CAPTAIN ROSWELL PALMER
In the year 1865 a son of Captain Roswell Palmer, of Connecticut, wrote
a letter to Mr. Henry Drowne, in which he narrates the story of his
father’s captivity, which we will condense in these pages. He says that
his father was born in Stonington, Conn., in August, 1764, and was about
seventeen at the time of his capture by the British, which must have
been in 1781.
Palmer had several relations in the army, and was anxious to enlist,
but was rejected as too young. His uncle, however, received him as an
assistant in the Commissary Department, and when the brig Pilgrim,
of Stonington, was commissioned to make war on the public enemy, the
rejected volunteer was warmly welcomed on board by his kinsman, Captain
Humphrey Crary.
The first night after putting to sea, the Pilgrim encountered a British
fleet just entering the Vineyard Sound. A chase and running fight
of several hours ensued, but at length the vessel was crippled and
compelled to surrender. The prize was taken into Holmes’ Hole, and the
crew subsequently brought to New York. Mr. Henry Palmer thus describes
the Jersey, which was his father’s destination.
“The Jersey never left her anchorage at the Wallabout, whether from
decrepitude, or the intolerable burden of woes and wrongs accumulated
in her wretched hulk,--but sank slowly down at last into the subjacent
ooze, as if to hide her shame from human sight, and more than forty
years after my father pointed out to me at low tide huge remnants of her
unburied skeleton.
“On board of this dread Bastile were crowded year after year, some 1,400
prisoners, mostly Americans. The discipline was very strict, while the
smallest possible attention was paid by their warders to the sufferings
of the captives. Cleanliness was simply an impossibility, where
the quarters were so narrow, the occupants so numerous, and little
opportunity afforded for washing the person or the tatters that sought
to hide its nakedness. Fortunate was the wretch who possessed a clean
linen rag, for this, placed in his bosom, seemed to attract to it crowds
of his crawling tormentors, whose squatter sovereignty could be disposed
of by the wholesale at his pleasure.
“The food of the prisoners consisted mainly of spoiled sea biscuit,
and of navy beef, which had become worthless from long voyaging in many
climes years before. These biscuits were so worm-eaten that a slight
pressure of the hand reduced them to dust, which rose up in little
clouds of insubstantial aliment, as if in mockery of the half famished
expectants. For variety a ration called ‘Burgoo,’ was prepared several
times a week, consisting of mouldy oatmeal and water, boiled in two
great Coppers, and served out in tubs, like swill to swine.
“By degrees they grew callous to each other’s miseries, and alert to
seize any advantage over their fellow sufferers. Many played cards day
and night, regardless of the scenes of woe and despair around them. *
* * The remains (of those who died) were huddled into blankets, and so
slightly interred on the neighboring slope that scores of them, bared by
the rains, were always visible to their less fortunate comrades left to
pine in hopeless captivity. * * * After having been imprisoned about a
year and a half my father, one night, during a paroxysm of fever, rushed
on board, and jumped overboard.
“The shock restored him to consciousness, he was soon rescued, and the
next morning was taken by the Surgeon-General’s orders to his quarters
in Cherry St., near Pearl, where he remained until the close of the war.
The kind doctor had taken a fancy to the handsome Yankee patient, whom
he treated with fatherly kindness; giving him books to read; and having
him present at his operations and dissections; and finally urged him
to seek his fortune in Europe, where he should receive a good surgical
education free of charge.
“The temptation was very great, but the rememberance of a nearer home
and dearer friends, unseen for years, was greater, and to them the long
lost returned at last, as one from the dead.”
Captain Palmer commanded a merchant ship after the war, retired and
bought a farm near Stockbridge, Mass. He followed the sea over forty
years. In appearance he was very tall, erect, robust, and of rare
physical power and endurance. He had remarkably small hands and feet, a
high and fair forehead, his hair was very black, a tangle of luxuriant
curls, and his eyes were clear hazel. He died in his 79th year, in 1844,
leaving a large family of children. In his own memoranda he writes:
“Four or five hundred Frenchmen were transferred as prisoners to
the orlop deck of the Jersey. They were much better treated than we
Americans on the deck above them. All, however, suffered very much for
the want of water, crowding around two half hogsheads when they were
brought on board, and often fighting for the first drink. On one of
these occasions a Virginian near me was elbowed by a Spaniard and thrust
him back. The Spaniard drew a sheath knife, when the Virginian knocked
him headlong backwards, down two hatches, which had just been opened for
heaving up a hogshead of stale water from the hold, for the prisoners’
drink. This water had probably been there for years, and was as ropy as
molasses.
“There was a deal of trouble between the American and the French and
Spanish prisoners. The latter slept in hammocks, we, on the _floor_ of
the deck next above them. One night our boys went down * * * and, at
a given signal, cut the hammock lashings of the French and Spanish
prisoners at the head, and let them all down by the run on the dirty
floor. In the midst of the row that followed this deed of darkness, the
Americans stole back to their quarters, and were all fast asleep when
the English guard came down.
“No lights were permitted after ten o’clock. We used, however, to hide
our candles occasionally under our hats, when the order came to
‘Douse the glim!’ One night the officer of the guard discovered our
disobedience, and came storming down the hatchway with a file of
soldiers. Our lights were all extinguished in a moment, and we on the
alert for our tyrants, whom we seized with a will, and hustled to and
fro in the darkness, till their cries aroused the whole ship.”
An uncle of Roswell Palmer’s named Eliakim Palmer, a man named Thomas
Hitchcock, and John Searles were prisoners on board the Scorpion, a
British 74, anchored off the Battery, New York. They were about to be
transferred to the Old Jersey, when Hitchcock went into the chains and
dropped his hat into the water. On his return he begged for a boat
to recover it, and being earnestly seconded by Lieutenant Palmer, the
officer of the deck finally consented, ordering a guard to accompany the
“damned rebels.” They were a long time in getting the boat off. The hat,
in the mean time, floated away from the ship. They rowed very awkardly,
of course got jeered at uproariously for “Yankee land lubbers,” and
were presently ordered to return. Being then nearly out of musket range,
Lieutenant Palmer suddenly seized and disarmed the astonished guard,
while his comrades were not slow in manifesting their latent adroitness
in the use of the oar, to the no less astonishment of their deriders. In
a moment the Bay was alive with excitement; many shots, big and little,
were fired at the audacious fugitives from all the fleet; boats put
off in hot pursuit; but the Stonington boys reached the Jersey shore in
safety, and escaped with their prisoner to Washington’s headquarters,
where the tact and bravery they had displayed received the approval of
the great commander.
Lieutenant Eliakim Palmer was again taken prisoner later in the war and
again escaped. This time he was on board the Jersey. He cut away three
iron bars let into an aperture on the side of the ship on the orlop
deck, formerly a part of her hold. He swam ashore with his shirt and
trousers tied to his head. Having lost his trousers he was obliged to
make his way down Long Island for nearly its whole length, in his shirt
only. He hid in ditches during the day, subsisting on berries, and
the bounty of cows, milked directly into his mouth. He crawled by the
sentries stationed at different parts of the island, and at length,
after many days, reached Oyster Pond Point, whence he was smuggled by
friends to his home in Stonington, Conn.