in prison No. 5, on the evening
of the first of December, 1814.
I then put over each prison, as a _caveat_, the following _memento_, as
it was feared others would do the same act:
Whene’er you view this doleful tomb,
Remember what you are,
And put your trust in God alone:
Suppress that fiend, Despair.
Lo! there’s entomb’d a generous youth
Despair did doom to die;
By the hard act of suicide,
John Taylor there doth lie.
He hung himself within yon walls,--
A warning may it prove:
Tho’ man is wicked here below,
There’s a just God above.
Be patient, meek, and wait His call,
Endure these ills of strife:
For great’s the sin of mortal man,
That takes away his life.
One knows not how to account for the origin of that act which takes
away one’s own life: self-love and self-preservation are so deeply
rooted in the very nature of all living creatures, that it is the
ultimate motive of all actions to endeavor to sustain and preserve
life; fear of destroying it is so instinctive in all animals that they
seem to flee from danger without any reasoning in the act, and almost
without knowing when the volition begins.
But the suicide reverses everything; he does an act which is not
natural, not rational, not desirable, and dangerous; he rushes into the
presence of his God with all his former crimes, and this most heinous
of all brings him there.
From the first to the twenty-sixth nothing material occurred, but a
constant fall of snow every day; but the season was less severe than
that of the year before.
In the interim, prisoners arrived from different quarters of the globe;
some taken in Canada on the lakes, and others on the land; and amongst
these arrivals was the crew of the privateer Leo, captured off the
coast of Portugal.
On the twenty-ninth, we were most agreeably surprised with the joyful
tidings of peace! The preliminaries were announced in the London paper
which we received this day, and the news was confirmed by a letter
from Mr. Beasley, received the same day, stating that the treaty had
been signed by the Commissioners at Ghent, on the 24th, and that the
sloop-of-war Favorite would sail with the treaty on the second of
January, one thousand eight hundred and fifteen, with all possible
speed, for the United States, and that three months would release every
man from confinement.
Language is too feeble to describe the transports of joy that so
suddenly and unexpectedly filled every heart. Every man forgot the many
tedious days and nights he had so often numbered over within these
prison walls. The memory of his better days rose fresh in his mind,
and he once more hoped to return to his native country, which he had
so long despaired of ever revisiting; his liberty, the embraces of his
friends, he knew better how to prize by being so long deprived of them.
The delicious fruits of plenty he could by his imagination taste.
The prison was now in great confusion and bustle in preparing to
celebrate the peace, which we were confident would be honorable to our
country. We were confident that the ground-work of the treaty must be
free trade and sailors’ rights, and made arrangements to celebrate it
in a manner conformable to the rights of the ocean.
We obtained a quantity of powder of the soldiers, unknown to the
keepers, and made large cartridges, wound them up in twine, so that
when exploded would make a report as loud as a six-pounder; we then
procured a large ensign, and a pendant for each prison; we prepared a
white flag in the centre, painted in large capitals, “FREE TRADE AND
SAILORS’ RIGHTS.”
The next morning, to the astonishment of the officers and guards, we
displayed the flags on the top of each prison; and on No. 3, which was
styled the Commodore, displayed the white flag with the above motto,
and at the same time fired a salute of seventeen rounds.
Shortly after, Capt. Shortland entered the yard, and politely requested
the white flag, containing the motto, to be taken down, as it would
draw censure upon him from the government, by holding out inducements
for the sailors to mutinise; he said the government of Great Britain
took care to suppress all such inflammatory mottoes. But the prisoners
were too full of spirits to comply with the request at that time. They
continued it till towards evening, when he again entered and solicited
us to take it down, or everything would be in confusion; he said if we
would take the motto-flag down, he would hoist an American ensign on
one end of his own house, and a British one on the other end; and if we
were not contented with this he would order them all down; we then told
him, out of respect for him, we would take them all down, and wait till
the ratification of peace before we displayed them again.
On the thirty-first of this month arrived a draft of prisoners, among
whom were many who had given themselves up as American citizens, and
claimed their right to a citizenship, and refused to act on board his
Majesty’s ships any longer; these the prisoners did not give a very
welcome reception, for they had delayed till the act had become a
wilful aiding and assisting the enemy, and the mischief now over. The
constant cry among the sailors, who are great friends to Uncle Sam,
was, “Damn my eyes if he han’t stood it like a man.”
