THE PRISONS ASHORE
9. MILLBAY, NEAR PLYMOUTH
Saxon prisoners taken at Leuthen were at the ‘New Prison,’ Plymouth, in
1758. In this year they addressed a complaint to the authorities,
praying to be sent elsewhere, as they were ostracized, and even reviled,
by the French captives, and a round-robin to the officer of the guard,
reminding him that humanity should rule his actions rather than a mere
delight in exercising authority, and hinting that officers who had made
war the trade of their lives probably knew more about its laws than Mr.
Tonkin, the Commissioner in charge of them, appeared to know.
In 1760 no less than 150 prisoners contrived to tunnel their way out of
the prison, but all except sixteen were recaptured.
Of the life at the old Mill Prison, as it was then called, during the
War of American Independence, a detailed account is given by Charles
Herbert of Newburyport, Massachusetts, captured in the _Dolton_, in
December 1776, by H.M.S. _Reasonable_, 64.
With his sufferings during the voyage to England we have nothing to do,
except that he was landed at Plymouth so afflicted with ‘itch’, which
developed into small-pox, that he was at once taken to the Royal
Hospital. It is pleasing to note that he speaks in the highest terms of
the care and kindness of the doctor and nurses of this institution.
When cured he was sent to Mill Prison, and here made money by carving in
wood of boxes, spoons and punch ladles, which he sold at the Sunday
market.
Very soon the Americans started the system of tunnelling out of the
prison, and attempting to escape, which only ceased with their final
discharge. Herbert was engaged in the scheme of an eighteen feet long
excavation to a field outside, the earth from which, they rammed into
their sea-chests. By this, thirty-two men got out, but eleven were
captured, he being one.
Men who could make no articles for sale in the market sold their clothes
and all their belongings.
Theft among the prisoners was punished by the offenders being made to
run the gauntlet of their comrades, who were armed with nettles for the
occasion.
Herbert complains bitterly of the scarcity and quality of the
provisions, particularly of the bread, which he says was full of
straw-ends. ‘Many are tempted to pick up the grass in the yard and eat
it; and some pick up old bones that have been laying in the dirt a week
or ten days and pound them to pieces and suck them. Some will pick
snails out of holes in the wall and from among the grass and weeds in
the yard, boil them, eat them, and drink the broth. Men run after the
stumps of cabbages thrown out by the cooks into the yard, and trample
over each other in the scuffle to get them.’
Christmas and New Year were, however, duly celebrated, thanks to the
generosity of the prison authorities, who provided the materials for two
huge plum-puddings, served out white bread instead of the regulation
‘Brown George’, mutton instead of beef, turnips instead of cabbage, and
oatmeal.
Then came a time of plenty. In London £2,276 was subscribed for the
prisoners, and £200 in Bristol. Tobacco, soap, blankets, and extra bread
for each mess were forthcoming, although the price of tobacco rose to
five shillings a pound. Candles were expensive, so marrow-bones were
used instead, one bone lasting half as long as a candle.
On February 1, 1778, five officers—Captains Henry and Eleazar Johnston,
Offin Boardman, Samuel Treadwell, and Deal, got off with two sentries
who were clothed in mufti, supplied by Henry Johnston. On February 17,
the two soldiers were taken, and were sentenced, one to be shot and the
other to 700 lashes, which punishment was duly carried out. Of the
officers, Treadwell was recaptured, and suffered the usual penalty of
forty days Black Hole, and put on half allowance. Continued attempts to
escape were made, and as they almost always failed it was suspected that
there were traitors in the camp. A black man and boy were discovered:
they were whipped, and soon after, in reply to a petition from the
whites, all the black prisoners were confined in a separate building,
known as the ‘itchy yard.’
Still the attempts continued. On one occasion two men who had been told
off for the duty of emptying the prison offal tubs into the river, made
a run for it. They were captured, and among the pursuers was the prison
head-cook, whose wife held the monopoly of selling beer at the prison
gate, the result being that she was boycotted.
