A WONDERFUL DELIVERANCE
There are few records of religious feeling on board the “Jersey,
vulgarly called ‘Hell.’” No clergyman was ever known to set foot on
board of her, although a city of churches was so near. The fear of
contagion may have kept ministers of the gospel away. Visitors came, as
we have seen, but not to soothe the sufferings of the prisoners, or
to comfort those who were dying. It is said that a young doctor, named
George Vandewater attended the sick, until he took a fatal disease and
died. He was a resident of Brooklyn, and seems to have been actuated
by motives of humanity, and therefore his name deserves a place in this
record.
But although the rough seamen who left narratives of their experiences
in that fearful place have told us little or nothing about the inner
feelings of those poor sufferers, yet it must be presumed that many
a silent prayer went up to the Judge and Father of all men, from the
depths of that foul prison ship. There was one boy on board the Jersey,
one at least, and we hope that there were many more, who trusted in God
that He could deliver him, even “from the nethermost hell.”
A large proportion of the prisoners were young men in their teens, who
had been attracted by the mysterious fascination of the sea; many of
them had run away from good homes, and had left sorrowing parents and
friends to mourn their loss. The feelings of these young men, full of
eager hopes, and as yet unsoured by too rough handling in their wrestle
with the world, suddenly transferred to the deck of the Jersey, has
been well described by Fox and other captives, whose adventures we have
transcribed in these pages.
We have now to tell the experience of a youth on the Jersey who lived to
be a minister, and for many years was in charge of a church at Berkeley.
This youth was sensitive, delicate, and far from strong. His faith in
human nature received a shock, and his disposition was warped at the
most receptive and formative period of his life, by the terrible scenes
of suffering on the one hand, and relentless cruelty on the other, that
he witnessed in that fatal place. He wrote, in his memoir many years
after: _“I have since found that the whole world is but one great
prison-house of guilty, sorrowful, and dying men, who live in pride,
envy, and malice, hateful, and hating one another.”_
This is one of the most terrible indictments of the human race that was
ever written. Let us hope that it is not wholly true.
In 1833 the Rev. Thomas Andros published his recollections under the
title, “The Old Jersey Captive.” We will give an abstract of them. He
begins by saying: “I was but in my seventeenth year when the struggle
commenced. In the summer of 1781 the ship Hannah, a very rich prize, was
captured and brought into the port of New London. It infatuated great
numbers of our young men who flocked on board our private armed ships
in hopes of as great a prize. * * * I entered on board a new Brig called
the ‘Fair American.’ She carried sixteen guns. * * * We were captured
on the 27th of August, by the Solebay frigate, and safely stowed away in
the Old Jersey prison ship at New York, an old, unsightly, rotten hulk.
“Her dark and filthy appearance perfectly corresponded with the death
and despair that reigned within. She was moored three quarters of a mile
to the eastward of Brooklyn ferry, near a tide-mill on the Long Island
shore. The nearest distance to land was about twenty rods. No other
British ship ever proved the means of the destruction of so many human
beings.”
Andros puts the number of men who perished on board the Jersey as
11,000, and continues: “After it was known that it was next to certain
death to confine a prisoner here, the inhumanity and wickedness of
doing it was about the same as if he had been taken into the city and
deliberately shot on some public square. * * * Never did any Howard
or angel of pity appear to inquire into or alleviate our woes. Once
or twice a bag of apples was hurled into the midst of hundreds of
prisoners, crowded together as thick as they could stand, and life and
limbs were endangered by the scramble. This was a cruel sport. When I
saw it about to commence I fled to the most distant part of the ship.”
At night, he says, the prisoners were driven down to darkness between
decks, secured by iron gratings and an armed soldiery. He thus speaks
of the tasks imposed upon the prisoners: “Around the well-room an armed
guard were forcing up the prisoners to the winches to clear the ship of
water, and prevent her sinking; and little could be heard but a roar of
mutual execrations, reproaches and insults.
“Sights of woe, regions of sorrow, doleful shades;
Where peace and rest can never dwell
“When I became an inmate of this abode of suffering, despair, and death,
there were about 400 on board, but in a short time they were increased
to 1,200.
“All the most deadly diseases were pressed into the service of the
king of terrors, but his prime ministers were dysentery, small pox, and
yellow fever. The healthy and the diseased were mingled together in the
main ship.”
He says that the two hospital ships were soon overcrowded, and that two
hundred or more of the prisoners, who soon became sick in consequence
of the want of room, were lodged in the fore-part of the lower gun-deck,
where all the prisoners were confined at night.