Among those prisoners who had declared themselves citizens of the
United States, were six who had been in the enemy’s service for many
years, and were on board His Majesty’s ship Pelican when she engaged
the United States brig Argus, and took a very active part in the action
against the Argus; every man of them had been appointed to some petty
office on board the Pelican. But, supposing a peace would shortly be
concluded between the two nations, they had thought best to claim a
citizenship, and obtain their release. This information soon spread
among all the prisoners, and enraged them to the highest degree at
their conduct; and being flushed with high spirits with the late news
of peace, were about to proceed to extremities with them, and they,
finding their lives were in danger, applied to Capt. Shortland for
protection, who entered the prison yard with guards and took these
traitorous villains along, and we believe they went back into his
Majesty’s service, as the next day they were conveyed to Plymouth, and
we heard no more of them.
The weather was now very severe, and the oldest prisoners had not
received any clothing since May, and were much in need of jackets and
trowers, of this fact the prisoners were a self-evident and naked
truth. Many were sick in the hospital.
December thirty-first, 1814. Statement of prisoners in prison at this
depot:
Prisoners delivered up from the British navy, 1978
United States’ and privateers’ men, those taken in
merchant vessels, 3348
----
Total, exclusive of those exchanged, 5326
Mr. Beasley, agent, had visited them once. They had received from him
one jacket, one pair of trowsers, two shirts, two pair of shoes, and
two pair of stockings, each man.
Received from the British government, one hammock, one blanket, one
horse rug, one bed, one yellow jacket, one pair of trowers, one
waistcoat, one pair of wooden shoes, and one cap.
Received in cash one and a half pence, to which was added one penny
more after two months, each man per day, from the first of January,
1814.
The weather still continued cold, and the oldest prisoners had not as
yet received any shoes or clothes, but were daily expecting them from
Mr. Beasley.
We had been in this cold and dreary mansion twenty-one months, and the
above items were all the assistance we had received from Beasley, the
only person in this foreign land of our enemies to whom we could look
for any assistance, or from whom we had any right to expect it.
Our ears had been constantly assailed with the groans of the sick and
the dying; pestilence and disease had been our constant companions; our
minds had become almost distracted betwixt the grief for our departed
friends and fellow-prisoners and the hunger and want of our own body.
From such a long series of incessant sufferings, it is natural to
suppose that the bodies were emaciated and the mind debilitated; and
much of the sameness that may appear in this narrative is owing to
a uniform state of misery, which will not admit of a variety in the
description.
Capt. Shortland had got information on the second of November, 1815,
that the prisoners had counterfeited three shilling pieces, and passed
them to the market people, for their country produce, and shortly
after he detected two men attempting to pass bad money; he had them
apprehended immediately, and sent to the cachot.
Nothing worthy of note occurred till the twentieth, when two men lately
arrived were discovered to be the same who had entered the British
service the winter before. After having received many insults, and
much hard usage, on board the war ships, they had got tired of their
situations, and claimed their citizenship and got themselves delivered
up and sent to prison again, which they considered the least of the two
evils.
Their conduct on board the ships, was no doubt as disgraceful as the
act they committed to bring them there; they shifted from ship to ship,
till the one wherein they claimed their citizenship was ignorant of
the manner they had come into the service. The prisoners being highly
enraged at such conduct, made strict inquiry into the matter, and found
the facts as above mentioned.--After holding consultations, many were
for putting them to immediate death, others were for flogging them as
severely as they could bear, and every man for giving them some condign
punishment; but at last it was unanimously concluded to put upon them
a mark, which would be a lasting stigma, and an example for others.
They seized and took the traitors into prison, and fastened them to a
table, so that they could not resist, and then, with needles and India
ink, pricked U. S. on one cheek, and T. on the other; which is United
States Traitor. After we let them go, they were taken immediately to
the hospital, and their faces blistered on both sides, to endeavor to
extract the ink, but this only made it brighter and sink deeper in. The
doctors reported the traitors to be in a very dangerous state, and that
their lives were despaired of. If this had been the case, it must only
proceed from the application they had made use of, for no harm could
arise from marking.
