LIFE ON THE HULKS—(_continued_)
I next give the remarks of Colonel Lebertre, who, having broken his
parole by escaping from Alresford, was captured, and put on the _Canada_
hulk at Chatham. This was in 1811. He complains bitterly that officers
in the hulks were placed on a level with common prisoners, and even with
negroes, and says that even the _Brunswick_, which was considered a
better hulk than the others, swarmed with vermin, and that although
cleanliness was strongly enjoined by the authorities, no allowance for
soap was made, no leave given to bathe even in summer, and that fresh
clothing was very rarely issued.
But most strongly does he condemn the conduct of the idle curious who
would come off from the shore to see the prisoners on the hulks.
‘Les femmes même ont montré une indifférence vraiment choquante. On en a
vu rester des heures entières les yeux fixés sur le Parc où se tiennent
les prisonniers, sans que e spectacle de misère qui affecterait si
vivement une Française ait fait couler une seule larme; le rire
insultant était, au contraire, sur leurs lèvres. Les prisonniers n’ont
connu qu’un seul exemple d’une femme qui s’évanouît à la vue du Parc.’
In the House of Commons on December 26, 1812, during a debate upon the
condition of the foreign prisoners of war in England, Croker, Secretary
to the Admiralty, declared that he had inspected the hulks at
Portsmouth, and had found the prisoners thereon ‘comfortable and happy
and well provided with amusement’, and Sir George Warrender said much
the same about Chatham.
Colonel Lebertre remarks on this:
‘Men sensual and hardened by pleasures! You who in full Parliament
outrage your victims and declare that the prisoners are happy! Would you
know the full horror of their condition, come without giving notice
beforehand; dare to descend before daylight into the tombs in which you
bury living creatures who are human beings like yourselves; try to
breathe for one minute the sepulchral vapour which these unfortunates
breathe for many years, and which sometimes suffocates them; see them
tossing in their hammocks, assailed by thousands of insects, and wooing
in vain the sleep which could soften for one moment their sufferings!’
He describes, as did the Baron de Bonnefoux, the Raffalés who sold all
their clothes, and went naked in obedience to one of the laws of their
_camaraderie_, who slept huddled together for warmth in ranks which
changed position by words of command. He says that some of the prisoners
were so utterly miserable that they accepted pay from the authorities to
act as spies upon their fellows. He describes the rude courts of justice
held, and instances how one man who stole five louis received thirty
blows with a rope’s end; he refers to the terrible vice prevalent upon
the prison ships, and remarks that ‘life on them is the touchstone of a
man’s character’.
When he arrived on the _Canada_ there was no vacant sleeping place, but
for 120 francs he bought a spot in the middle of the battery, not near a
port, ‘just big enough to hold his dead body’. Still, he admits that the
officers treated him with as much consideration as their orders would
allow.
On August 11, 1812, in response to many urgent remonstrances from
influential prisoners against the custom of herding officers and men
together, all the officers on the hulks at Chatham were transferred to
the lower or thirty-six gun battery of the _Brunswick_, in number 460.
Here they had to submit to the same tyranny as on the other ships,
except that they were allowed to have wine if they could afford to pay
six francs a bottle for it, which few of them could do. Later, General
Pillet and other ‘broke paroles’, on account of the insulting letters
they wrote on the subject of being allowed rum or other spirits, were
confined to the regulation small beer. The Transport Office wrote:
‘Indeed, when the former unprincipled conduct of these officers is
considered, with their present combination to break through the rules,
obviously tending to insurrection and a consequent renewal of bloodshed,
we think it proper that they should immediately be removed to separate
prison ships.’
We now come to the most rabid of the Frenchmen, General Pillet. Pillet
was severely wounded and taken prisoner at Vimiero in 1808, and—in
violation, he says, of the second article of the Convention of Cintra,
which provided that no French should be considered prisoners of war, but
should be taken out of Portugal with arms, &c., by British ships—was
brought to England, with many other officers. He was at once allowed to
be on parole at Alresford, but, not considering himself bound by any
parole terms, attempted to escape with Paolucci, Captain of the
_Friedland_ captured in 1808 by the _Standard_ and _Active_, but was
recaptured and sent to the dépôt at Norman Cross. Here his conduct was
so reprehensible that he was sent to the _Brunswick_ at Chatham. From
the _Brunswick_ he tried to escape in a vegetable boat, but this attempt
failed, and it is to the subsequent rigour of his treatment that must be
attributed his vitriolic hatred of Britain.