Much complaint was made of the treatment of the sick, extra necessaries
being only procurable by private subscription, and when in June 1778,
the chief doctor died, Herbert writes: ‘I believe there are not many in
the prison who would mourn, as there is no reason to expect that we can
get a worse one.’
On Independence Day, July 4, all the Americans provided themselves with
crescent-shaped paper cockades, painted with the thirteen stars and
thirteen stripes of the Union, and inscribed at the top ‘Independence’,
and at the bottom ‘Liberty or Death’. At one o’clock they paraded in
thirteen divisions. Each in turn gave three cheers, until at the
thirteenth all cheered in unison.
The behaviour of a section of blackguards in the community gave rise to
fears that it would lead to the withdrawal of charitable donations. So
articles were drawn up forbidding, under severe penalties, gambling,
‘blackguarding’, and bad language. This produced violent opposition, but
gradually the law-abiders won the day.
An ingenious attempt to escape is mentioned by Herbert. Part of the
prison was being repaired by workmen from outside. An American saw the
coat and tool-basket of one of these men hanging up, so he appropriated
them, and quietly sauntered out into the town unchallenged. Later in the
day, however, the workman recognized his coat on the American in the
streets of Plymouth, and at once had him arrested and brought back.
On December 28, 1778, Herbert was concerned in a great attempt to
escape. A hole nine feet deep was dug by the side of the inner wall of
the prison, thence for fifteen feet until it came out in a garden on the
other side of the road which bounded the outer wall. The difficulty of
getting rid of the excavated dirt was great, and, moreover, excavation
could only be proceeded with when the guard duty was performed by the
Militia regiment, which was on every alternate day, the sentries of the
13th Regular regiment being far too wideawake and up to escape-tricks.
Half the American prisoners—some two hundred in number—had decided to
go. All was arranged methodically and without favour, by drawing lots,
the operation being conducted by two chief men who did not intend to go.
Herbert went with the first batch. There were four walls, each eight
feet high, to be scaled. With five companions Herbert managed these, and
got out, their aim being to make for Teignmouth, whence they would take
boat for France. Somehow, as they avoided high roads, and struck across
fields, they lost their bearings, and after covering, he thinks, at
least twenty miles, sat down chilled and exhausted, under a haystack
until daybreak. They then restarted, and coming on to a high road,
learned from a milestone that, after all, they were only three miles
from Plymouth!
Day came, and with it the stirring of the country people. To avoid
observation, the fugitives quitted the road, and crept away to the
shelter of a hedge, to wait, hungry, wet, and exhausted, during nine
hours, for darkness. The end soon came.
In rising, Herbert snapped a bone in his leg. As it was being set by a
comrade, a party of rustics with a soldier came up, the former armed
with clubs and flails. The prisoners were taken to a village, where they
had brandy and a halfpenny cake each, and taken back to Plymouth.
At the prison they learned that 109 men had got out, of whom thirty had
been recaptured. All had gone well until a boy, having stuck on one of
the walls, had called for help, and so had given the alarm. Altogether
only twenty-two men escaped. Great misery now existed in the prison,
partly because the charitable fund had been exhausted which had hitherto
so much alleviated their lot, and partly on account of the number of men
put on half allowance as a result of their late escape failure, and so
scanty was food that a dog belonging to one of the garrison officers was
killed and eaten.
Herbert speaks in glowing terms of the efforts of two American
‘Fathers’, Heath and Sorry, who were allowed to visit the prison, to
soften the lot of the captives.
Finally, on March 15, 1779, Herbert was exchanged after two years and
four months’ captivity.
In a table at the end of his account, he states that between June 1777,
and March 1779, there were 734 Americans in Mill Prison, of whom
thirty-six died, 102 escaped, and 114 joined the British service. Of
these last, however, the majority were British subjects.
In 1779 Howard reported that there were 392 French and 298 American
prisoners in Millbay. He noted that neither the wards nor the
court-yards apportioned to the Frenchmen were so spacious and convenient
as were those in the American part of the prison, nor were the
provisions so good. In the hospital there were fifty patients; it was
dirty and offensive, and Howard found only three pairs of sheets in use.