The next day, Capt Shortland being offended at the treatment of his
friends had received, sent and had three men taken, whom he suspected
were concerned in the affair, and put them into the cachot, where they
were examined not long after by the King’s solicitor, and there ordered
to remain till the next Exeter assizes, then and there to be tried by
the laws of this country. On the twenty-fifth arrived five hundred
suits of clothes, which were distributed among those who had last
arrived.
The weather being very severe, and great quantities of snow falling,
the men were obliged to keep within doors. On the same day arrived
a regiment of regular troops, who themselves had been prisoners in
France for many years during the late war between that nation and
England.--They were much disgusted with the treatment we received here,
and exclaimed against the authors of it, whoever they might be, and
declared they had not received such treatment in France.
At this time, the government not being so strict in their charge the
military, and the keepers not so strict in putting them in execution,
and these new guards being very friendly, gave us a fine opportunity
to escape over the walls, and many made their escape in dark stormy
nights. This continued for some time, till one man was taken on the
wall, in the very act; then it was stopped, and strict orders given.
On the twenty-sixth a draft of prisoners arrived, among whom were the
crew of the privateer Neuf-Chattel of New York, lately captured, and
two navy officers captured on the lakes. On the twenty-eighth these
officers received their parole, and proceeded on to Ashburton, where
all the paroled officers were stationed.
_Nantucket Neutrality._
On the thirtieth, Sir Isaac Coffin arrived with another British
admiral; Sir Isaac is a native of Massachusetts, and feeling some
partiality to his native statesmen, requested Capt. Shortland to
permit all the men who belonged to Nantucket to come alone into market
square, which request was of course granted. He himself and the other
admiral, whose name we did not learn, held a long conversation with
the Nantucket men, and inquired the particulars of their birth, their
friends and places of residence; they then told them, should the war
continue, they would be released, on account of belonging to a neutral
Country.--They then took an affectionate leave of the citizens of that
neutral nation, and went away. Such are the advantages derived from
being a neutral nation in the time of war.
February commences with much snow and cold; the prisoners in great
anxiety for the ratification of the treaty.
On the fourth arrived a draft of prisoners, lately captured in the
privateer Brutus. At this time a new, and most dreadful calamity now
alarmed and endangered the life of every man; the African pox had,
by some unfortunate means, got among the prisoners, and threatened
destruction to every living soul. The disorder was so violent that when
it attacked a person, he had nothing to expect but immediate death;
numbers died daily.
On the fifth, the London papers mentioned two American frigates
cruising in the channel, which excited great alarm.
On the sixth, the pestilence had grown so mortal, that the chief
surgeon in England visited the prison; he imagined the distemper to
arise from a want of pure air; that so many people crowded together
in one building must render the air very impure, and unfit for
respiration. He tried the difference of temperature of the air in the
prison, and outside, which he found to differ twenty-five degrees
by Farenheit’s thermometer, the air being much warmer inside. This
difference of heat arose entirely from the heat of the human body,
as no fire was kept in the prisons; each prison now contained about
1200 persons on an average. It is highly probable the distemper had
generated itself in the bad state of air, and had not been introduced
from abroad, as was first supposed.
On the eighth arrived an order from the Board of Transport, for Capt.
Shortland to ascertain the number and description of all prisoners
belonging to the Island of Nantucket, for the purpose of giving them
their discharge; like the citizens of Denmark and Sweden, they were
neutral.
On the tenth arrived a draft of prisoners, lately captured on their
voyage to France; on the same day a number of prisoners were called on
to give evidence on the part of the crown, concerning the marking the
traitors in the cheek.
The king’s solictor was a long while busy in endeavouring to obtain
information, but all the satisfaction he got was, that they had heard
by report that the men that marked the traitors, were to be tried at
Exeter the next assizes. At the same time a small quantity of clothing
arrived from Mr. Beasley, who it seemed always took care to send
clothing to those who last arrived, as in this instance, although they
had not been prisoners but a few weeks; he seemed to have an idea that
they always come into prison naked, and when they were there, one
suit would last them all their life; for the oldest prisoners had not
received any clothing since the last May, and it was now ten months,
and every garment entirely worn out. He supposed, that during two
years imprisonment, such as we had had, we must have got used to every
species of hardship, and that going naked was so slight an evil that
we did not mind it at all.