General Pillet is of opinion that the particular branch of the Navy told
off for duty on the prison ships was composed of the most miserable scum
of English society; of men who have either been accomplices in or guilty
of great crimes, and who had been given by the magistrates the
alternative of being marines or of being hanged!
He speaks of the Chatham hulks as abominably situated near foul
marshes—which is undeniably true. The quarters of the prisoners were in
no place high enough for a man to stand upright; fourteen little ports,
unglazed but barred, of seventeen inches square, on each side of the
deck, gave all the light and air obtainable. When they were shut they
were fast shut, so that during the winter months the prisoners breathed
foul air for sixteen hours a day. Hence they went naked, and so, when
the cold air was admitted the results were fatal. The overcrowding of
the hulks, says Pillet, was part of the great Government design of
killing the prisoners, and asserts that even a London newspaper, quoting
the opinion of a medical board in London, said that the strongest of
men, after six years’ life on the hulks, must be physically wrecked for
life.
The hammock space allowed was six feet in length, but swinging reduced
them to four and a half. Newcomers were often obliged to sleep on the
bare deck, as there was no other vacant space, and there was no
distinction of ranks. However, officers were generally able to buy
spaces, upon which practice Pillet remarks:
‘C’est une misérable spéculation pour un pauvre prisonnier affamé; il
consent à vendre sa place afin de se procurer un peu plus de vivre
pendant quelques jours, et afin de ne pas mourir de faim il accélère la
destruction de sa santé, et se réduit dans cette horrible situation à
coucher sur un plancher ruisselant d’eau, l’évaporisation des
transpirations forcées qui a lieu dans ce séjour d’angoisses et de la
mort.’
He declares that the air is so foul when the decks are shut up that the
candles will not burn, and he has heard even the guards call for help
when they have opened the hatches and the air has escaped. The food he
describes as execrable, so that the two boats which had the monopoly of
coming alongside to sell butter, tea, coffee, sugar, potatoes, candles,
and tobacco at a price one-third above that on land, did a roaring
trade. The general reply to complaints was that any food was good enough
for French dogs.
If they were badly fed, says Pillet, they were worse clothed. Nominally
they received every eighteen months a coat, waistcoat, breeches, two
pairs of stockings, two shirts, a pair of shoes, and a cap. He declares
he can prove that the prisoners did not receive this complete rig-out
once in four years, and that if a prisoner had any rags of his own, or
received any money, he got no clothes! What clothes they did get were so
badly made that they generally had to be re-made. He says that at
Portsmouth, where the hulk agent Woodriff was at any rate conscientious
enough to issue the clothes on the due dates, his secretary would buy
back the shirts at one shilling each, and so, as Government paid three
shillings each for them, and there were at Portsmouth, Forton, and
Portchester some twelve thousand prisoners on the average, his
‘pickings’ must have been considerable!
In a note he gives the instance of the reply of Commander Mansell, who
commanded the prison-ship police at Chatham in 1813, when the fact that
not one quarter of the clothing due to the prisoners had been delivered
to them, was proved clearly: ‘I am afraid it is too true, but I have
nothing to do with it. I cannot help it.’
From the _Carnet d’Étapes du Sergt.-Maj. Beaudouin, 31^e demi-brigade de
ligne_, I take the following account of life on the hulks.
‘On October 31st, 1809, Beaudouin left Valleyfield where he had been
confined since June 10th, 1804, and came on board the _Bristol_ hulk at
Chatham. At this time the hulks were the _Glory_, three decker,
_Bristol_, _Crown Prince_, _Buckingham_, _Sampson_ (_mauvais sujets_),
_Rochester_, _Southwick_, _Irresistible_, _Bahama_ (Danes), and
_Trusty_, hospital ship, holding in all 6,550 prisoners.’
