulks off the quiet shores of Long Island, where, secluded from the public eye, they were allowed to perish by the thousands from cruel and criminal neglect.

"The Old Jersey and the two hospital ships," says General J. Johnson, "remained in the Wallabout until New York was evacuated by the British. The Jersey was the receiving ship: the others, truly, the ships of death!

"It has been generally thought that all the prisoners died on board the Jersey. This is not true. Many may have died on board of her who were not reported as sick, but all who were placed on the sick list were removed to the hospital ships, from which they were usually taken, sewed up in a blanket, to their graves.

"After the hospital ships were brought into the Wallabout, it was reported that the sick were attended by physicians. Few indeed were those who recovered, or came back to tell the tale of their sufferings in those horrible places. It was no uncommon sight to see five or six dead bodies brought on shore in a single morning, when a small excavation would be dug at the foot of the hill, the bodies cast into it, and then a man with a shovel would quickly cover them by shovelling sand down the hill upon them.

"Many were buried in a ravine of this hill and many on Mr. Remsen's farm. The whole shore, from Rennie's Point, to Mr. Remsen's dooryard, was a place of graves; as were also the slope of the hill near the house; the shore, from Mr. Remsen's barn along the mill-pond to Rappelye's farm; and the sandy island between the flood-gates and the mill-dam, while a few were buried on the shore on the east side of the Wallabout.

"Thus did Death reign here, from 1776 (when the Whitby prison ship was first moored in the Wallabout) until the peace. The whole Wallabout was a sickly place during the war. The atmosphere seemed to be charged with foul air: from the prison ships; and with the effluvia of dead bodies washed out of their graves by the tides. * * * More than half of the dead buried on the outer side of the mill-pond, were washed out by the waves at high tide, during northeasterly winds.

"The bodies of the dead lay exposed along the beach, drying and bleaching in the sun, and whitening the shores, till reached by the power of a succeeding storm, as the agitated waves receded, the bones receded with them into the deep, where they remain, unseen by man, awaiting the resurrection morn, when, again joined to the spirits to which they belong, they will meet their persecuting murderers at the bar of the Supreme Judge of the quick and the dead.

"We have ourselves," General Johnson continues, "examined many of the skulls lying on the shore. From the teeth they appeared to be the remains of men in the prime of life."

We will quote more of this interesting account written by an eyewitness of the horrors he records, in a later chapter. At present we will endeavor to give the reader a short history of the Jersey, from the day of her launching to her degradation, when she was devoted to the foul usages of a prison ship.

She was a fourth rate ship of the line, mounting sixty guns, and carrying a crew of four hundred men. She was built in 1736, having succeeded to the name of a celebrated 50-gun ship, which was then withdrawn from the service, and with which she must not be confounded. In 1737 she was fitted for sea as one of the Channel Fleet, commanded by Sir John Norris.

In the fall of 1738 the command of the Jersey was given to Captain Edmund Williams, and in July, 1739, she was one of the vessels which were sent to the Mediterranean under Rear Admiral Chaloner Ogle, when a threatened rupture with Spain rendered it necessary to strengthen the naval force in that quarter.

The trouble in the Mediterranean having been quieted by the appearance of so strong a fleet, in 1740 the Jersey returned home; but she was again sent out, under the command of Captain Peter Lawrence, and was one of the vessels forming the fleet of Sir John Norris, when, in the fall of that year and in the spring of 1741, that gentleman made his fruitless demonstrations against the Spanish coast. Soon afterwards the Jersey, still forming one of the fleet commanded by Sir Chaloner Ogle, was sent to the West Indies, to strengthen the forces at that station, commanded by Vice-Admiral Vernon, and she was with that distinguished officer when he made his well-known, unsuccessful attack on Carthagena, and the Spanish dominions in America in that year.

In March, 1743, Captain Lawrence was succeeded m the command of the Jersey by Captain Harry Norris, youngest son of Admiral Sir John Norris: and the Jersey formed one of the fleet commanded by Sir John Norris, which was designed to watch the enemy's Brest fleet; but having suffered severely from a storm while on that station, she was obliged to return to the Downs.

Captain Harry Norris having been promoted to a heavier ship, the command of the Jersey was given soon afterwards to Captain Charles Hardy subsequently well known as Governor of the Colony of New York; and in June, 1744, that officer having been appointed to the command of the Newfoundland Station, she sailed for North America, and bore his flag in those waters during the remainder of the year. In 1745, still under the immediate command of Captain Hardy, the Jersey was one of the ships which, under Vice-Admiral Medley, were sent to the Mediterranean, where Vice-Admiral Sir William Rowley then commanded; and as she continued on that station during the following year there is little doubt that Captain Hardy remained there, during the remainder of his term of service on that vessel.

It was while under the command of Captain Hardy in July, 1745, that the Jersey was engaged with the French ship, St. Esprit, of 74 guns, in one of the most desperate engagements on record. The action continued during two hours and a half, when the St. Esprit was compelled to bear away for Cadiz, where she was repaired and refitted for sea. At the close of Sir Charles Hardy's term of service in 1747, the Jersey was laid up, evidently unfit for active service; and in October, 1748, she was reported among the "hulks" in port.

On the renewal of hostilities with France in 1756 the Jersey was refitted for service, and the command given to Captain John Barker, and in May, 1757, she was sent to the Mediterranean, where, under the orders of Admiral Henry Osbourne, she continued upwards of two years, having been present, on the 28th of February, 1758, when M. du Quesne made his ineffectual attempt to reinforce M. De la Clue, who was then closely confined, with the fleet under his command, in the harbor of Carthagena.

On the 18th of August, 1759, while commanded by Captain Barker, the Jersey, with the Culloden and the Conqueror, were ordered by Admiral Boscowan, the commander of the fleet, to proceed to the mouth of the harbor of Toulon, for the purpose of cutting out or destroying two French ships which were moored there under cover of the batteries with the hope of forcing the French Admiral, De la Clue, to an engagement. The three ships approached the harbour, as directed, with great firmness; but they were assailed by so heavy a fire, not only from the enemy's ships and fortifications, but from several masked batteries, that, after an unequal but desperate contest of upwards of three hours, they were compelled to retire without having succeeded in their object; and to repair to Gibraltar to be refitted.

In the course of the year 1759 Captain Barker was succeeded in the command of the Jersey by Captain Andrew Wilkinson, under whom, forming one of the Mediterranean fleet, commanded by Sir Charles Saunders, she continued in active service until 1763.

In 1763 peace was established, and the Jersey returned to England and was laid up; but in May, 1766, she was again commissioned, and under the command of Captain William Dickson, and bearing the flag of Admiral Spry, she was ordered to her former station in the Mediterranean, where she remained three years.

In the spring of 1769, bearing the flag of Commodore Sir John Byron, the Jersey sailed for America. She seems to have returned home at the close of the summer, and her active duties appear to have been brought to an end.

She remained out of commission until 1776, when, without armament, and under the command of Captain Anthony Halstead, she was ordered to New York as a hospital ship.

Captain Halstead died on the 17th of May, 1778, and, in July following, he was succeeded by Commander David Laird, under whom, either as a hospital, or a prison ship, she remained in Wallabout bay, until she was abandoned at the close of the war, to her fate, which was to rot in the mud at her moorings, until, at last, she sank, and for many years her wretched worm-eaten old hulk could be seen at low tide, shunned by all, a sorry spectacle, the ghost of what had once been a gallant man-of-war.

This short history of the Jersey has been condensed from the account written in 1865 by Mr. Henry B. Dawson and published at Morrisania, New York, in that year.

In an oration delivered by Mr. Jonathan Russel, in Providence, R. I., on the 4th of July 1800, he thus speaks of this ill-fated vessel and of her victims: "But it was not in the ardent conflicts of the field only, that our countrymen fell; it was not the ordinary chances of war alone which they had to encounter. Happy indeed, thrice happy were Warren, Montgomery, and Mercer; happy those other gallant spirits who fell with glory in the heat of the battle, distinguished by their country and covered with her applause. Every soul sensible to honor, envies rather than compassionates their fate. It was in the dungeons of our inhuman invaders; it was in the loathsome and pestiferous prisons, that the wretchedness of our countrymen still makes the heart bleed. It was there that hunger, and thirst, and disease, and all the contumely that cold-hearted cruelty could bestow, sharpened every pang of death. Misery there wrung every fibre that could feel, before she gave the Blow of Grace which sent the sufferer to eternity. It is said that poison was employed. No, there was no such mercy there. There, nothing was employed which could blunt the susceptibility to anguish, or which, by hastening death, could rob its agonies of a single pang. On board one only of these Prison ships above 11,000 of our brave countrymen are said to have perished. She was called the Jersey. Her wreck still remains, and at low ebb, presents to the world its accursed and blighted fragments. Twice in twenty-four hours the winds of Heaven sigh through it, and repeat the groans of our expiring countrymen; and twice the ocean hides in her bosom those deadly and polluted ruins, which all her waters cannot purify. Every rain that descends washes from the unconsecrated bank the bones of those intrepid sufferers. They lie, naked on the shore, accusing the neglect of their countrymen. How long shall gratitude, and even piety deny them burial? They ought to be collected in one vast ossory, which shall stand a monument to future ages, of the two extremes of human character: of that depravity which, trampling on the rights of misfortune, perpetrated cold and calculating murder on a wretched and defenceless prisoner; and that virtue which animated this prisoner to die a willing martyr to his country. Or rather, were it possible, there ought to be raised a Colossal Column whose base sinking to Hell, should let the murderers read their infamy inscribed upon it; and whose capital of Corinthian laurel ascending to Heaven, should show the sainted Patriots that they have triumphed.

"Deep and dreadful as the coloring of this picture may appear, it is but a taint and imperfect sketch of the original. You must remember a thousand unutterable calamities; a thousand instances of domestic as well as national anxiety and distress; which mock description. You ought to remember them; you ought to hand them down in tradition to your posterity, that they may know the awful price their fathers paid for freedom."