(Herbert, above quoted, said that the hospital was not worthy of the
name, that when it rained the wet beat upon the patients as they lay in
their beds.)
A new hospital was building, Howard continues, but he considered the
wards were being made too low and too close, being seventeen feet ten
inches wide, and ten feet high. In the American blocks the regulations
were hung up according to rule, and he notes Article 5 of these to the
effect that: ‘As water and tubs for washing their linen and clothes will
be allowed, the prisoners are advised to keep their persons as clean as
possible, it being conducive to health.’
I now make an extract from _The Memoirs of Commodore Barney_, published
in Boston, 1832, chiefly on account of his stirring escape from Millbay,
therein described.
Barney was captured in December 1780 by H.M.S. _Intrepid_, Captain
Malloy, whom he stigmatizes as the embodiment of all that is brutal in
man. He was carried to England on the _Yarmouth, 74_, with seventy other
American officers. They were confined, he says, in the hold, under three
decks, twelve feet by twenty feet, and three feet high, without light
and almost without air. The result was that during the fifty-three days’
passage in the depths of winter, from New York to Plymouth, eleven of
them died, and that when they arrived at Plymouth, few of them were able
to stand, and all were temporarily blinded by the daylight.
It sounds incredible, but Mrs. Barney, the editress of the volume, says:
‘What is here detailed is given without adornment or exaggeration,
almost in the very words of one who saw and suffered just as he has
described.’
Barney was sent first to a hulk, which he describes as a Paradise when
compared with the _Yarmouth_, and as soon as they could walk, he and his
companions went to Mill Prison, ‘as rebels.’
He lost no time in conspiring to escape. With infinite pains he and
others forced their way through the stone walls and iron gratings of the
common sewer, only to find, after wading through several hundred feet of
filth, their exit blocked by a double iron grating. He then resolved to
act independently, and was suddenly afflicted by a sprain which put him
on crutches. He found a sympathetic friend in a sentry who, for some
reason or other, had often manifested friendship for the American
prisoners. This man contrived to obtain for him a British officer’s
undress uniform. One day Barney said to him, ‘To-day?’ to which the
laconic reply was ‘Dinner’, by which Barney understood that his hours on
duty would be from twelve till two.
Barney threw his old great coat over the uniform; arranged with his
friends to occupy the other sentries’ attention by chaff and chat;
engaged a slender youth at roll-call time to carry out the old trick of
creeping through a hole in the wall and answer to Barney’s name as well
as his own; and then jumped quickly on to the shoulders of a tall friend
and over the wall.
Throwing away his great-coat, he slipped four guineas into the
accomplice sentry’s hand, and walked quietly off into Plymouth to the
house of a well-known friend to the American cause. No little alarm was
caused here by the sudden appearance of a visitor in British uniform,
but Barney soon explained the situation, and remained concealed until
night, when he was taken to the house of a clergyman. Here he found two
Americans, not prisoners, desirous of returning to America, and they
agreed to buy a fishing boat and risk the crossing to France.
So the British uniform was exchanged for fisher garb, the boat
purchased, and the three started. As his companions were soon prostrate
from sea-sickness, Barney had to manage the craft himself; passed
through the British war-ships safely, and seemed to be safe now from all
interference, when a schooner rapidly approached, showing British
colours, and presently lowered a boat which was pulled towards them.
Instantly, Barney resolved to play a game of bluff. Luckily, in changing
his attire he had not left the British uniform behind. The boat came
alongside and a privateer officer came aboard and asked Barney his
business.
‘Government business to France,’ replied Barney with dignity—and
displayed the British uniform.
The officer was not satisfied, and said that he must report to his
captain. This he did; the privateer captain was no more satisfied than
his lieutenant, and politely but firmly declared his intention of
carrying Barney back to Plymouth, adding that it must be funny business
to take a British officer in uniform over to France in a fishing boat.
‘Very well,’ said Barney, calm and dignified to the end; ‘then I hold
you responsible, for the interruption of my errand, to Admiral Digby, to
whose flag-ship I will trouble you to take me.’