Beaudouin says:
‘The difference between the land prisons and the hulks is very marked.
There is no space for exercise, prisoners are crowded together, no
visitors come to see them, and we are like forsaken people. There is no
work but the _corvées_ to get our water, and to scrape in winter and
wash in summer our sleeping place. In a word, only to see them is to be
horrified. The anchorage at Chatham is bounded by low and ill-cultured
shores; the town is two miles away—a royal dockyard where there is much
ship-building. At the side of it is a fine, new, well-armed fort, and
adjoining it a little town named Rochester, where there are two
windmills, and two more in Chatham. By the London road, three miles off,
there are four windmills. The people of this country are not so pleasant
and kind as in Scotland, in fact I believe “the sex” is not so
beautiful.’
Very soon the _Bristol_ was condemned and its prisoners transferred to
the _Fyen_, and at the same time the _Rochester_ and _Southwick_ were
replaced by the _Canada_ and _Nassau_. On the _Fyen_ were 850 prisoners,
but during 1810 and 1811 a great many Chatham prisoners were sent to
Norman Cross and Scotland.
Beaudouin comments thus bitterly:
‘It is unfortunate for me that my circle of acquaintances is so limited,
and that I cannot therefore make sufficiently known the crimes of a
nation which aims at the supremacy in Europe. It poses as an example
among nations, but there are no brigands or savages as well versed in
wickedness as it is. Day by day they practise their cruelties upon us,
unhappy prisoners. That is where they are cowardly fighters! against
defenceless men! Half the time they give us provisions which the very
dogs refuse. Half the time the bread is not baked, and is only good to
bang against a wall; the meat looks as if it had been dragged in the mud
for miles. Twice a week we get putrid salt food, that is to say,
herrings on Wednesday, cod-fish on Saturday. We have several times
refused to eat it, and as a result got nothing in its place, and at the
same time are told that anything is good enough for a Frenchman. Therein
lies the motive of their barbarity.’
A short description of the terrible _Sampson_ affair is given elsewhere
(p. 93), but as Beaudouin was evidently close by at the time, his more
detailed account is perhaps worth quoting.
‘On the _Sampson_ the prisoners refused to eat the food. The English
allowed them to exist two days without food. The prisoners resolved to
force the English to supply them with eatable provisions. Rather than
die of hunger they all went on deck and requested the captain either to
give them food or to summon the Commandant of the anchorage. The brute
replied that he would not summon the Commandant, and that they should
have no other provisions than those which had been served out to them
two days previously. The prisoners refused to touch them. The “brigand”
then said: “As you refuse to have this food, I command you to return
below immediately or I will fire upon you.” The prisoners could not
believe that he really meant what he said and refused to go below.
‘Hardly had they made this declaration, when the Captain gave the word
to the guard to fire, which was at once done, the crowd being fired
upon. The poor wretches, seeing that they were being fired upon without
any means of defence, crowded hastily down, leaving behind only the
killed and wounded—fifteen killed and some twenty wounded! Then the
Captain hoisted the mutiny signal which brought reinforcements from the
other ships, and all were as jubilant as if a great victory had been
won.
‘I do not believe that any Frenchman lives who hates this nation more
than I do; and all I pray for is that I may be able to revenge myself on
it before I die.’
Beaudouin wrote a poem of 514 alexandrines, entitled:
_Les Prisons d’Albion.
Ou la malheureuse situation des prisonniers en Angleterre.
Bellum nobis haec mala fecit._
I give in the original the first and last ‘chants’ of this embittered
production.
I
‘Tu veux, mon cher ami, que ranimant ma verve
Je te peigne sans fard, sans crainte, et sans réserve,
Le Tableau des tourmens et de l’affliction
Sous lesquels sont plongés les captifs d’Albion.
J’obéis à la voix, et ma muse craintive,
Entonnant à regret la trompette plaintive,
Va chanter sur des tons, hélas! bien douloureux,
Les maux, les maux cuisans de bien des malheureux.’