SONNET

SUGGESTED BY A VISION OF THE JERSEY PRISON SHIP

BY W P P

O Sea! in whose unfathomable gloom
A world forlorn of wreck and ruin lies,
In thy avenging majesty arise,
And with a sound as of the trump of doom
Whelm from all eyes for aye yon living tomb,
Wherein the martyr patriots groaned for years,
A prey to hunger and the bitter jeers
Of foes in whose relentless breasts no room
Was ever found for pity or remorse;
But haunting anger and a savage hate,
That spared not e'en their victim's very corse,
But left it, outcast, to its carrion fate
Wherefore, arise, O Sea! and sternly sweep
This floating dungeon to thy lowest deep

It was stated in the portion of the eloquent oration given in our last chapter that more than 11,000 prisoners perished on board the Jersey alone, during the space of three years and a half that she was moored in the waters of Wallabout Bay. This statement has never been contradicted, as far as we know, by British authority. Yet we trust that it is exaggerated. It would give an average of more than three thousand deaths a year. The whole number of names copied from the English War Records of prisoners on board the Jersey is about 8,000. This, however, is an incomplete list. You will in vain search through its pages to find the recorded names of many prisoners who have left well attested accounts of their captivity on board that fatal vessel. All that we can say now is that the number who perished there is very great.

As late as 1841 the bones of many of these victims were still to be found on the shores of Walabout Bay, in and around the Navy Yard. On the 4th of February of that year some workmen, while engaged in digging away an embankment in Jackson Street, Brooklyn, near the Navy Yard, accidentally uncovered a quantity of human bones, among which was a skeleton having a pair of iron manacles still upon the wrists. (See Thompson's History of Long Island, Vol. 1, page 247.)

In a paper published at Fishkill on the 18th of May, 1783, is the following card: "To All Printers, of Public Newspapers:--Tell it to the world, and let it be published in every Newspaper throughout America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, to the everlasting disgrace and infamy of the British King's commanders at New York: That during the late war it is said that 11,644 American prisoners have suffered death by their inhuman, cruel, savage, and barbarous usage on board the filthy and malignant British prison ship called the Jersey, lying at New York. Britons tremble, lest the vengeance of Heaven fall on your isle, for the blood of these unfortunate victims!

"An American"

"They died, the young, the loved, the brave, The death barge came for them,
And where the seas yon black rocks lave
Is heard their requiem
They buried them and threw the sand
Unhallowed o'er that patriot band

The black ship like a demon sate
Upon the prowling deep,
From her came fearful sounds of hate,
Till pain stilled all in sleep
It was the sleep that victims take,
Tied, tortured, dying, at the stake.

Yet some the deep has now updug,
Their bones are in the sun,
Whether by sword or deadly drug
They perished, one by one,
Was it not dread for mortal eye
To see them all so strangely die?

Are there those murdered men who died
For freedom and for me?
They seem to point, in martyred pride
To that spot upon the sea
From whence came once the frenzied yell,
From out that wreck, that prison hell"

This rough but strong old poem was written many years ago by a Mr. Whitman We have taken the liberty of retouching it to a slight degree.

It is well known thattwenty hogsheads of bones were collected in 1808 from the shores of the Wallabout, and buried under the auspices of the Tammany Society in a vault prepared for the purpose. These were but a small part of the remains of the victims of the prison ships. Many were, as we have seen, washed into the sea, and many more were interred on the shores of New York Harbor, before the prison ships were removed to the Wallabout. It will be better that we should give the accounts left to us by eye witnesses of the sufferings on board these prison ships, and we will therefore quote from the narrative of John Van Dyke, who was confined on board the Jersey before her removal to the Wallabout.

Captain John Van Dyke was taken prisoner in May, 1780, at which time he says: "We were put on board the prison ship Jersey, anchored off Fly Market. (New York City) This ship had been a hospital ship. When I came on board her stench was so great, and my breathing this putrid air--I thought it would kill me, but after being on board some days I got used to it, and as though all was a common smell. * * *

"On board the Jersey prison ship it was short allowance, so short a person would think it was not possible for a man to live on. They starved the American prisoners to make them enlist in their service. I will now relate a fact. Every man in a mess of six took his daily turn to get the mess's provisions. One day I went to the galley and drew a piece of salt, boiled pork. I went to our mess to divide it. * * * I cut each one his share, and each one eat our day's allowance in one mouthful of this salt pork and nothing else. One day called peaday I took the drawer of our doctor's chest (Dr. Hodges of Philadelphia) and went to the galley, which was the cooking place, with my drawer for a soup dish. I held it under a large brass cock, the cook turned it. I received the allowance of my mess, and behold! Brown water, and fifteen floating peas--no peas on the bottom of my drawer, and this for six men's allowance for 24 hours. The peas were all in the bottom of the kettle. Those left would be taken to New York and, I suppose, sold.

"One day in the week, called pudding day, we would receive three pounds of damaged flour, in it would be green lumps such as their men would not eat, and one pound of very bad raisins, one third raisin sticks. We would pick out the sticks, mash the lumps of flour, put all with some water into our drawer, mix our pudding and put it into a bag and boil it with a tally tied to it with the number of our mess. This was a day's allowance. We, for some time, drew a half pint of rum for each man. One day Captain Lard (Laird) who commanded the ship Jersey, came on board. As soon as he was on the main deck of the ship he cried out for the boatswain. The boatswain arrived and in a very quick motion, took off his hat. There being on deck two half hogshead tubs where our allowance of rum was mixed into grog, Captain L., said, 'Have the prisoners had their allowance of rum today?' 'No, sir' answered the boatswain. Captain L. replied, 'Damn your soul, you rascal, heave it overboard.'

"The boatswain, with help, upset the tubs of rum on the middle deck. The grog rum run out of the scuppers of the ship into the river. I saw no more grog on board. * * * Every fair day a number of British officers and sergeants would come on board, form in two ranks on the quarter deck, facing inwards, the prisoners in the after part of the quarter deck. As the boatswain would call a name, the word would be 'Pass!' As the prisoners passed between the ranks officers and sergeants stared them in the face. This was done to catch deserters, and if they caught nothing the sergeants would come on the middle deck and cry out 'Five guineas bounty to any man that will enter his Majesty's service!'

"Shortly after this party left the ship a Hessian party would come on board, and the prisoners had to go through the same routine of duty again.

"From the Jersey prison ship eighty of us were taken to the pink stern sloop-of-war Hunter, Captain Thomas Henderson, Commander. We were taken there in a large ship's long boat, towed by a ten-oar barge, and one other barge with a guard of soldiers in the rear.

"On board the ship Hunter we drew one third allowance, and every Monday we received a loaf of wet bread, weighing seven pounds for each mess. This loaf was from Mr. John Pintard's father, of New York, the American Commissary, and this bread, with the allowance of provisions, we found sufficient to live on.

"After we had been on board some time Mr. David Sproat, the British Commissary of prisoners, came on board; all the prisoners were ordered aft; the roll was called and as each man passed him Mr. Sproat would ask, 'Are you a seaman?' The answer was 'Landsman, landsman.' There were ten landsmen to one answer of half seaman. When the roll was finished Mr. Sproat said to our sea officers, 'Gentlemen, how do you make out at sea, for the most part of you are landsmen?'

"Our officers answered: 'You hear often how we make out. When we meet our force, or rather more than our force we give a good account of them.'

"Mr. Sproat asked, 'And are not your vessels better manned than these. Our officers replied, 'Mr Sproat, we are the best manned out of the port of Philadelphia.' Mr. Sproat shrugged his shoulders saying, 'I cannot see how you do it.'"

We do not understand what John Van Dyke meant by his expression "half seaman." It is probable that the sailors among the prisoners pretended to be soldiers in order to be exchanged. There was much more difficulty in exchanging sailors than soldiers, as we shall see. David Sproat was the British Commissary for Naval Prisoners alone. In a paper published in New York in April 28th, 1780, appears the following notice:--"I do hereby direct all Captains, Commanders, Masters, and Prize Masters of ships and other vessels, who bring naval prisoners into this port, immediately to send a list of their names to this office, No. 33 Maiden Lane, where they will receive an order how to dispose of them.

"(Signed) David Sproat."

The Jersey and some of the other prison ships often had landsmen among their prisoners, at least until the last years of the war, when they were so overcrowded with sailors, that there must have been scant room for any one else.

The next prisoner whose recollections we will consider is Captain Silas Talbot, who was confined on board the Jersey in the fall of 1780. He says: "All her port holes were closed. * * * There were about 1,100 prisoners on board. There were no berths or seats, to lie down on, not a bench to sit on. Many were almost without cloaths. The dysentery, fever, phrenzy and despair prevailed among them, and filled the place with filth, disgust and horror. The scantiness of the allowance, the bad quality of the provisions, the brutality of the guards, and the sick, pining for comforts they could not obtain, altogether furnished continually one of the greatest scenes of human distress and misery ever beheld. It was now the middle of October, the weather was cool and clear, with frosty nights, so that the number of deaths per day wasreduced to an average of ten, and this number was considered by the survivors a small one, when compared with the terrible mortality that had prevailed for three months before. The human bones and skulls, yet bleaching on the shore of Long Island, and daily exposed, by the falling down of the high bank on which the prisoners were buried, is a shocking sight, and manifestly demonstrates that the Jersey prison ship had been as destructive as a field of battle."

Ebenezer Fox, a prisoner on board the Jersey, wrote a little book about his dreadful experiences when he was a very old man. The book was written in 1838, and published by Charles Fox in Boston in 1848. Ebenezer Fox was born in the East Parish of Roxbury, Mass., in 1763. In the spring of 1775 he and another boy named Kelly ran away to sea. Fox shipped as a cabin boy in a vessel commanded by Captain Joseph Manchester.