All the same Barney saw that the game was up, and back towards Plymouth
he had to turn. Barney’s story is not very clear as to how he managed to
escape the notice of the crew of the privateer, on board which he now
was, but he slipped into a boat alongside, cut her adrift, and made for
‘Cawsen’. Landing here, and striking away inland, he thought it best to
leave the high road, and so, climbing over a hedge, he found himself in
Edgcumbe Park. Presently he came upon an old gardener at work. Barney
accosted him, but all the reply he got was: ‘It’s a fine of half a
guinea for crossing a hedge.’ Barney had no money, but plenty of
pleasant talk, the result of which was that the old man passed him out
by a side gate and showed him a by-way towards the river. Barney, for
obvious reasons, wished to avoid the public ferry, so crossed over in a
butcher’s boat, and passing under the very wall of Mill Prison, was soon
in Plymouth and at the clergyman’s house.
He had had a narrow escape, for in less than an hour after Admiral Digby
had received the privateer captain’s report, a guard had been sent off
from Mill Prison to Cawsand, and had he kept to the high road he would
assuredly have been captured. Whilst at the clergyman’s house, the Town
Crier passed under the window, proclaiming the reward of five guineas
for the apprehension of ‘Joshua Barney, a Rebel Deserter from Mill
Prison’.
Barney remained here three days. Then, with a fresh outfit, he took a
post chaise for Exeter. At midnight the Town Gate was reached, and a
soldier closely examined Barney and compared him with his description on
the Apprehension bill. Again his _sang-froid_ came to the rescue, and he
so contorted his face and eyes that he was allowed to proceed, and his
escape was accomplished.
In 1783 Barney was at Plymouth again; this time as a representative of
the Republic in a time of peace, and although an individual of
importance, entertaining all the great officials of the port on the
_George Washington_, and being entertained by them in return, he found
time not only to visit the kindly clergyman who had befriended him, but
to look up the old gardener at Mount Edgcumbe, amply pay the fine so
long due, and discover that the old man was the father of the sentry who
had enabled him to escape from Mill Prison!
An account by another American, Andrew Sherburne, published at Utica, in
1825, of a sojourn in Mill Prison in 1781, is quoted only for his
remarks on the hospital system, which do not accord with those of other
writers. He says:
‘However inhuman and tyrannical the British Government was in other
respects, they were to be praised and respected for the suitable
provision they made for the sick in the hospitals at Mill Prison.’
In 1798 Vochez, the official sent to England by the French Directory to
inquire into the true state of French prisoners under our care, brought
an action against certain provision contractors for astounding breaches
of their engagements, in the shape of a system of short weightage
carried on for years, and of supplying provisions of an inferior
character. In this he was supported by Captain Lane, a travelling
inspector of prisons, and an honest official, and this, wrote Vochez,
‘despite the contradiction by a number of base and interested prisoners
brought to London for that express purpose to attack the unblemished
character of that officer.’
Captain Lane insisted that the Governor of the Prison should give
certificates as to the badness of the provisions supplied; this was
done, and Vochez’s case was established. The Admiralty entirely endorsed
Captain Lane’s recommendation that in every case the Governors of
Prisons should certify as to the character of provisions supplied by
contractors, highly complimented him on his action, and very heavily
mulcted the rascally contractors. Unhappily, the vile system was far
from being abolished. The interests of too many influential people were
linked with those of the contractors for a case such as the above to be
more than a flash in the pan, and the prison contractors continued to
flourish until the very end of the Great War period.
In 1799 Mill Prison was practically rebuilt, and became known as
Millbay. The condition of it at this time seems to have been very bad.
It was said that some of the poor inmates were so weak for lack of
proper food that they fell from their hammocks and broke their necks,
that supplies of bedding and clothing were only to be had from
‘capitalists’ among the prisoners, who had bought them from the
distribution officers and sold them at exorbitant rates.
In 1806, at the instance of some Spanish prisoners in Millbay, a firm of
provision contractors was heavily mulcted upon proof that for a long
time past they had systematically sent in stores of deficient quality.