LXIV
‘Je t’ai dépeint sans fard l’exacte vérité,
Tels sont les maux cruels de la captivité.
O vous qui de bonheur goûtez en paix les charmes,
Si vous lisez mes vers, donnez-nous quelques larmes;
S’ils n’impriment chez vous une tendre affection,
Vous êtes, plus que nous, dignes de compassion!’
Speaking of the horrible moral effects of the bad treatment he says:
‘The ruin of their comrades and the depravities which were daily
committed in public, impressed right thinking men with so frightful
force that this place means a double suffering to them.’
In 1812 it was reported that a batch of incurables would be sent home to
France, and Beaudouin resolved to get off with them by making himself
ill. He starved himself into such a condition that he was sent into
hospital, but the doctor would not pass him as an incurable. He
swallowed tobacco juice, and at last, in a miserable state, turned up
with the candidates. Then it was announced that no privateersmen, but
only regular seamen, would be sent. Beaudouin, being a soldier, and
being among the privateersmen, was in despair. However, a kindly English
doctor pitied him, cured him of his self-inflicted illness, and got him
leave to go.
On June 2, 1812, he was ready to sail, but was searched first for
letters. Luckily none were discovered, although he had sixty sewn
between the soles of his shoes, and 200 in a box with a double bottom.
He sailed on June 4, the king’s birthday—that day eight years previously
he had arrived at Greenock amidst the Royal salutes—arrived at Morlaix,
and so home to Boiscommun (Loiret), canton of Beaune-la-Rolande,
arrondissement of Pithiviers.
The following experiences of an American prisoner of war are from _The
Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts_, (1816), who was a surgeon, by
name Benjamin Waterhouse, captured at sea in May 1813, and confined on
Melville Island, Halifax, whence he was transported to Chatham, and then
to Dartmoor. The account is interesting as showing the very marked
difference between the American and the French prisoners of war, and is
otherwise remarkable for the hatred and contempt of the writer for
Britons in general and for Scotsmen in particular, entire pages being
devoted to their vilification. Waterhouse, with a hundred of his
countrymen, was shipped to England on the _Regulus_, and his complaints
are bitter about the shameful treatment on board—the filth, the
semi-starvation, the vermin, the sleeping on stone ballast, the lack of
air owing to the only opening to the lower deck being a hatchway two
feet square, the brutal rule of allowing only two prisoners to go on
deck at a time, and the presence in their midst of the only latrine. The
captain, a Scotsman, would only yield to constant petitions and
remonstrances so far as to sanction the substitution of iron bars for
the hatchway.
After a miserable voyage the prisoners reached Portsmouth, and, starved,
vermin-eaten, and in rags, were shipped off to the _Crown Prince_,
Captain Hutchison, at Chatham, where were thirteen other prison ships
and some 1,200 Americans. On this hulk, Waterhouse says, they fared ‘as
well as could be expected ... not that we fared so well as British
prisoners fare in America’, the daily allowance being half a pound of
beef, one gill of barley, one and a half pounds of bread, on five days
of the week, and on the others one pound cod fish, and one pound
potatoes, or one pound smoked herring, porter and beer being
purchasable. He dilates bitterly on the extraordinary lack of humanity
in John Bull, as evidenced by the hard fare of soldiers and sailors, the
scoundrelism of some officers, especially those of the provisioning
departments, and, above all, the shockingly cruel punishments in the
Army and Navy. During the daytime, he says, life on a prison ship was
not so unpleasant, but at night the conditions were very bad—especially
as American prisoners were more closely watched and guarded than were
men of other nationalities. ‘The French were always busy in some little
mechanical employ, or in gaming, or in playing the fool, but the
Americans seemed to be on the rack of invention to escape.’