He made several cruises and returned home. In 1779 he enlisted, going as a substitute for the barber to whom he was apprenticed. His company was commanded by Captain William Bird of Boston in a regiment under Colonel Proctor. Afterwards he signed ship's papers and entered the naval service on a twenty gun ship called the Protector, Captain John F. Williams of Massachusetts. On the lst of April, 1780, they sailed for a six months cruise, and on the ninth of June, 1780, fought the Admiral Duff until she took fire and blew up. A short time afterwards the Protector was captured by two English ships called the Roebuck and Mayday.

Fox concealed fifteen dollars in the crown of his hat, and fifteen more in the soles of his shoes.

All the prisoners were sent into the hold. One third of the crew of the Protector were pressed into the British service. The others were sent to the Jersey. Evidently this prison ship had already become notorious, for Fox writes: "The idea of being incarcerated in this floating pandemonium filled us with horror, but the ideas we had formed of its horror fell far short of the reality. * * * The Jersey was removed from the East River, and moored with chain cables at the Wallabout in consequence of the fears entertained that the sickness which prevailed among the prisoners might spread to the shore. * * * I now found myself in a loathsome prison, among a collection of the most wretched and disgusting looking objects that I ever beheld in human form.

"Here was a motley crew, covered with rags and filth; visages pallid with disease; emaciated with hunger and anxiety; and hardly retaining a trace of their original appearance. Here were men, who had once enjoyed life while riding over the mountain wave or roaming through pleasant fields, full of health and vigor, now shrivelled by a scanty and unwholesome diet, ghastly with inhaling an impure atmosphere, exposed to contagion; in contact with disease, and surrounded with the horrors of sickness, and death. Here, thought I, must I linger out the morning of my life" (he was seventeen) "in tedious days and sleepless nights, enduring a weary and degrading captivity, till death should terminate my sufferings, and no friend will know of my departure.

"A prisoner on board the 'Old Jersey!' The very thought was appalling. I could hardly realize my situation.

"The first thing we found it necessary to do after our capture was to form ourselves into small parties called messes, consisting of six in each, as previous to doing this, we could obtain no food. All the prisoners were obliged to fast on the first day of their arrival, and seldom on the second could they obtain any food in season for cooking it. * * * All the prisoners fared alike; officers and sailors received the same treatment on board of this old hulk. * * * We were all 'rebels.' The only distinction known among us was made by the prisoners themselves, which was shown in allowing those who had been officers previous to their captivity, to congregate in the extreme afterpart of the ship, and to keep it exclusively to themselves as their place of abode. * * * The prisoners were confined in the two main decks below. The lowest dungeon was inhabited by those prisoners who were foreigners, and whose treatment was more severe than that of the Americans.

"The inhabitants of this lower region were the most miserable and disgusting looking objects that can be conceived. Daily washing in salt water, together with their extreme emaciation, caused the skin to appear like dried parchment. Many of them remained unwashed for weeks; their hair long, and matted, and filled with vermin; their beards never cut except occasionally with a pair of shears, which did not improve their comeliness, though it might add to their comfort. Their clothes were mere rags, secured to their bodies in every way that ingenuity could devise.

"Many of these men had been in this lamentable condition for two years, part of the time on board other prison ships; and having given up all hope of ever being exchanged, had become resigned to their situation. These men were foreigners whose whole lives had been one continual scene of toil, hardship, and suffering. Their feelings were blunted; their dispositions soured; they had no sympathies for the world; no home to mourn for; no friends to lament for their fate. But far different was the condition of the most numerous class of prisoners, composed mostly of young men from New England, fresh from home.

"They had reason to deplore the sudden change in their condition. * * * The thoughts of home, of parents, brothers, sisters, and friends, would crowd upon their minds, and brooding on what they had been, and what they were, their desire for home became a madness. The dismal and disgusting scene around; the wretched objects continually in sight; and 'hope deferred which maketh the heart sick', produced a state of melancholy that often ended in death,--the death of a broken heart."

Fox describes the food and drink, the prison regulations, deaths, and burials, just as they were described by Captain Dring, who wrote the fullest account of the Jersey, and from whose memoirs we shall quote further on. He says of their shallow graves in the sand of the Wallabout: "This was the last resting place of many a son and a brother,--young and noble-spirited men, who had left their happy homes and kind friends to offer their lives in the service of their country. * * * Poor fellows! They suffered more than their older companions in misery. They could not endure their hopeless and wearisome captivity:--to live on from day to day, denied the power of doing anything; condemned to that most irksome and heart-sickening of all situations, utter inactivity; their restless and impetuous spirits, like caged lions, panted to be free, and the conflict was too much for endurance, enfeebled and worn out as they were with suffering and confinement. * * * The fate of many of these unhappy victims must have remained forever unknown to their friends; for in so large a number, no exact account could be kept of those who died, and they rested in a nameless grave; while those who performed the last sad rites were hurried away before their task was half completed, and forbid to express their horror and indignation at this insulting negligence towards the dead. * * *

"The regular crew of the Jersey consisted of a Captain, two Mates, a steward, a cook, and about twelve sailors. There was likewise on board a guard of about thirty soldiers, from the different regiments quartered on Long Island, who were relieved by a fresh party every week.

"The physical force of the prisoners was sufficient at any time to take possession of the ship, but the difficulty was to dispose of themselves after a successful attempt. Long Island was in possession of the British, and the inhabitants were favorable to the British cause. To leave the ship and land on the island, would be followed by almost certain detection; and the miseries of our captivity would be increased by additional cruelties heaped upon us from the vindictive feelings of our oppressors.

"Yet, small as was the chance for succeeding in the undertaking, the attempt to escape was often made, and in not a few instances with success.

"Our sufferings were so intolerable, that we felt it to be our duty to expose ourselves to almost any risk to obtain our liberty. To remain on board of the prison ship seemed to be certain death, and in its most horrid form; to be killed, while endeavoring to get away, could be no worse.

"American prisoners are proverbial for their ingenuity in devising ways and means to accomplish their plans, whether they be devised for their own comfort and benefit, or for the purpose of annoying and tormenting their keepers.

"Although we were guarded with vigilance yet there did not appear much system in the management of the prisoners; for we frequently missed a whole mess from our number, while their disappearance was not noticed by our keepers. Occasionally a few would be brought back who had been found in the woods upon Long Island, and taken up by the Tories.

"Our mess one day noticed that the mess that occupied the place next to them were among the missing. This circumstance led to much conjecture and inquiry respecting the manner in which they had effected their escape. By watching the movements of our neighbors we soon found out the process necessary to be adopted.

"Any plan which a mess had formed they kept a secret among their number, in order to insure a greater prospect of success. * * * For the convenience of the officers of the ship a closet, called the "round house", had been constructed under the forecastle, the door of which was kept locked. This room was seldom used, there being other conveniences in the ship preferable to it.

"Some of the prisoners had contrived to pick the lock of the door; and as it was not discovered the door remained unfastened.

"After we had missed our neighbor prisoners, and had ascertained to our satisfaction their mode of operation, the members of our mess determined to seize the first opportunity that offered to attempt our escape. We selected a day, about the 15th of August, and made all the preparations in our power for ensuring us success in our undertaking. At sunset, when the usual cry from the officer of the guard, 'Down, rebels, down!' was heard, instead of following the multitude down the hatchways, our mess, consisting of six, all Americans, succeeded in getting into the 'round house', except one. The round house was found too small to contain more than five; and the sixth man, whose name, I think, was Putnam of Boston, concealed himself under a large tub, which happened to be lying near the place of our confinement. The situation of the five, as closely packed in the round house as we could stand and breathe, was so uncomfortable as to make us very desirous of vacating it as soon as possible.

"We remained thus cooped up, hardly daring to breathe, for fear we should be heard by the guard. The prisoners were all below, and no noise was heard above, saving the tramp of the guard as he paced the deck. It was customary, after the prisoners were secured below, for the ship's mate every night to search above; this, however, was considered a mere formality, and the duty was very imperfectly executed. While we were anxiously awaiting the completion of this service, an event transpired, that we little anticipated, and which led to our detection.

"One of the prisoners, an Irishman, had made his arrangements to escape the same evening, and had not communicated with any one on the subject except a countryman of his, whom he persuaded to bury him up in the coal hole, near the forecastle.

"Whether his friend covered him faithfully or not, or whether the Irishman thought that if he could not see anybody, nobody could see him, or whether, feeling uncomfortable in his position, he turned over to relieve himself, I know not; but when the mate looked in the coal hole he espied something rather whiter than the coal, which he soon ascertained to be the Irishman's shoulder. This discovery made the officer suspicious, and induced him to make a more thorough search than usual.

"We heard the uproar that followed the discovery, and the threats of the mate that he would search every damned corner. He soon arrived at the round house, and we heard him ask a soldier for the key. Our hopes and expectations were a little raised when we heard the soldier reply, 'There is no need of searching this place, for the door is kept constantly locked.'

"But the mate was not to be diverted from his purpose, and ordered the soldier to get the key.

"During the absence of the soldier, we had a little time to reflect upon the dangers of our situation; crowded together in a space so small as not to admit of motion; with no other protection than the thickness of a board; guarded on the outside by about twelve soldiers, armed with cutlasses, and the mate, considerably drunk, with a pistol in each hand, threatening every moment to fire through;--our feelings may be more easily conceived than described. There was but little time for deliberation; something must be immediately done. * * * In a whispered consultation of some moments, we conceived that the safest course we could pursue would be to break out with all the violence we could exercise, overcome every obstacle, and reach the quarter-deck. By this time the soldier had arrived with the key, and upon applying it, the door was found to be unlocked. We now heard our last summons from the mate, with imprecations too horrible to be repeated, and threatening us with instant destruction if we did not immediately come out.