In 1807 the Commissioners of the Transport Office refused an application
that French prisoners at Millbay should be allowed to manufacture
worsted gloves for H.M.’s 87th Regiment, on the grounds that, if
allowed, it would seriously interfere with our own manufacturing
industry, and further, would lead to the destruction by the prisoners of
their blankets and other woollen articles in order to provide materials
for the work.
I now proceed to give a very interesting account of prisoner life in
Millbay Prison from Édouard Corbière’s book, _Le Négrier_.
When a lad of fifteen, Corbière was captured on the _Val de Grâce_
privateer by H.M.S. _Gibraltar_, in 1807. The _Val de Grâce_ must have
been a very small craft, for not only did she not show fight, but the
_Gibraltar_ simply sent off a boat’s crew, made fast hawsers and
tackles, and hoisted the Frenchman bodily on board. Corbière and his
fellows were sent to Millbay. Before describing his particular
experiences, he gives a page or so to a scathing picture of our shore
prisons, but he impressively accentuates the frightful depravity brought
about by the sufferings endured, and says that nobody who had not lived
in an English war-prison could realize the utter depths of wickedness to
which men could fall. At Millbay, he says, the _forts à bras_ ruled all
by mere brute strength. Victories at fights or wrestling matches were
celebrated by procession round the airing grounds, and the successful
men formed the ‘Government’ of the _Pré_, as the airing ground was
called, regulating the gambling, deciding disputes, officiating at
duels—of which there were many, the weapons being razors or compass
points fixed on the ends of sticks—and generally exercising despotic
sway. They were usually topsmen and sailors. The _Romains_ were the
pariahs at Millbay, and the _Rafalés_ the lowest of all, naked rascals
who slept in ranks, spoon fashion, as described elsewhere.
The usual industries were carried on at Millbay. Much money was made by
the straw plaiters and workers, some of the latter earning 18 sous a
day. But the straw ‘capitalists’, the men who bought straw wholesale
through the soldiers of the guard, and who either employed workers
themselves, or sold the straw to other employers, accumulated fortunes,
says Corbière, of from 30,000 to 40,000 francs. There were teachers of
sciences, languages, music, dancing and fencing. There were
eating-cabins where a ‘beef steak’ could be got for four sous. There
were theatrical performances, but not of the same character or quality
as, for instance, at Portchester.
On Sundays, as at Stapleton, the prayers of the Mass were read. Each
province was particular in observing its own festivals—Basques and
Bretons notably.
A great many ‘broke-paroles’ were here, and, Corbière remarks, the
common sailors took advantage of their fallen position and
ostentatiously treated them as equals, and even as inferiors. Not so the
soldiers, who punctiliously observed the distinctions of rank; and there
were even instances of private soldiers helping officers not used to
manual labour to supplement their daily rations.
Corbière also emphasizes the fact that, notwithstanding the depth of
degradation to which the prisoners sank among themselves, they always
preserved a proud attitude towards strangers, and never begged of
visitors and sight-seers.
In the prison, regular Courts of Justice were held, the chief _maître
d’armes_ being generally elected President _if he could read_. The Court
was held within the space of twelve hammocks, shut in by hangings of old
cloth. The only ordinary punishment was flogging, but a very terrible
exception was made in the following case. One of the grandest and
boldest projects for escape from a war-prison which had ever been
conceived had been secretly proceeded with at Millbay for some time. It
consisted of a tunnel no less than 532 yards long (Corbière’s words are
‘half a quarter league’, and the French league of this time measured 2
miles 743 yards) coming out in a field, by which the whole of the 5,000
prisoners were to get away after overcoming and disarming the guard. The
enormous quantity of earth excavated was carried by the workers in their
pockets and emptied into the latrines, and although I give the account
as written, I cannot repress a doubt that Corbière, who was then but a
boy, may have been mistaken in his figures, for this process alone of
emptying a tunnel, big enough to allow the passage of a man, in
continual fear of detection, must have been very long and laborious.
At any rate one Jean Caffé sold the secret to the authorities, the
result being that on the appointed night, when the tunnel was full of
escaping prisoners, the first man to emerge at the outlet was greeted by
Scots soldiers, and the despairing cry arose, _Le trou est vendu_!