Amongst themselves, the Americans elected by voting, every four weeks, a
President, and twelve Committee men, whose functions were to make
wholesome laws, to define crimes and award punishments, and particularly
to insist upon personal cleanliness. The punishments were fines,
whippings, and in very extreme cases the Black Hole. The volubility and
the eloquence of the orators at these Committee Meetings very much
impressed the British officers. The Frenchmen, Waterhouse says, were
almost to a man gamblers:
‘Their skill and address at these games of apparent hazard were far
superior to the Americans. They seemed calculated for gamesters; their
vivacity, their readiness, and their everlasting professions of
friendship were nicely adapted to inspire confidence in the unsuspecting
American Jack Tar, who has no legerdemain about him. Most of the
prisoners were in the way of earning a little money; but almost all of
them were deprived of it by the French gamesters. Our people stood no
chance with them, but were commonly stripped of every cent, whenever
they set out seriously to play with them. How often have I seen a
Frenchman capering, singing, and grinning in consequence of his
stripping one of our sailors of all his money; ... the officers among
them are the most adroit gamesters. We have all tried hard to respect
them; but there is something in their conduct so much like swindling,
that I hardly know what to say of them. When they knew that we had
received money for the work we had been allowed to perform, they were
very attentive, and complaisant and flattering.... They would come round
and say: “Ah! Boston fine town, very pretty—Cape Cod fine town, very
fine! Town of Rhode Island superb! Bristol Ferry very pretty! General
Washington _très grand homme_, General Madison _brave homme_!” With
these expressions and broken English, they would accompany, with their
monkey tricks, capering and grinning and patting us on the shoulder,
with: “The Americans are brave men—fight like Frenchmen;” and by their
insinuating manners allure our men once more to their wheels of fortune
and billiard-tables, and as sure as they did, so sure did they strip
them of all their money.’
Waterhouse adds that ‘if an American, having lost all his money, wanted
to borrow of a Frenchman under promise of repayment, the latter would
say: “Ah mon ami! I am sorry, very sorry, indeed; it is _la fortune de
guerre_. If you have lost your money you must win it back again; that is
the fashion in my country—we no lend, that is not the fashion!”...
‘There were here some Danes as well as Dutchmen. It is curious to
observe their different looks and manners.... Here we see the
thick-skulled plodding Dane, making a wooden dish; or else some of the
most ingenious making a clumsy ship; while others submitted to the
dirtiest drudgery of the hulk, for money; and there we see a Dutchman,
picking to pieces tarred ropes ... or else you see him lazily stowed
away in some corner, with his pipe ... while here and there and every
where, you find a lively singing Frenchman, working in hair, or carving
out of a bone, a lady, a monkey, or the central figure of the
crucifixion! Among the specimens of American ingenuity I most admired
their ships, which they built from three to five feet long.... Had not
the French proved themselves to be a very brave people, I should have
doubted it by what I have observed of them on board the prison-ship.
They would scold, quarrel and fight, by slapping each other’s chops with
the flat hand, and cry like so many girls.... Perhaps such a man as
Napoleon Bonaparte could make any nation courageous.’
Very bitter were the complaints of the Americans about the supine and
indifferent attitude towards them of Beasley, their agent, who was
supposed to keep constant watch and ward over the interests of his
unfortunate countrymen. He lived in London, thirty-two miles away, paid
no attention to complaints forwarded to him, and was heartily hated and
despised. Once he paid a visit to the hulks in Gillingham Creek, but
seemed anxious to avoid all interviews and questionings, and left amidst
a storm of hisses and jeers.
Waterhouse dwells severely on the fact that the majority of the
Americans on the _Crown Prince_ and the other hulks were not men who had
been fairly taken in open combat on the high seas, but men who had been
impressed into the British Navy from American merchant ships previous to
the war between the two countries and who, upon the Declaration of War,
had given themselves up as prisoners of war, being naturally unwilling
to fight against their own country, but who had been kept prisoners
instead of being exchanged. This had been the British practice since
1755, but after the War of Independence it had ceased. All the same the
British authorities had insisted upon the right of search for British
subjects on American ships, and to the arbitrary and forcible exercise
of this ‘right’ was very largely owing the War of 1812.
Waterhouse admits that on the whole he was treated as well on the _Crown
Prince_ as were the British prisoners at Salem or Boston. Recruiting
sergeants for the British service came on board and tried to tempt
Americans with a bounty of sixteen guineas, but they were only chaffed
and sent off.