"To remain any longer where we were would have been certain death to some of us; we therefore carried our hastily formed plan into execution. The door opened outwards, and forming ourselves into a solid body, we burst open the door, rushed out pellmell, and making a brisk use of our fists, knocked the guard heels over head in all directions, at the same time running with all possible speed for the quarter-deck. As I rushed out, being in the rear, I received a wound from a cutlass on my side, the scar of which remains to this day.

"As nearly all the guards were prostrated by our unexpected sally, we arrived at our destined place, without being pursued by anything but curses and threats.

"The mate exercised his authority to protect us from the rage of the soldiers, who were in pursuit of us, as soon as they had recovered from the prostration into which they had been thrown; and, with the assistance of the Captain's mistress, whom the noise had brought upon deck, and whose sympathy was excited when she saw we were about to be murdered: she placed herself between us and the enraged guard, and made such an outcry as to bring the Captain" (Laird) "up, who ordered the guard to take their station at a little distance and to watch us narrowly. We were all put in irons, our feet being fastened to a long bar, a guard placed over us, and in this situation we were left to pass the night.

"During the time of the transactions related, our fellow prisoner, Putnam, remained quietly under the tub, and heard the noise from his hiding place. He was not suffered to remain long in suspense. A soldier lifted up the tub, and seeing the poor prisoner, thrust his bayonet into his body, just above his hip, and then drove him to the quarter-deck, to take his place in irons among us. The blood flowed profusely from his wound, and he was soon after sent on board the hospital ship, and we never heard anything respecting him afterwards.

"With disappointed expectations we passed a dreary night. A cold fog, followed by rain, came on; to which we were exposed, without any blankets or covering to protect us from the inclemency of the weather. Our sufferings of mind and body during that horrible night, exceeded any that I have ever experienced.

"We were chilled almost to death, and the only way we could preserve heat enough in our bodies to prevent our perishing, was to lie upon each other by turns.

"Morning at last came, and we were released from our fetters. Our limbs were so stiff that we could hardly stand. Our fellow prisoners assisted us below, and wrapping us in blankets, we were at last restored to a state of comparative comfort.

"For attempting to escape we were punished by having our miserable allowance reduced one third in quantity for a month; and we had found the whole of it hardly sufficient to sustain life. * * *

"One day a boat came alongside containing about sixty firkins of grease, which they called butter. The prisoners were always ready to assist in the performance of any labor necessary to be done on board of the ship, as it afforded some little relief to the tedious monotony of their lives. On this occasion they were ready to assist in hoisting the butter on board. The firkins were first deposited upon the deck, and then lowered down the main hatchway. Some of the prisoners, who were the most officious in giving their assistance, contrived to secrete a firkin, by rolling it forward under the forecastle, and afterwards carrying it below in their bedding.

"This was considered as quite a windfall; and being divided among a few of us, proved a considerable luxury. It helped to fill up the pores in our mouldy bread, when the worms were dislodged, and gave to the crumbling particles a little more consistency.

"Several weeks after our unsuccessful attempt to escape, another one attended with better success, was made by a number of the prisoners. At sunset the prisoners were driven below, and the main hatchway was closed. In this there was a trap-door, large enough for a man to pass through, and a sentinel was placed over it with orders to permit one prisoner at a time to come up during the night.

"The plan that had been formed was this:--one of the prisoners should ascend, and dispose of the sentinel in such a manner that he should be no obstacle in the way of those who were to follow.

"Among the soldiers was an Irishman who, in consequence of having a head of hair remarkable for its curly appearance, and withal a very crabbed disposition, had been nicknamed 'Billy the Ram'. He was the sentinel on duty this night, for one was deemed sufficient, as the prisoners were considered secure when they were below, having no other place of egress saving the trap-door, over which the sentinel was stationed.

"Late in the night one of the prisoners, a bold, athletic fellow, ascended upon deck, and in an artful manner engaged the attention of Billy the Ram, in conversation respecting the war; lamenting that he had engaged in so unnatural a contest, expressing his intention of enlisting in the British service, and requesting Billy's advice respecting the course necessary to be pursued to obtain the confidence of the officers.

"Billy happened to be in a mood to take some interest in his views, and showed an inclination, quite uncommon for him, to prolong the conversation. Unsuspicious of any evil design on the part of the prisoner, and while leaning carelessly on his gun, Billy received a tremendous blow from the fist of his entertainer on the back of his head, which brought him to the deck in a state of insensibility.

"As soon as he was heard to fall by those below, who were anxiously awaiting the result of the friendly conversation of their pioneer with Billy, and were satisfied that the final knock-out argument had been given, they began to ascend, and, one after another, to jump overboard, to the number of about thirty.

"The noise aroused the guard, who came upon deck, where they found Billy not sufficiently recovered from the stunning effects of the blow he had received to give any account of the transaction. A noise was heard in the water; but it was so dark that no object could be distinguished. The attention of the guard, however, was directed to certain spots which exhibited a luminous appearance, which salt water is known to assume in the night when it is agitated, and to these appearances they directed their fire, and getting out the boats, picked out about half the number that attempted to escape, many of whom were wounded, though not one was killed. The rest escaped.

"During the uproar overhead the prisoners below encouraged the fugitives, and expressed their approbation of their proceedings in three hearty cheers; for which gratification we suffered our usual punishment--a short allowance of our already short and miserable fare.

"For about a fortnight after this transaction it would have been a hazardous experiment to approach near to 'Billy the Ram', and it was a long time before we ventured to speak to him, and finally to obtain from him an account of the events of the evening.

"Not long after this another successful attempt to escape was made, which for its boldness is perhaps unparalleled in the history of such transactions.

"One pleasant morning about ten o'clock a boat came alongside, containing a number of gentlemen from New York, who came for the purpose of gratifying themselves with a sight of the miserable tenants of the prison-ship, influenced by the same kind of curiosity that induces some people to travel a great distance to witness an execution.

"The boat, which was a beautiful yawl, and sat like a swan upon the water, was manned by four oarsmen, with a man at the helm. Considerable attention and respect was shown the visitors, the ship's side being manned when they showed their intention of coming on board, and the usual naval courtesies extended. The gentlemen were soon on board; and the crew of the yawl, having secured her to the forechains on the larboard side of the ship, were permitted to ascend the deck.

"A soldier as usual was pacing with a slow and measured tread the whole length of the deck, wheeling round with measured precision, when he arrived at the end of his walk; and whether upon this occasion, any one interested in his movements had secretly slipped a guinea into his hand, not to quicken but to retard his progress, was never known; but it was evident to the prisoners that he had never occupied so much time before in measuring the distance with his back to the place where the yawl was fastened.

"At this time there were sitting in the forecastle, apparently admiring the beautiful appearance of the yawl, four mates and a captain, who had been brought on board as prisoners a few days previous, taken in some vessel from a southern port.

"As soon as the sentry had passed these men, in his straightforward march, they, in a very quiet manner, lowered themselves down into the yawl, cut the rope, and the four mates taking in hand the oars, while the captain managed the helm, in less time than I have taken to describe it, they were under full sweep from the ship. They plied the oars with such vigor that every stroke they took seemed to take the boat out of the water. In the meantime the sentry heard nothing and saw nothing of this transaction, till he had arrived at the end of his march, when, in wheeling slowly round, he could no longer affect ignorance, or avoid seeing that the boat was several times its length from the ship. He immediately fired; but, whether he exercised his best skill as a marksman, or whether it was on account of the boat's going ahead its whole length at every pull of the rowers, I could never exactly ascertain, but the ball fell harmlessly into the water. The report of the gun brought the whole guard out, who blazed away at the fugitives, without producing any dimunition in the rapidity of their progress.

"By this time the officers of the ship were on deck with their visitors; and while all were gazing with astonishment at the boldness and effrontery of the achievement, the guard were firing as fast as they could load their guns. When the prisoners gave three cheers to the yawl's crew, as an expression of their joy at their success, the Captain ordered all of us to be driven below at the point of the bayonet, and there we were confined the remainder of the day.

"These five men escaped, greatly to the mortification of the captain and officers of the prison-ship. After this, as long as I remained a prisoner, whenever any visitors came on board, all the prisoners were driven below, where they were obliged to remain till the company had departed."

The miseries of our condition were continually increasing. The pestilence on board spread rapidly; and every day added to our bill of mortality. The young were its most frequent victims. The number of the prisoners was constantly augmenting, notwithstanding the frequent and successful attempts to escape. When we were mustered and called upon to answer to our names, and it was ascertained that nearly two hundred had mysteriously disappeared, without leaving any information of their departure, the officers of the ship endeavored to make amends for their past remissness by increasing the rigor of our confinement, and depriving us of all hope of adopting any of the means for liberating ourselves from our cruel thralldom, so successfully practiced by many of our comrades.

"With the hope that some relief might be obtained to meliorate the wretchedness of our situation, the prisoners petitioned General Clinton, commanding the British forces in New York, for permission to send a memorial to General Washington, describing our condition, and requesting his influence in our behalf, that some exchange of prisoners might be effected.

"Permission was obtained, and the memorial was sent. * * * General Washington wrote to Congress, and also to the British Commissary of Naval prisoners, remonstrating with him, deprecating the cruel treatment of the Americans, and threatening retaliation.

"The long detention of American sailors on board of British prison-ships was to be attributed to the little pains taken by our countrymen to retain British subjects who were taken prisoner on the ocean during the war. Our privateers captured many British seamen, who, when willing to enlist in our service, as was generally the case, were received on board of our ships. Those who were brought into port were suffered to go at large; for in the impoverished condition of the country, no state or town was willing to subject itself to the expence of maintaining prisoners in a state of confinement; they were permitted to provide for themselves. In this way the number of British seamen was too small for a regular and equal exchange. Thus the British seamen, after their capture, enjoyed the blessings of liberty, the light of the sun, and the purity of the atmosphere, while the poor American sailors were compelled to drag out a miserable existence amid want and distress, famine and pestilence. As every principle of justice and humanity was disregarded by the British in their treatment of the prisoners, so likewise was every moral and legal right violated in compelling them to enter into their service.