Drums beat, the alarm brought more soldiers from Plymouth, and the
would-be escapers were put back into prison, but, so maddened were they
at the failure at the eleventh hour of their cherished plot, that they
refused to put out the lights, sang songs of defiance, and broke out
into such a riot that the guard fired into them, with what result
Corbière does not state.
The next morning, search was made for Caffé, who no doubt had been
hidden by the authorities, and the miserable man was found with some
guineas in his pocket. The rage of his countrymen was the deeper because
Caffé had always been regarded as a poor, witless sort of fellow, for
whom everybody had pity, and who existed upon the charity of others, and
the cry arose that he should be at once put to death. But the chief of
the _Pré_, who happened to be Corbière’s captain on the _Val de Grâce_,
and of whom more anon, said ‘Non! Il faut auparavant le flétrir!’
So Caffé was dragged before the entire assembly of prisoners. A
professional tattooer then shaved his head, laid him on a table, and
held him down whilst on his forehead was pricked: ‘Flétri pour avoir
VENDU 5000 de ses camarades dans la nuit du 4 Septembre 1807.’
This accomplished, he was taken to a well, thrown down it, and stones
hurled on him until he was hidden from sight, and his cries could be
heard no more. Corbière adds that, so far from the authorities trying to
stop this summary execution, the British commander said that it served
him right, and that he would have done the same.
Ivan, the privateer captain who had been chief official at the foregoing
execution, had won his position as a _Chef de Pré_ in the following way.
He was dancing at a ball in Calais when the news was brought him that a
rich British prize had been sighted, and without stopping to change his
costume, he had hurried on board the _Val de Grâce_, so that the prize
should not escape him. Hence, when captured by the _Gibraltar_, he was
in full dancing kit,—laced coat, ruffles, silk stockings and all—and in
the same garb had been introduced into Millbay Prison, much to the
amusement of his fellow countrymen. Particularly did he attract the
attention of the chief _fort à bras_, who had a good deal to say about
carpet knight and armchair sailor, which was so distasteful to Ivan that
he challenged him, fought him, and half-killed him. The result of which
was that the same night he was elected a _Chef de Pré_ with much pomp
and circumstance. Furthermore, discovering among the prisoners old
comrades of the _Sans Façon_ privateer, they elected him head cook, a
position in the prison of no small consideration.
Now Mr. Milliken, purser of the prison, had a pretty wife who took such
a fancy to the handsome, dashing young French privateer captain that she
made him a present of a New Testament, although it was well she did not
hear his description of it as ‘le beau fichu cadeau’. At the same time
Milliken, socially superior, Corbière remarks, to his wife, pitying the
boy (Corbière himself) thus thrust by fate at the very threshold of his
life into the wild, wicked world of a war-prison, offered him employment
in his office, which he gladly accepted, going there every day, but
returning every night to the prison. Milliken’s office was on the ground
floor of his dwelling-house, and Mrs. Milliken with her servant Sarah
were constantly in and out, the result being that the boy became very
friendly with them, and their chief object seemed to be to make his life
as happy as possible, the only cloud upon it being his separation every
day from Ivan, for whom he had an affection bordering upon idolatry. For
weeks Corbière had the happiest of lives, indulged in every way by Mrs.
Milliken, and made much of by her visitors, to most of whom a lively,
intelligent, French lad was a refreshing novelty. To dress him up in
feminine attire was a favourite amusement of the ladies, ‘and’, says
Corbière, ‘they were good enough to say that, except for my rolling
gait, begot of a lifetime spent afloat, I should pass well for a
distinguished-looking girl.’
One morning Mrs. Milliken gave him bad news. Ivan had escaped from the
prison. He says: ‘Whatever feeling I had of gladness that my dear friend
was out of prison, was smothered not merely by the sense of my own
desolate position, but by surprise that he should have left me.’