Later on, 500 more prisoners arrived from America in a pitiable
condition, mostly Maryland and Pennsylvania men—‘Colonel Boerstler’s men
who had been deceived, decoyed and captured near Beaver Dams on January
23rd, 1813’. With their cruel treatment on board the _Nemesis_ on their
trans-Atlantic voyage, Waterhouse contrasts favourably the kind
treatment of the prisoners brought by the _Poictiers 74_, Captain
Beresford, after his capture of the American _Wasp_ and her prize the
_Frolic_.
The author gives a glaring instance of provision cheating. By the terms
of his contract, if the bread purveyor failed to send off to the hulks
fresh bread when the weather was favourable, he forfeited half a pound
of bread to each man. For a long time the prisoners were kept in
ignorance of this agreement, but they found it out, and on the next
occasion when the forfeit was due, claimed it. Commodore Osmore refused
it, and issued hard ship’s bread. The prisoners refused to take it.
Osmore was furious, and ordered his marines to drive the prisoners, now
in open mutiny, below. A disturbance was imminent, but the Americans
remained firm, and the commodore gave way.
The American prisoners took in newspapers, as they were mostly
intelligent and well-educated men, but paid dearly for them.
The papers were the _Statesman_, _Star_, _Bell’s Weekly Messenger_, and
_Whig_. The _Statesman_ cost 28_s._ a month, plus 16_s._ a month for
conveyance on board.
As the weather grew milder, matters were more comfortable on board until
small-pox broke out. Vaccination was extensively employed, but many
prisoners refused to submit to it, not from unbelief in its efficacy,
but from misery and unwillingness to live! Then came typhus, in April
1814. There were 800 prisoners and 100 British on the ship. The hospital
ship being crowded, part of the _Crown Prince_ was set apart for
patients, with the result that the mortality was very high. Still
Beasley, the American agent, never came near the ship to inquire into
affairs.
The gambling evil had now assumed such proportions that the Americans
determined to put it down. In spite of the vigorous opposition of the
Frenchmen, the ‘wheels of fortune’ were abolished, but the
billiard-tables remained, it being urged by the Frenchmen that the rate
of a halfpenny per game was not gambling, and that the game afforded a
certain amount of exercise. There remained, however, a strong
pro-gambling party among the Americans, and these men insisted upon
continuing, and the committee sent one of them to the Black Hole without
a trial. This angered his mates; a meeting was held, violent speeches
were made in which the names of Hampden, Sidney, and Wilkes were
introduced, and he was brought out. He was no ordinary rough tar, but a
respectable well-educated New England yeoman, with the ‘gift of the
gab’; and the results of his harangue were that the committee admitted
their error, and he was released.
Finally the billiard-tables were abolished; a great improvement was soon
manifest among the captives, education was fostered, and classes formed,
although a few rough characters still held aloof, and preferred
skylarking, and the slanging and chaffing of passers-by in boats on the
river.
In May 1814 four men went on deck and offered themselves for British
service. Two got away, but two were caught by their mates, tried, and
sentenced to be marked with indian ink on their foreheads with the
letter T (= Traitor). The Frenchmen were now being shipped home. Some of
them had been prisoners since 1803. Waterhouse comments upon the
appalling ignorance among English people in the educated class of all
matters American, and quotes the instance of the lady who, wishing to
buy some of the articles made by the American prisoners, was confronted
by the difficulty of ‘not knowing their language’!
Waterhouse describes the surroundings of the _Crown Prince_ thus:
‘The Medway is a very pleasant river ... its banks are rich and
beautiful.... The picture from the banks of the river to the top of the
landscape is truly delightful, and beyond any thing I ever saw in my own
country, and this is owing to the hedges.... Nearly opposite our doleful
prison stands the village of Gillingham, adorned with a handsome church;
on the side next Chatham stands the castle, defended by more than an
hundred cannon.... This place is noted for making sulphate of iron....