"We had obtained some information in relation to an expected draught that would soon be made upon the prisoners to fill up a complement of men that were wanted for the service of his Majesty's fleet.

"One day in the last part of August our fears for the dreaded event were realized. A British officer with a number of soldiers came on board. The prisoners were all ordered on deck, placed on the larboard gangway, and marched in single file round to the quarter-deck, where the officers stood to inspect them, and select such ones as suited their fancies without any reference to the rights of the prisoners. * * * We continued to march round in solemn and melancholy processsion, till they had selected from among our number about three hundred of the ablest, nearly all of whom were Americans, and they were directed to go below under a guard, to collect together whatever things they wished to take belonging to them. They were then driven into the boats, waiting alongside, and left the prison ship, not to enjoy their freedom, but to be subjected to the iron despotism, and galling slavery of a British man-of-war; to waste their lives in a foreign service; and toil for masters whom they hated. Such, however, were the horrors of our situation as prisoners, and so small was the prospect of relief, that we almost envied the lot of those who left the ship to go into the service of the enemy.

"That the reader may not think I have given an exaggerated account of our sufferings on board the Jersey, I will here introduce some facts related in the histories of the Revolutionary War. I introduce them as an apology for the course that I and many of my fellow citizens adopted to obtain temporary relief from our sufferings.

"The prisoners captured by Sir William Howe in 1776 amounted to several thousands. * * * The privates were confined in prisons, deserted churches, and other large open buildings, entirely unfit for the habitations of human beings, in severe winter weather, without any of the most ordinary comforts of life.

"To the indelible and everlasting disgrace of the British name, these unfortunate victims of a barbarity more befitting savages than gentlemen belonging to a nation boasting itself to be the most enlightened and civilized of the world,--many hundreds of them, perished from want of proper food and attention.

"The cruelty of their inhuman jailors was not terminated by the death of these wretched men, as so little care was taken to remove the corpses that seven dead bodies have been seen at one time lying in one of the buildings in the midst of their living fellow-prisoners, who were perhaps envying them their release from misery. Their food * * * was generally that which was rejected by the British ships as unfit to be eaten by the sailors, and unwholesome in the highest degree, as well as disgusting in taste and appearance.

"In December, 1776, the American board of war, after procuring such evidence as convinced them of the truth of their statements, reported that: 'There were 900 privates and 300 officers of the American army, prisoners in the city of New York, and 500 privates and 50 officers in Philadelphia. That since the beginning of October, all these officers and privates had been confined in prisons or in the provost. That, from the best evidence the subject could admit of, the general allowance of the prisoners did not exceed four ounces of meat a day, and that often so damaged as to be uneatable. That it had been a common practice of the British to keep their prisoners four or five days without a morsel of meat and thus tempt them to enlist to save their lives.'

"Many were actually starved to death, in hope of making them enroll themselves in the British army. The American sailors when captured suffered even more than the soldiers, for they were confined on board prison ships in great numbers, and in a manner which showed that the British officers were willing to treat fellow beings, whose only crime was love of liberty, worse than the vilest animals; and indeed in every respect, with as much cruelty as is endured by the miserable inhabitants of the worst class of slave ships. * * * In the course of the war it has been asserted on good evidence, that 11,000 prisoners died on board the Jersey. * * * These unfortunate beings died in agony in the midst of their fellow sufferers, who were obliged to witness their tortures, without the power of relieving their dying countrymen, even by cooling their parched lips with a drop of cold water, or a breath of fresh air; and, when the last breath had left the emaciated body, they sometimes remained for hours in close contact with the corpse, without room to shrink from companions that Death had made so horrible, and when at last the dead were removed, they were sent in boats to the shore, and so imperfectly buried that long after the war was ended, their bones lay whitening in the sun on the beach of Long Island, a lasting memorial of British cruelty, so entirely unwarranted by all the laws of war or even common humanity.

"They could not even pretend that they were retaliating, for the Americans invariably treated their prisoners with kindness, and as though they were fellow men. All the time that these cruelties were performed those who were deprived of every comfort and necessary were constantly entreated to leave the American service, and induced to believe, while kept from all knowledge of public affairs, that the republican cause was hopeless; that all engaged in it would meet the punishment of traitors to the king, and that all their prospect of saving their lives, or escaping from an imprisonment worse than death to young and high-spirited men, as most of them were, would be in joining the British army, where they would be sure of good pay and quick promotion.

"These were the means employed by our enemies to increase their own forces, and discourage the patriots, and it is not strange they were successful in many instances. High sentiments of honor could not well exist in the poor, half-famished prisoners, who were denied even water to quench their thirst, or the privilege of breathing fresh, pure air, and cramped, day after day, in a space too small to admit of exercising their weary limbs, with the fear of wasting their lives in a captivity, which could not serve their country, nor gain honor to themselves.

"But worse than all was the mortifying consideration that, after they had suffered for the love of their country, more than sailors in active service, they might die in these horrible places, and be laid with their countrymen on the shores of Long Island, or some equally exposed spot, without the rites of burial, and their names never be heard of by those who, in future ages, would look back to the roll of patriots, who died in defence of liberty, with admiration and respect, while, on the contrary, by dissembling for a time, they might be able to regain a place in the service so dear to them, and in which they were ready to endure any hardship or encounter any danger.

"Of all the prisons, on land or water, for the confinement of the Americans, during the Revolutionary War, the Old Jersey was acknowledged to be the worst; such an accumulation of horrors was not to be found in any other one, or perhaps in all collectively.

"The very name of it struck terror into the sailor's heart, and caused him to fight more desperately, to avoid being made a captive. Suffering as we did, day after day, with no prospect of relief, our numbers continually augmenting, * * * can it be thought strange that the younger part of the prisoners, to whom confinement seemed worse than death, should be tempted to enlist into the British service; especially when, by so doing, it was probable that some opportunity would be offered to desert? We were satisfied that death would soon put an end to our sufferings if we remained prisoners much longer, yet when we discussed the expediency of seeking a change in our condition, which we were satisfied could not be worse under any circumstances, and it was proposed that we should enter the service of King George, our minds revolted at the idea, and we abandoned the intention.

"In the midst of our distresses, perplexities, and troubles of this period, we were not a little puzzled to know how to dispose of the vermin that would accumulate upon our persons, notwithstanding all our attempts at cleanliness. To catch them was a very easy task, but to undertake to deprive each individual captive of life, as rapidly as they could have been taken, would have been a more herculean task for each individual daily, than the destruction of 3000 Philistines by Sampson of old. To throw them overboard would have been but a small relief, as they would probably add to the impurities of the boiler, by being deposited in it the first time it was filled up for cooking our unsavory mess. What then was to be done with them? A general consultation was held, and it was determined to deprive them of their liberty. This being agreed upon, the prisoners immediately went to work, for their comfort and amusement, to make a liberal contribution of those migratory creatures, who were compelled to colonize for a time within the boundaries of a large snuff box appropriated for the purpose. There they lay, snugly ensconced, of all colors, ages, and sizes, to the amount of some hundreds, waiting for orders.

"British recruiting officers frequently came on board, and held out to the prisoners tempting offers to enlist in his Majesty's service; not to fight against their own country, but to perform garrison duty in the island of Jamaica.

"One day an Irish officer came on board for this purpose, and not meeting with much success among the prisoners who happened to be on deck, he descended below to repeat his offers. He was a remarkably tall man, and was obliged to stoop as he passed along between decks. The prisoners were disposed for a frolic, and kept the officer in their company for some time, flattering him with expectations, till he discovered their insincerity, and left them in no very pleasant humor. As he passed along, bending his body and bringing his broad shoulders to nearly a horizontal position, the idea occurred to our minds to furnish him with some recruits from the colony in the snuff box. A favorable opportunity presented, the cover of the box was removed, and the whole contents discharged upon the red-coated back of the officer. Three cheers from the prisoners followed the migration, and the officer ascended to the deck, unconscious of the number and variety of the recruits he had obtained without the formality of an enlistment. The captain of the ship, suspecting that some joke had been practised, or some mischief perpetrated, from the noise below, met the officer at the head of the gangway, and seeing the vermin crawling up his shoulders, and aiming at his head, with the instinct peculiar to them, exclaimed, 'Hoot mon! what's the maitter wi' your back!' * * * By this time many of them in their wanderings, had travelled from the rear to the front, and showed themselves, to the astonishment of the officer. He flung off his coat, in a paroxysm of rage, which was not allayed by three cheers from the prisoners on deck. Confinement below, with a short allowance, was our punishment for this gratification.

"From some information we had obtained we were in daily expectation of a visit from the British recruiting officers, and from the summary method of their procedure, no one felt safe from the danger of being forced into their service. Many of the prisoners thought it would be better to enlist voluntarily, as it was probable that afterwards they would be permitted to remain on Long Island, preparatory to their departure to the West Indies, and during that time some opportunity would be offered for their escape to the Jersey shore. * * * Soon after we had formed this desperate resolve a recruiting officer came on board to enlist men for the 88th Regiment to be stationed at Kingston, in the island of Jamaica. * * * The recruiting officer presented his papers for our signature. We hesitated, we stared at each other, and felt we were about to do a deed of which we were ashamed, and which we might regret. Again we heard the tempting offers, and again the assurance that we should not be called upon to fight against our government or country, and with the hope that we should find an opportunity to desert, of which it was our firm intention to avail ourselves when offered,--with such hopes, expectations, and motives, we signed the papers, and became soldiers in his Majesty's service,

"How often did we afterwards lament that we had ever lived to see this hour? How often did we regret that we were not in our wretched prison ship again, or buried in the sand at the Wallabout!"