A day or two later a young woman appeared at the back door of the
Millikens’ house, which gave on to the street, looked around cautiously
for a few moments, and then rapidly passed down the street. It was
Corbière. It was a daring move, and it was not long before he wished he
had not made it, for Plymouth streets in these piping war-times were no
place for a respectable girl, and no doubt his flurried, anxious look,
and palpable air of being a stranger, commanded unusual attention.
Whither he was going he had no idea, and for an hour he went through
what he confesses to have been one of the severest trials of a life full
of adventure and ordeal. He was on the point of trying to find his way
back to the Millikens’ house, when an old Jew man, with a bag over his
shoulder, brushed against him, and at the same time whispered his name.
It was Ivan. The boy could have shouted for joy, but Ivan impressed
silence, and motioned him to follow. Arrived at Stonehouse, Ivan paused
at a house, whispered to Corbière to walk on, return, and enter, and
went in himself. This was done, and Corbière describes how, when at last
together in the house, they unrestrainedly indulged their joy at being
again together, and Ivan explained how both of their escapes had been
arranged by Mrs. Milliken. Then Ivan detailed his plan for getting out
of England. He had thirty false one-pound notes, manufactured in Millbay
Prison, which he had bought for a guinea, and the next day they would
start off on foot for Bigbury, about fifteen miles distant, on the
coast, near which they would charter a smuggler to take them across.
That evening they went into the town to make a few necessary purchases,
and in his delight at being free again, Ivan proposed that they should
go to the theatre at Plymouth Dock. They did, and it nearly proved the
undoing of them, for some American sailors were there who naturally
regarded as fair game a nice-looking, attractively dressed girl in the
company of a bearded old Jew, and paid Corbière attentions which became
so marked as to provoke Ivan, the result being a row, in the course of
which Ivan’s false beard was torn off, and Corbière’s dress much
deranged, and the cry of ‘Runaway prisoners!’ beginning to be heard, the
two rushed out of the theatre, and through the streets, until they were
in the open country.
They spent the night, which luckily was warm and fine, in a ditch, and
the next morning saw an anchored boat riding close in shore. They swam
out and boarded her, and found that there were rudder and oars chained,
but no sails or mast. Ivan broke the chain, and rigged up some of
Corbière’s female clothes on an oar, for sail and mast. Some days ensued
of much suffering from hunger and thirst, as, being without bearings,
they simply steered by the sun, south-east, and at last they were
sighted and picked up by the _Gazelle_, French ‘aventurier’, of St.
Malo, and in her went to Martinique.
In 1809 the Transport Office, in reply to French prisoners at Millbay
asking leave to give fencing lessons outside the prison, refused, adding
that only officers of the guard were allowed to take fencing lessons
from prisoners, and those in the prison.
In 1811 a dozen prisoners daubed themselves all over with mortar, and
walked out unchallenged as masons. Five were retaken. Another man
painted his clothes like a British military uniform, and got away, as he
deserved to.
In 1812 additional buildings to hold 2,000 persons were erected at
Millbay.
In 1813 a notable scene, indicative of the prevalence occasionally of a
nice feeling between foes, was witnessed at Millbay, at the funeral of
Captain Allen of the United States ship _Argus_, who had died of wounds
received in the action with the _Pelican_. Allen had been first
lieutenant of the _United States_ in her victorious action with the
British _Macedonian_, and had received his promotion for his bravery in
that encounter. Moreover, all the British prisoners taken by him
testified to his humanity and kindness. A contemporary newspaper says:
‘The Funeral Procession as it moved from the Mill Prison to the Old
Church, afforded a scene singularly impressive to the prisoners, who
beheld with admiration the respect paid by a gallant, conquering enemy
to the fallen hero. 500 British Marines first marched in slow time, with
arms reversed; the band of the Plymouth Division of Marines followed,
playing the most solemn tunes. An officer of Marines in military
mourning came after these. Two interesting black boys, the servants of
the deceased, then preceded the hearse. One of these bore his master’s
sword, and the other his hat. Eight American officers followed the
hearse, and the procession was closed with a number of British Naval
officers.
‘On the arrival of the body at the Old Church, it was met by the
officiating Minister, and three volleys over the grave closed the
scene.’