Near to this village of Gillingham is a neat house with a good garden,
and surrounded by trees, which was bequeathed by a lady to the oldest
boatswain in the Royal Navy.’
Waterhouse complains strongly of the immorality on board: ‘Such a sink
of vice, I never saw, or ever dreamt of, as I have seen here,’ He
relates a daring escape. A hole was cut through the ship’s side near the
stern, the copper being removed all round except on one side so as to
lap over and be opened or closed at will. Sixteen men escaped through
this, and swam ashore one dark night, the sentry on duty close by being
allured away by the singing of droll songs and the passing of a can of
grog. At the numbering of the prisoners next morning, the correct tale
was made up by the passing through a hole cut in the bulk-head of
sixteen men who had been already counted. At another attempt two men
slipped into the water; one of them got tired and benumbed with cold,
and turned back. The sentry heard him breathing and said: ‘Ah! Here is a
porpoise, and I’ll stick him with my bayonet,’ and only the crying out
of the poor would-be refugee saved him. The ship’s officers on examining
the hole were amazed, and one of them remarked that he did not believe
that the Devil himself could keep these fellows in hell if they made up
their minds to get out. The next day the other poor chap was seen lying
dead on the beach, and to the disgust of the prisoners was allowed to
remain there two days before he was buried.
Commodore Osmore was always the butt of the American prisoners. A yarn
got about that he had procured a sheep from a farmer ashore without
paying for it. Thereupon his appearance was the signal for a chorus of
‘Baa! Baa!’ He was mad with rage, and ordered the port through which the
insulting chorus had been made to be closed. The Americans forced it
open. The marines drove the prisoners from the fo’c’sle into the
‘Pound’. As more ‘Baa!’s resounded, they were driven below decks, and
all market boats were stopped from approaching the ship, so that for two
days the prisoners were without extra food. However, Captain Hutchison
instituted an inquiry, and peace was arranged.
In June 1814 three men escaped in a water tank. Others would have
followed, but one of the former party had stupidly written an ironical
letter of thanks to Captain Hutchison, in which he described the method
of escape.
A daring escape was made from the _Irresistible_ in broad daylight. Four
Americans saw a jolly-boat made fast to the accommodation-ladder under
the charge of a sentry. One of them was a big, strong Indian of the
Narragansett tribe from Rhode Island. The four men dashed down, seized
the sentry, disarmed him, threw him into the boat, and pulled off. They
were fired at from all sides, and boats put off from all the ships to
chase them, but only one man was wounded. They reached shore and struck
across the fields, which were soon covered by people in chase from the
farms and brickfields, who soon ran all the prisoners down except the
Indian, who out-distanced the prisoners, and would have got away had he
not sprained his ankle in getting over a fence, and even then, as he was
sitting down, none of the country folk would approach him, until the
marines came up. The chase had been closely followed with great
excitement on the ship, and on the arrival of the captured men
alongside, they were loudly cheered, their healths drunk, and the Indian
at once dubbed ‘Baron Trenck’. Said the boys: ‘If it took 350 British
seamen and marines to capture four Yankees, how many British sailors and
marines would it take to catch ten thousand of us?’
Two Scotsmen Waterhouse excepted from his condemnation of their nation:
Galbraith, the master-at-arms, and Barnes, the sailing-master, who was
wont to reprove them for misdeeds, saying: ‘I expect better things of
you as Americans, I consider you all in a different light from that of a
d—d set of French monkeys.’
The British officers were clearly uneasy about their custody of the
Americans, and felt it to be an ignoble business. Said they: ‘The
Yankees seemed to take a pleasure in making us uneasy, and in exciting
our apprehensions of their escape, and then they laugh and make
themselves merry at our anxiety. In fact, they have systematized the art
of tormenting.’
The Government, too, appreciated ‘the difficult task which the miserable
officers of this miserable Medway fleet had to perform’. It did not wish
them to be more rigorous, yet knew that more rigour was necessary.
Rumours got about that in desperation the Government was about to
transfer all the Americans from the prison ships to Dartmoor—the place
which, _it was said_, had been lost by the Duchess of Devonshire at a
game of hazard to the Prince of Wales, who determined to utilize it
profitably by making a prison there.