There were twelve of the prisoners who left the Jersey with Ebenezer Fox. They were at first taken to Long Island and lodged in barns, but so vigilantly were they guarded that they found it impossible to escape. They were all sent to Kingston, and Fox was allowed to resume his occupation as a barber, much patronized by the officers stationed at that post. He was soon allowed the freedom of the city, and furnished with a pass to go about it as much as he wished. At last, in company with four other Americans, he escaped, and after many adventures the party succeeded in reaching Cuba, by means of a small sailing boat which they pressed into service for that purpose. From Cuba they took passage in a small vessel for St. Domingo, and dropped anchor at Cape Francois, afterwards called Cape Henri. There they went on board the American frigate, Flora, of 32 guns, commanded by Captain Henry Johnson, of Boston.

The vessel soon sailed for France and took several prizes. It finally went up the Garonne to Bordeaux, where it remained nine months. In the harbor of Bordeaux were about six hundred vessels bearing the flags of various nations. Here they remained until peace was proclaimed, when Fox procured service on board an American brig lying at Nantes, and set sail for home in April, 1783.

At length he again reached his mother's house at Roxbury, after an absence of about three years. His mother, at first, did not recognize him. She entertained him as a stranger, until he made himself known, and then her joy was great, for she had long mourned him as lost.

Christopher Hawkins was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1764. When he was in his thirteenth year he sailed on board an American privateer as a cabin boy. The privateer was a schooner, called the Eagle, commanded by Captain Potter. Taken prisoner by the British, Hawkins was sent on board the Asia, an old transport ship, but was soon taken off this vessel, then used for the confinement of American prisoners, and sent on board a frigate, the Maidstone, to serve as a waiter to the British officers on board. He remained on board the Maidstone a year. At the end of that time he was allowed a good deal of liberty. He and another boy were sent on shore to New York with a message, managed to elude the sentinels, and escaped first to Long Island, and afterwards returned home to Providence.

About 1781 he again went on board a privateer under Captain Whipple, was again captured, and this time he was sent to the Jersey. He describes the condition of the prisoners on their way in a transport to this fearful prison ship. They were so crowded together that they could scarcely move, yet they all joined in singing a patriotic song every stanza of which ended with the words:

"For America and all her sons forever will shine!"

They were on board this transport three or four days unable to sit or lie down for want of room. When at last they reached the Jersey they found 800 prisoners on board. Many of these poor wretches would become sick in the night and die before day. Hawkins was obliged to lie down to rest only twenty feet from the gangway, and in the path of the prisoners who would run over him to get on the upper deck. He describes the condition of these men as appalling.

"Near us," he writes, "was a guard ship and hospital ship, and along the shore a line of sentinels at regular intervals."

Yet he determined to escape. Many did so; and many were murdered in the attempt. A mess of six had just met a dreadful fate. One of them became terrified and exclaimed as soon as he touched the water, "O Lord, I shall be drowned!" The guard turned out, and murdered five of the poor wretches. The sixth managed to hide, and held on by the flukes of the anchor with nothing but his nose above water. Early in the morning he climbed up the anchor over the bow of the ship to the forecastle, and fled below. A boy named Waterman and Hawkins determined to drop through a port-hole, and endeavor to reach Long Island by swimming. He thus describes the adventure:

"The thunder-storm was opportune to our design, for having previously obtained from the cook's room an old axe and crow-bar from the upper deck for the purpose, we concealed them till an opportunity should offer for their use. We took advantage of the peals of thunder in a storm that came over us in the afternoon to break one of the gun ports on the lower deck, which was strongly barred with iron and bolts. * * * When a peal of thunder roared we worked with all our might with the axe and crow-bar against the bars and bolts. When the peals subsided we ceased, without our blows being heard by the British, until another peal commenced. We then went to work again, and so on, until our work was completed to our liking. The bars and bolts, after we had knocked them loose, were replaced so as not to draw the attention of our British gentry if they should happen to visit the lower deck before our departure. We also hung some old apparel over and around the shattered gunport to conceal any marks.

"Being thus and otherwise prepared for our escape, the ship was visited by our Captain Whipple the next day after we had broken the gun-port. To him we communicated our intention and contemplated means of escape. He strongly remonstrated against the design. We told him we should start the ensuing evening. Captain Whipple answered:

"'How do you think of escaping?'

"I answered, 'By swimming to that point,' at the same time pointing to a place then in our view on Long Island, in a northeasterly direction from the prison ship. We must do this to avoid the sentinels who were stationed in the neighborhood of the ship.

"'What!' said Captain Whipple, 'Do you think of swimming to that point?'

"'Yes, we must, to avoid the sentinels,' I answered.

"'Well,' said Captain Whipple, 'Give it up, It is only throwing your lives away, for there is not a man on earth who can swim from this ship to that point as cold as the water is now. Why, how far do you think it is?'

"'Why,' I answered, 'Waterman and myself have estimated the distance at a mile and a half.'

"'Yes,' said he, 'It's all of two and a half miles. You cannot measure across as well as I can. So you had better give it up, for I have encouragement of getting home next week, and if I do, I will make it my whole business to get you all exchanged immediately.'

"Altho' Waterman was several years my senior in age, the conversation was carried on between Captain Whipple and myself for the reason that Captain W. was more acquainted with me than with Waterman, but Waterman was present." (Captain Whipple was captured five times during the Revolution, each time on his own vessel.)

"His advice had great weight on our minds, but did not shake our purpose. We had not been on board the Old Jersey more than one hour before we began to plot our escape. We had been only three days on board when we left it forever. We had been on board long enough to discover the awful scenes which took place daily in this 'floating hell.'

"Our preparations for leaving were completed by procuring a piece of rope from an old cable that was stretched under the fo'castle of the ship, * * * and wound around the cable to preserve it. We had each of us packed our wearing apparel in a knapsack for each, made on board the Old Jersey. I gave some of my apparel to the two Smiths. I stowed in my knapsack a thick woolen sailor jacket, well lined, a pair of thick pantaloons, one vest, a pair of heavy silver shoe buckles, two silk handkerchiefs, four silver dollars, not forgetting a junk bottle of rum, which we had purchased on board at a dear rate. Waterman had stowed his apparel and other articles in his knapsack. Mine was very heavy. It was fastened to my back with two very strong garters, passing over my shoulders, and under each arm, and fastened with a string to my breast, bringing my right and left garter in contact near the centre.

"Thus equipt we were ready to commit ourselves to the watery element, and to our graves, as many of our hardy fellow prisoners predicted. The evening was as good an one as we could desire at that season of the year, the weather was mild and hazy, and the night extremely dark.

"It was arranged between Waterman and myself that after leaving the ship we should be governed in our course by the lights on board the ships and the responses of the sentinels on shore, and after arriving on shore to repair near a dwelling house which we could see from the Old Jersey in the day time, and spend the balance of the night in a barn, but a few rods from the dwelling.

"Waterman was the first to leave the ship through the broken-open gun-port, and suspended to the rope by his hands, and at the end behind him (it was held) by several of our fellow prisoners whom we were leaving behind us, and with whom we affectionately parted with reciprocal good wishes. He succeeded in gaining the water and in leaving the ship without discovery from the British. It had been agreed, if detection was about to take place, that he should be received again into the ship. I had agreed to follow him in one minute in the same manner. I left and followed in half that time, and succeeded in leaving the ship without giving the least alarm to those who had held us in captivity.

"I kept along close to the side of the ship until I gained the stern, and then left the ship. This was all done very slowly, sinking my body as deep in the water as possible, without stopping my course, until I was at such a distance from her that my motions in the water would not create attention from those on board. After gaining a suitable distance from the ship, I hailed Waterman three times. He did not answer me. * * * I have never seen him since he left the Old Jersey to this day. His fate and success I have since learned from James Waterman, one of his brothers.

"In the meantime I kept on my course without thinking that any accident would befall him, as I knew him to be an excellent swimmer, and no fainthearted or timid fellow.

"I could take my course very well from the light reflected from the stern lanthorns of the prison, guards, and hospital ships, and also from the responses of the sentinels on shore; in the words, 'All's well.' These responses were repeated every half hour on board the guard ship, and by the sentinels. * * * These repetitions served me to keep the time I was employed in reaching the shore;--no object occupied my mind during this time so much as my friend Waterman, if I may except my own success in getting to land in safety.

"I flattered myself I should find him on shore or at the barn we had agreed to occupy after we might gain it. After I had been swimming nearly or quite two hours my knapsack had broken loose from my back, from the wearing off of the garters under my arms, in consequence of the friction in swimming. * * * This occurrence did not please me much. I endeavored to retain my knapsack by putting it under one arm, * * * but soon found that this impeded my progress, and led me from my true course. * * * By this time I had become much chilled, and benumbed from cold, but could swim tolerably well. * * * I hesitated whether or not to retain my knapsack longer in my possession, or part from it forever, I soon determined on the latter, and sent it adrift. In this balancing state of mind and subsequent decision I was cool and self collected as perhaps at any time in my life. * * * I now soon found I was close in with the shore. * * * I swam within twelve feet of the shore before I could touch bottom, and in so doing I found I could not stand, I was so cold * * * but I moved around in shoal water until I found I could stand, then stept on shore. * * * I had not sent my clothes adrift more than twenty-five minutes or so before striking the shore. I was completely naked except for a small hat on my head which I had brought from the Old Jersey. What a situation was this, without covering to hide my naked body, in an enemy's country, without food or means to obtain any, and among Tories more unrelenting than the devil,--more perils to encounter and nothing to aid me but the interposition of heaven! Yet I had gained an important portion of my enterprise: I had got on land, after swimming in the water two hours and a half, and a distance of perhaps two miles and a half."