“Utter derangement was a common sympton of yellow fever, and to increase
the horror of darkness which enshrouded us, for we were allowed no
light, the voice of warning would be heard, ‘Take care! There’s a madman
stalking through the ship with a knife in his hand!’”
Andros says that he sometimes found the man by whose side he had lain
all night a corpse in the morning. There were many sick with raging
fever, and their loud cries for water, which could only be obtained
on the upper deck, mingled with the groans of the dying, and the
execrations of the tormented sufferers. If they attempted to get water
from the upper deck, the sentry would push them back with his bayonet.
Andros, at one time, had a narrow escape with his life, from one of
these bayonet thrusts.
“In the morning the hatches were thrown open and we were allowed to
ascend. The first object we saw was a boat loaded with dead bodies
conveying them to the Long Island shore, where they were very slightly
covered with sand. * * * Let our disease be what it would we were
abandoned to our fate. No English physician ever came near us.”
Thirteen of the crew to which Andros belonged were on the Jersey. In a
short time all but three or four were dead. The healthiest died first.
They were seized vith yellow fever, which was an epidemic on the ship,
and died in a few hours. Andros escaped contagion longer than any of
his companions, with one exception. He says that the prisoners were
furnished with buckets and brushes to cleanse the ship, and vinegar to
sprinkle the floors, but that most of them had fallen into a condition
of apathy and despair, and that they seldom exerted themselves to
improve their condition.
“The encouragement to do so was small. The whole ship was equally
affected, and contained pestilence enough to desolate a world; disease
and death were wrought into her very timbers. At the time I left it is
to be supposed a more filthy, contagious, and deadly abode never existed
among a Christianized people.
“The lower hold and the orlop deck were such a terror that no man would
venture down into them. * * * Our water was good could we have had
enough of it: the bread was superlatively bad. I do not recollect seeing
any which was not full of living vermin, but eat it, worms and all, we
must, or starve. * * * A secret, prejudicial to a prisoner, revealed
to the guard, was death. Captain Young of Boston concealed himself in a
large chest belonging to a sailor going to be exchanged, and was carried
on board the cartel, and we considered his escape as certain, but the
secret leaked out, and he was brought back and one Spicer of Providence
being suspected as the traitor the enraged prisoners were about to cut
his throat. The guard rushed down and rescued him.
“I knew no one to be seduced into the British service. They tried to
force one of our crew into the navy, but he chose rather to die than
perform any duty, and he was again restored to the prison-ship.”
Andros declares that there was no trace of religion exhibited on board
the Jersey. He also says that the prisoners made a set of rules for
themselves by which they regulated their conduct towards each other. No
one was allowed to tyrannize over the weak, and morality was enforced by
rules, and any infraction of these regulations was severely punished.
He speaks of scenes of dreadful suffering which he witnessed:
“Which things, most worthy of pity, I myself saw,
And of them was a part.”
“The prison ship is a blot which a thousand ages cannot eradicate from
the name of Britian. * * * While on board almost every thought was
occupied to invent some plan of escape. The time now came when I must
be delivered from the ship or die. I was seized with yellow fever, and
should certainly take the small-pox with it, and who does not know that
I could not survive the operation of both of these diseases at once. * *
* I assisted in nursing those who had the pox most violently.
“The arrival of a cartel and my being exchanged would but render my
death the more sure.”
Yet he endeavored to promote his exchange by stepping up and giving in
his name among the first, when a list of the prisoners was taken. Andros
was not strong, and as he himself says, disease often seemed to pass
over the weak and sickly, and to attack, with deadly result, the
prisoners who were the healthiest and most vigorous.
“It was the policy of the English to return for sound and healthy men
sent from our prisons, such Americans as had but just the breath of life
in them, sure to die before they reached home. The guard would tell a
man while in health, ‘You haven’t been here long enough, you are too
well to be exchanged.’
“There was one more method of getting from the ship,” Andros continues,
“and that was at night to steal down through a gun-port which we had
managed to open unbeknown to the guard, and swim ashore.” This, he
declared, was for him a forlorn hope. Already under the influence of
yellow fever, and barely able to walk, he was, even when well, unable
to swim ten rods. Discovery was almost certain, for the guards now kept
vigilant watch to prevent any one escaping in this manner, and they shot
all whom they detected in the act of escaping. Yet this poor young man
trusted in God. He writes: “God, who had something more for me to do,
undertook for me.” Mr. Emery, the sailing master, was going ashore for
water. Andros stepped up to him and asked: “Mr. Emery, may I go on shore
with you after water?”