The national festival on July 4 was duly celebrated on board the two
prison ships _Crown Prince_ and _Nassau_. An additional allowance of
drink was sanctioned, but the American flag was only allowed to be flown
as high as the ‘railings’. There were drums and pipes which played
Yankee Doodle on the fo’c’sle: cheers were exchanged between the ships,
and the toast of the day was drunk in English porter. There was, of
course, much speechifying, especially on the _Nassau_, where one orator
declaimed for half an hour, and another recited a poem, ‘The Impressment
of an American Sailor Boy’, which is too long to be quoted, but which,
says our author, brought tears into many eyes. All passed off quietly,
and acknowledgement is made of the ‘extraordinary good behaviour of all
the British officers and men on board the _Crown Prince_‘.
Although Commodore Osmore was unpopular with the Americans, his charming
wife exercised a good influence in the ship by her amiability and
appreciation of the fact that American prisoners were not all a gang of
vagabonds; and gradually a better feeling developed between captors and
captured.
In August 1814 the news of the transfer to Dartmoor was confirmed, and,
says Waterhouse, was received with regret on the _Crown Prince_—the ship
being ‘actually viewed with feelings of attachment’. The last scene,
however, was marked by a disturbance.
Thirty prisoners had been told off to prepare for embarkation on a
tender. At the appointed hour no tender appeared, and the embarkation
was put off. But all hammocks had been packed, and upon application to
Osmore for hammocks, the prisoners were told to shift as they could for
the night, as the tender would arrive early the next morning, and it was
not worth while to unpack the hammocks. Upon hearing this the prisoners
resolved that if they were to be deprived of their night’s rest, nobody
else should have any. So they harnessed themselves to benches, and ran
about the deck, shouting and singing, and bumping the benches against
everything which would make a noise, jammed down the marines’ crockery
and brought into play every article which could add to the pandemonium.
Osmore sent a marine down to quiet them. The marine returned,
dishevelled, and disarmed. Osmore was furious. ‘I’ll be d—d if I do not
fire on them!’ he roared: ‘Fire, and be d—d,’ was the response. As it
was useless to attempt to quiet them, and to fire would have been
criminal, the commodore retired, and did what he could to sleep amid the
infernal din of bumping benches, jangling metal, shouts and songs, which
lasted throughout the night.
When the tender took the men off in the morning it was to the
accompaniment of a great roar of ‘Baa! Baa!’ as a parting shot.
The remainder of the _Crown Prince_ Americans were transferred to the
_Bahama_ on October 15, 1814. Here they found 300 of their countrymen of
the vicious, baser sort, gamblers all, and without any men of influence
to order them. Danes occupied the main deck and Americans the lower.
Jail fever had played havoc among Danes and Americans—no less than 84 of
the latter being buried in the marshes in three months.
Next to the _Bahama_ lay the _Belliqueux_ hulk, full of harmless and
dull Scandinavians, so that the captain thereof, having nothing to do in
his own ship, started to spy upon the doings aboard the _Bahama_, and
succeeded in getting a marine punished for smuggling liquor. Next day,
the rations were fish and potatoes. The Americans collected all their
potatoes, and watched for the appearance of the _Belliqueux_ commander
for his spying promenade on his quarter deck, the result being that when
he did appear, he was greeted with such a hail of potatoes that he was
fain to beat an undignified retreat. Soon he came off in his boat to
complain to Commander Wilson of the _Bahama_ of his treatment. Wilson, a
passionate, hot-tempered, but just and humane man, said he was very
sorry, but could do nothing, so back the discomfited officer had to go,
pelted with more potatoes and some coals. Said Wilson: ‘These Americans
are the sauciest dogs I ever saw; but d—n me if I can help liking them,
nor can I ever hate men who are so much like ourselves.’
In October 1814 two hundred Americans were sent to Plymouth, where they
were at once boarded by an army of loose women.
With Waterhouse’s experiences at Dartmoor I deal in the chapter devoted
to that prison.