Hawkins at last found the barn and slept in it the rest of the night, but not before falling over a rock in the darkness, and bruising his naked body severely. Next morning a black girl came into the barn, apparently hunting for eggs, but he did not dare reveal himself to her. He remained there all day, and endeavored to milk the cows, but they were afraid of a naked stranger. He left the place in the night and travelled east. In a field he found some overripe water melons, but they were neither wholesome nor palatable. After wandering a long time in the rain he came to another barn, and in it he slept soundly until late the next day. Nearly famished he again wandered on and found in an orchard a few half rotten pears. Near by was a potato patch which he entered hoping to get some of them. Here a young woman, who had been stooping down digging potatoes, started up. "I was, of course," he continues, "naked, my head excepted. She was, or appeared to be, excessively frightened, and ran towards a house, screeching and screaming at every step." Hawkins ran in the other direction, and got safely away. At last the poor boy found another barn, and lay, that night, upon a heap of flax. After sunrise next morning he concluded to go on his way. "I could see the farmers at their labor in the fields. I then concluded to still keep on my course, and go to some of these people then in sight. I was, by this time, almost worn out with hunger. I slowly approached two tall young men who were gathering garden sauce. They soon discovered me and appeared astonished at my appearance, and began to draw away from me, but I spoke to them in the following words:--'Don't be afraid of me: I am a human being!' They then made a halt and inquired of me, 'Are you scared?' 'No,' said I. They then advanced slowly towards me, and inquired, 'How came you here naked?'

"I seated myself on the ground and told them the truth."

One of the young men told him to conceal himself from the sight of the neighbors, and he would go and consult with his mother what had best be done. He soon returned, bringing two large pieces of bread and butter and a decent pair of pantaloons. He then told him to go to the side of the barn and wait there for his mother, but not to allow himself to be seen. The boys' mother came out to speak to him with a shirt on her arm. As he incautiously moved around the side of the barn to meet her, she exclaimed, "For God's sake don't let that black woman see you!" A slave was washing clothes near the back door of the farm house. The poor woman explained to Hawkins that this negress would betray him, "For she is as big a devil as any of the king's folks, and she will bring me out, and then we should all be put in the provost and die there, for my husband was put there more than two years ago, and rotted and died there not more than two weeks since."

The poor woman wept as she told her story, and the escaped prisoner wept with her. This woman and her two sons were Dutch, and their house was only nine miles from Brooklyn ferry. She now directed the boy to a house at Oyster Bay where she said there was a man who would assist him to escape.

After running many risks he found the house at last, but the woman who answered his knock told him that her husband was away and when he explained who he was she became very angry, and said that it was her duty to give him up. So he ran away from her, and at last fell into the hands of a party of British, who recaptured him, and declared that they would send him immediately back to the prison ship. They were quartered in a house near Oyster Bay, and here they locked him in a room, and he was told to lie down on some straw to sleep, as it was now night. In the night the fleas troubled him so much that he was very restless. A sentinel had been placed to guard him, and when this wretch heard him moving in the dark he exclaimed, "Lie still, G--d--- you," and pricked him several times with his bayonet, so that the poor boy felt the fresh blood running down his body. He begged the sentinel to spare his life, declaring that it was hard he should be killed merely because the fleas had made him restless. He now did not dare to move, and was obliged to endure the attacks the fleas and the stiffness of his wounds in perfect silence until the sentinel was relieved. The next sentinel was kind and humane and seemed to compassionate his sufferings. He said that some men were natural brutes, and seemed to take an interest in the boy, but could do little for him. At daylight he was sent to the quarters of a Tory colonel a mile from the guard room. The colonel was a tall man of fine appearance, who examined him, and then said he must be sent back to the Jersey. The poor lad was now left in an unlocked room on the ground floor of the colonel's house. He was given his breakfast, and a mulatto man was set to guard him. Now there was a pantry opening into this room, and a negro girl, who appeared very friendly with the mulatto, called him to eat his breakfast in this pantry. The mulatto, while eating, would look out every few minutes. Just after one of these inspections the boy got up softly, with his shoes in his hands, stepped across the room, out at the back door, and concealed himself in a patch of standing hemp. From thence he made his way into an orchard, and out into a wood lot. Here he hid himself and remained quiet for several hours, and although he heard several persons talking near him, he was not pursued. At last he stole out, walked about six miles, and at night fall entered a barn and slept there. He was in rather better case than before his recapture, for a doctor belonging to the British service had taken pity on him the night before, and had furnished him with warm clothes, shoes, and a little money.

Next morning a woman who lived in a small house near the road gave him some bread and milk. The time of the year was autumn, it was a day or two before Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown. He now very fortunately met an acquaintance named Captain Daniel Havens. He was an uncle of a boy named John Sawyer, with whom young Hawkins had run away from New York some years before. Through the agency of this old friend Hawkins got on board a smuggler in the night and finally reached home in safety.

Christopher Hawkins's account of the Old Jersey is not so reliable as that of some others who were among her inmates. He was only on board that vessel three days, but in that time he saw enough to decide him to risk death in the attempt to escape rather than remain any longer on board of her. He declares that: "The cruel and unjustifiable treatment of the prisoners by the British soon produced the most demoralizing effects upon them. Boxing was tolerated without stint.... After I left the ship an American vessel came into the port of New York as a cartel for the exchange of prisoners.... A ship's mate was so fortunate as to be one of the exchanged. He had a large chest on board, and, as privately as he could, he put the cabin boy into the chest, locked him in, and carried him on board the cartel. A prisoner named Spicer had seen the boy put into the chest, and after he had been conveyed on board the cartel, Spicer communicated the affair to the commanding officer on board the Jersey. The cartel was immediately boarded, as she had not yet left the port, and the boy was found and brought back. Spicer paid for his treachery with his life. The prisoners knocked him down the hatchway, when they were going down for the night; they then fell upon him, cut off his ears, and mangled him in a shocking manner, so that he died in a day or two."

This event occured after he left the ship, according to his own narrative. The same story is told in a different way by an eye witness of undoubted veracity. He says that the prisoners were so incensed against Spicer that they determined to kill him. For this purpose some of them held him, while another was about to cut his throat, when the guards, hearing the uproar, rushed down the hatchway, and rescued him.

Hawkins also says: "I one day observed a prisoner on the forecastle of the ship, with his shirt in his hands, having stripped it from his body, deliberately picking the vermin from the pleats and putting them in his mouth. * * * I stepped very near the man and commenced a conversation with him. He said he had been on board two years and a half, or eighteen months. He had completely lost count of time, was a skeleton and nearly naked. This was only one case from perhaps a hundred similar. This man appeared in tolerable health as to body, his emaciation excepted. * * * The discipline of the prisoners by the British was in many respects of the most shocking and appalling character. The roll of the prisoners, as I was informed, was called every three months, unless a large acquisiton of prisoners should render it necessary more often. The next day after our crew were put on board the roll was called, and the police regulations of the ship were read. I heard this. One of the new regulations was to the effect that every captive trying to get away should suffer instant death, and should not even be taken on board alive."

It appears that David Laird commanded the Old Jersey from 1778 until early in the year 1781. He was then relieved of the command, and this office was given to a man named John Sporne, or Spohn, until the 9th of April, 1783, when all the prisoners remaining in her were released, and she was abandoned. The dread of contagion kept visitors aloof. She was still moored in the mud of the Wallabout by chain cables, and gradually sank lower and lower. There is a beam of her preserved as a curiosity at the Naval Museum at Brooklyn.

David Laird, the Scotchman who commanded her until the early part of 1781, returned to New York after the peace of 1783 as captain of a merchant ship, and moored his vessel at or near Peck's Slip. A number of persons who had been prisoners on board the Jersey, and had suffered by his cruelty, assembled on the wharf to receive him, but he deemed it prudent to remain on ship-board during the short time his vessel was there.

It is in the recollections of Ebenezer Fox that we have the only mention ever made of a woman on board that dreadful place, the Old Jersey, and although she may have been and probably was an abandoned character, yet she seems to have been merciful, and unwilling to see the prisoners who were attempting to escape, butchered before her eyes. It is indeed to be hoped that no other woman ever set foot in that terrible place to suffer with the prisoners, and yet there are a few women's names in the list of these wretched creatures given in the appendix to this book. It is most likely, however, that these were men, and that their feminine appellations were nicknames.*

* One is named Nancy and one Bella, etc.

We must again quote from Ebenezer Fox, whose description of the provisions dealt out to the prisoners on board the prison ships shall now be given.

"The prisoners received their mess rations at nine in the morning. * * * All our food appeared to be damaged. The bread was mostly mouldy, and filled with worms. It required considerable rapping upon the deck, before these worms could be dislodged from their lurking places in a biscuit. As for the pork, we were cheated out of it more than half the time, and when it was obtained one would have judged from its motley hues, exhibiting the consistence and appearance of variegated soap, that it was the flesh of the porpoise or sea hog, and had been an inhabitant of the ocean, rather than a sty. * * * The flavor was so unsavory that it would have been rejected as unfit for the stuffing of even Bologna sausages. The provisions were generally damaged, and from the imperfect manner in which they were cooked were about as indigestible as grape shot. The flour and oatmeal was often sour, and when the suet was mixed with the flour it might be nosed half the length of the ship. The first view of the beef would excite an idea of veneration for its antiquity, * * * its color was a dark mahagony, and its solidity would have set the keenest edge of a broad axe at defiance to cut across the grain, though like oakum it could be pulled to pieces, one way, in strings, like rope yarn. * * * It was so completely saturated with salt that after having been boiled in water taken from the sea, it was found to be considerably freshened by the process. * * * Such was our food, but the quality was not all of which we had to complain. * * * The cooking was done in a great copper vessel. * * * The Jersey, from her size, and lying near the shore, was embedded in the mud, and I don't recollect seeing her afloat the whole time I was a prisoner. All the filth that accumulated among upwards of a thousand men was daily thrown overboard, and would remain there until carried away by the tide. The impurity of the water may be easily conceived, and in that water our meat was boiled. It will be recollected, too, that the water was salt, which caused the inside of the copper to be corroded to such a degree that it was lined with a coat of verdigris. Meat thus cooked must, in some degree, be poisoned, and the effects of it were manifest in the cadaverous countenances of the emaciated beings who had remained on board for any length of time.