No such favor had ever been granted a prisoner, and Andros scarcely knew
what prompted him to prefer such a request. To his immense surprise, the
sailing master, who must have had a heart after all, replied, “Yes, with
all my heart.” He was evidently struck with compassion for the poor,
apparently dying, young man.
Andros, to the astonishment of his companions, immediately descended
into the boat. Some of them asked: “What is that sick man going on shore
for?”
The British sailors endeavored to dissuade him, thinking that he would
probably die on the excursion.
“‘So, to put them all to silence, I again ascended on board, for I had
neglected to take my great-coat. But I put it on, and waited for the
sailing-master. The boat was pushed off, I attempted to row, but an
English sailor said, very kindly, ‘Give me the oar. You are too unwell.’
* * * I looked back to the black and unsightly old ship as to an object
of the greatest horror. * * * We ascended the creek and arrived at the
spring, and I proposed to the sailors to go in quest of apples.”
The sailing-master said to him, “This fresh air will be of service to
you.” This emboldened him to ask leave to ascend a bank about
thirty feet high, and to call at a house near the spring to ask for
refreshment. “Go,” said Mr. Emery, “but take care not to be out of the
way.” He replied that his state of health was such that nothing was
to be feared from him on that account. He managed to get into a small
orchard that belonged to the farmhouse. There he saw a sentinel, who was
placed on guard over a pile of apples. He soon convinced himself
that this man was indifferent to his movements, and, watching his
opportunity, when the man’s back was turned, he slipped beyond the
orchard, into a dense swamp, covered with a thick undergrowth of
saplings and bushes. Here there was a huge prostrate log twenty feet in
length, curtained with a dense tangle of green briar.
“Lifting up this covering I crept in, close by the log, and rested
comfortably, defended from the northeast storm which soon commenced.”
He heard the boat’s crew making inquiries for him but no one discovered
his hiding-place. One of them declared that he was safe enough, and
would never live to go a mile. In the middle of the night he left his
hiding place, and fell into a road which he pursued some distance. When
he heard approaching footsteps he would creep off the path, roll himself
up into a ball to look like a bush, and remain perfectly still until the
coast was clear. He now felt that a wonderful Providence was watching
over him. His forethought in returning for his overcoat was the means
of saving his life, as he would undoubtedly have perished from exposure
without it. Next night he hid in a high stack of hay, suffering greatly.
When the storm was over he left this hiding place, and entered a deep
hollow in the woods near by, where he felt secure from observation. Here
he took off his clothes and spread them in the sun to dry.
Returning to the road he was proceeding on his way, when at a bend in
the road, he came upon two light dragoons, evidently looking for him.
What was he to do? His mind acted quickly, and, as they approached, he
leisurely got over a fence into a small corn field, near a cottage by
the way-side. Here he busied himself as if he were the owner of the
cottage, going about the field; deliberately picking up ears of corn;
righting up the cap sheaf of a stack of stalks, and examining each
one. He had lost his hat, and had a handkerchief around his head, which
helped to deceive the dragoons, who supposed that he had just come out
of the cottage. They eyed him sharply, but passed on.
After this he dared not show himself, and wandered about, living on
apples and water. He would lie concealed all day, in barns or hollows of
the woods. At night he travelled as far as his weakened condition
would allow He often found unfermented cider at the presses, for it was
cider-making time.
After several days of this wandering life he sought refuge in a barn,
where he was found by a cross old man, who refused to do anything for
him. He says that in the course of his wanderings he uniformly found
women kind and helpful. They gave him food and kept his secret. One
night, feeling utterly spent, he came to the poor dwelling of an old
man and his wife, on the east side of Long Island. These good people
assisted him by every means in their power, as if he were their own son.
They took off his clothes, giving him another suit until they had baked
all his garments in the oven to destroy the vermin which tormented him
day and night. They insisted upon his occupying a clean bed. That night
he slept sweetly, rid of the intolerable torture of being eaten up
alive. He managed to reach Sag Harbor, where he found two other escaped
prisoners. Soon he was smuggled to Connecticut in a whale-boat, and
restored to his mother. It was late in October when he reached home.
He was very ill and delirious for a long time, but finally recovered,
taught school for some time, and finally became a minister of the
gospel.