"* * * We passed the night amid the accumulated horrors of sighs and groans; of foul vapor; a nauseous and putrid atmosphere, in a stifling and almost suffocating heat. * * * Little sleep could be enjoyed, for the vermin were so horribly abundant that all the personal cleanliness we could practice would not protect us from their attacks."

The public papers of the day often contained accounts of the cruelties practiced upon the prisoners on the ships. In thePennsylvania Packet of Sept. 4th, 1781, there is an extract from a letter written by a prisoner whose name is not given.

"New York August 10th 1781

"There is nothing but death or entering into the British service before me. Our ship's company is reduced by death and entering into the British service to the small number of 19. * * * I am not able to give you even the outlines of my exile; but this much I will inform you, that we bury 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 in a day. We have 200 more sick and falling sick every day; the sickness is the yellow fever, small pox, and in short everything else that can be mentioned."

"New London. Conn. March 3rd. 1782. Sunday last a flag ship returned from New York which brought twenty Americans who had been a long time on board a prison ship. About 1,000 of our countrymen remain in the prison ships at New York, great part of whom have been in close confinement for more than six months, and in the most deplorable condition: many of them seeing no prospect of release are entering into the British service to elude the contagion with which the ships are fraught."

"I am sorry to write you from this miserable place. I can assure you that since I have been here we have had only twenty men exchanged, although we are in number upwards of 700, exclusive of the sick in the Hospital ships, who died like sheep; therefore my intention is, if possible, to enter on board some merchant or transport vessel, as it is impossible for so many men to keep alive in one vessel."

"Providence. May 25th 1782. Sunday last a flag of truce returned here from New York and brought a few prisoners. We learn that 1100 Americans were on board the prison and hospital ships at New York, when the flag sailed from thence, and that from six to seven were generally buried every day."

"Salem. Mass. Extract from a letter of an officer on board the Jersey.--'The deplorable situation I am in cannot be expressed. The captains, lieutenants, and sailing masters have gone to the Provost, but they have only gotten out of the frying pan into the fire. I am left here with about 700 miserable objects, eaten up by lice, and daily taking fevers, which carry them off fast. Nov 9th 1782."

By repeated acts of cruelty on the part of the British the Americans were, at last, stung to attempt something like retaliation. In 1782 a prison ship, given that name, was fitted up and stationed in the Thames near New London, as we learn from the following extract:

"New London, Conn. May 24th 1782. Last Saturday the Retaliation prison ship was safely moored in the river Thames, about a mile from the ferry, for the receipt of such British prisoners as may fall into our hands, since which about 100 prisoners have been put on board."

It is said that this ship was in use but a short time, and we have been unable to learn anything further of her history.

Thomas Philbrook, who was a prisoner on board the Jersey for several months was one of the "working-party," whose duty it was to scrub the decks, attend to the sick, and bring up the dead. He says: "As the morning dawned there would be heard the loud, unfeeling, and horrid cry, 'Rebels! Bring up your dead!'

"Staggering under the weight of some stark, still form, I would at length gain the upper deck, when I would be met with the salutation: 'What!you alive yet? Well, you are a tough one!'"

Andrew Sherburne, a lad of seventeen, shipped on the Scorpion, Captain R. Salter, a small vessel, with a crew of eighteen men. This vessel was captured by the Amphion, about the middle of November, 1782. Sherburne says that the sailors plundered them of everything they possessed, and that thirteen of them were put on board the Amphion, and sent down to the cable tiers between the two decks, where they found nearly a hundred of their countrymen, who were prisoners of war.

"We were very much crowded, and having nothing but the cables to lay on, our beds were as hard and unpleasant as though they were made of cord wood, and indeed we had not sufficient room for each to stretch himself at the same time.

"After about two weeks we arrived at New York, and were put on board that wretched ship the Jersey. The New York prison ships had been the terror of American tars for years. The Old Jersey had become notorious in consequence of the unparallelled mortality on board her. * * *

"I entered the Jersey towards the last of November, I had just entered the eighteenth year of my age, and had now to commence a scene of suffering almost without a parallel. * * * A large proportion of the prisoners had been robbed of their clothing. * * * Early in the winter the British took the Chesapeake frigate of about thirty guns, and 300 hands. All were sent on board the Jersey, which so overcrowded her, that she was very sickly. This crew died exceedingly fast, for a large proportion were fresh hands, unused to the sea."

Sherburne says that boats from the city brought provisions to sell to such of the prisoners as were so fortunate as to be possessed of money, and that most of them were able to make purchases from them. A piece of sausage from seven to nine inches long sold for sixpence.

In January, 1783, Sherburne became ill and was sent to the Frederick, a hospital ship. In this two men shared every bunk, and the conditions were wretchedly unsanitary. He was placed in a bunk with a man named Wills from Massachusetts, a very gentle and patient sufferer, who soon died.

"I have seen seven men drawn out and piled together on the lower hatchway, who had died in one night on board the Frederick.

"There were ten or twelve nurses, and about a hundred sick. Some, if not all of the nurses, were prisoners. * * * They would indulge in playing cards and drinking, while their fellows were thirsting for water and some dying. At night the hatches were shut down and locked, and the nurses lived in the steerage, and there was not the least attention paid to the sick except by the convalescent, who were so frequently called upon that, in many cases, they overdid themselves, relapsed, and died."

Sherburne suffered extremely from the cold. "I have often," he says "toiled the greatest part of the night, in rubbing my feet and legs to keep them from freezing. * * * In consequence of these chills I have been obliged to wear a laced stocking upon my left leg for nearly thirty years past. My bunk was directly against the ballast-port; and the port not being caulked, when there came a snow-storm the snow would blow through the seams in my bed, but in those cases there was one advantage to me, when I could not otherwise procure water to quench my thirst. The provision allowed the sick was a gill of wine, and twelve ounces of bread per day. The wine was of an ordinary quality, and the bread made of sour or musty flour, and sometimes poorly baked. There was a small sheet iron stove between decks, but the fuel was green, and not plenty, and there were some peevish and surly fellows generally about it. I never got an opportunity to sit by it, but I could generally get the favor of some one near it to lay a slice of bread upon it, to warm or toast it a little, to put into my wine and water. We sometimes failed in getting our wine for several days together; we had the promise of its being made up to us, but this promise was seldom performed. * * * Water was brought on board in casks by the working party, and when it was very cold it would freeze in the casks, and it would be difficult to get it out. * * * I was frequently under the necessity of pleading hard to get my cup filled. I could not eat my bread, but gave it to those who brought me water. I have given three days allowance to have a tin cup of water brought me. * * * A company of the good citizens of New York supplied all the sick with a pint of good Bohea tea, well sweetened with molasses a day; and this was constant. I believe this tea saved my life, and the lives of hundreds of others. * * * The physicians used to visit the sick once in several days: their stay was short, nor did they administer much medicine. Were I able to give a full description of our wretched and filthy condition I should almost question whether it would be credited. * * * It was God's good pleasure to raise me up once more so that I could just make out to walk, and I was again returned to the Jersey prison ship."

Here he received sad news. One of his uncles was a prisoner on board the Jersey, and had been very kind to him, giving him a share of his money with which to purchase necessaries. Now he found his uncle about to take his place in the hospital ship. A boy named Stephen Nichols also informed him of the death in his absence of the gunner of their ship, whose name was Daniel Davis. This poor man had his feet and legs frozen, from which he died.

"Nichols and myself were quite attached to each other. * * * We stalked about the decks together, lamenting our forlorn condition. In a few days there came orders to remove all the prisoners from the Jersey in order to cleanse the ship. We were removed on board of transports, and directly there came on a heavy storm. The ship on which I was was exceedingly crowded, so that there was not room enough for each man to lay down under deck, and the passing and repassing by day had made the lower deck entirely wet. Our condition was distressing. After a few days we were all put on board the Jersey again. A large number had taken violent colds, myself among the rest. The hospital ships were soon crowded, and even the Jersey herself shortly became about as much of a hospital ship as the others."

Sherburne was again sent to a hospital ship, where he was rejoiced to find his uncle convalescing. A man who lay next him had been a nurse, but had had his feet and legs frozen, the toes and bottom of his feet fell off.

Two brothers shared a bunk near him. Their names were John and Abraham Falls. John was twenty-three, and Abraham only sixteen. Both were very sick. One night Abraham was heard imploring John not to lie on him, and the other invalids reproached him for his cruelty in thus treating his young brother. But John was deaf to their reproaches, for he was dead. Abraham was too ill to move from under him. Next day the dead brother was removed from the living one, but it was too late to save him, and the poor boy died that morning.

Sherburne says that only five of his crew of thirteen survived, and that in many instances a much larger proportion died.

"At length came news of peace. It was exceedingly trying to our feelings to see our ship mates daily leaving us, until our ship was almost deserted. We were, however, convalescent, but we gained exceedingly slowly. * * * I think there were but seven or eight left on board the hospital ship when we left it, in a small schooner sent from R. I., for the purpose of taking home some who belonged to that place, and the commander of the hospital ship had the humanity to use his influence with the master of the cartel to take us on board, and to our unspeakable joy he consented."

When at last he reached home he says: "My brother Sam took me into another room to divest me of my filthy garments and to wash and dress me. He having taken off my clothes and seen my bones projecting here and there, was so astonished that his strength left him. He sat down on the point of fainting, and could render me no further service. I was able to wash myself and put on my clothes."

After this he was obliged to spend twenty days in bed. Poor Mrs. Falls, the mother of the two young men who had died on the hospital ship, called on him and heard the fate of her sons. She was in an agony, and almost fainted, and kept asking if it was not a mistake thatboth were dead.