During the interval of time since the peace, another _slight_ evil,
somewhat similar to the above, had befallen us, for the contractor,
seeing we were shortly to go to a land of plenty, was determined to
show us the difference in a man’s feelings between eating and going
without; so he gave us no more than the simpleton gave his horse while
learning him to live without eating.
On the thirteenth, one of the four prisoners, whom we mentioned before
were sentenced last August to remain in the cachot during the war,
watched an opportunity to get among the other prisoners in the yard,
being let into the yard of that building for the benefit of the fresh
air, and seeing the attention of the turnkeys and soldiers occupied
by some other object, at this time jumped over the iron railing that
separated this building from the yards of Nos. 1, 2, and 3, and got
undiscovered amongst the other prisoners; the morning following he was
missed by the keepers, and information given to Capt. Shortland, who
demanded the man from among us immediately that he be returned to the
cachot again.
The prisoners positively refused to give the man up, and declared
that no force of arms should wrest him from their protection. He then
ordered the market closed, and would not allow any communication with
it, and refused the prisoners every privilege, and gave them only their
allowance.
On the fourteenth, he entered the yard at the head of two hundred
soldiers with fixed bayonets, and ordered every prisoner to retire
within the prisons, that search might be made for the prisoner, and he
again remanded to the cachot; but all the prisoners having previously
agreed to stand by each other, and if they attempted to use any
violence, to surround and disarm them; a signal was given to surround,
and the soldiers were immediately surrounded, and the intention
made known to the officers, and advised to retire, unless they were
determined to risk the consequence. They then very prudently ordered
the soldiers to fall back, and retire without the yard, and leave the
man whom they sought.
The captain still harboring rancor in his breast, thought to compel us
to give up the man by force of starvation, and kept the markets closed
against us, and compelled us to subsist solely on our scant allowance;
but we, to retaliate, forbid all prisoners going out of the yard to
work, who at this time were about forty or fifty carpenters, masons,
and other mechanics, who were a great profit to the government; this
step put Shortland to great expense and inconvenience to procure others.
He at last concluded to make peace and restore tranquility, and let
the man remain; and, on the twentieth, he again opened the markets to
the prisoners, and we permitted the workmen to go out and work again.
The other three men remained in the cachot, but a stronger guard was
placed? there, otherwise we were determined to release them by force.
On the twenty-second, arrived a draft of prisoners, lately captured
off the Cape of Good Hope, among whom were the crew of the late United
States brig Syren; the treatment of these men before they arrived at
this place will be mentioned in the supplements to this work. These,
together with others taken in other parts, arrived since the last
enumeration on the last day of one thousand eight hundred and fourteen,
made in all at this depot five thousand eight hundred and fifty, which
were all the prisoners in England, except officers on parole. The
prisoners were barefooted, and very sickly.
On the twenty-sixth of this month, is gazetted in the London papers,
the official account of the capture of the United States frigate
President, Com. Decatur.
The editor says she was captured solely by the Endymion, of far
inferior force; he says the engagement was in the old English style,
yard-arm to yard-arm. Knowing this to be a falsehood, I addressed a
letter to the editor, requesting him to read a short piece of poetry
which I enclosed.
March commenced with cold and blustering weather, and the prison almost
one continued scene of sick and dying, the small-pox was raging with a
desolating aspect, and the greatest anxiety concerning the ratification
of the treaty; afflictions, which seem never to come singly, were now
pressing upon the back of one another; pestilence, famine and nakedness
were not affliction enough, phrensy must be added.
On the fourth, a man in the hospital, in a sudden fit of insanity,
seized a knife and stabbed two of the nurses very dangerously, of which
wounds Jonathan Paul died on the tenth, the other survived.
On inquiry into the circumstances of the deceased, we found him to have
been a married man, and his wife had lived a little distance from the
prison since his confinement, who was in very narrow circumstances.
We all agreed to give her the day’s allowance of fish of that week,
which we sold to the contractor and received the money, which amounted
to nearly one hundred dollars; this sum she received, and returned to
her residence on the day of the death of her husband.
On this day, also, the three men who were put into close confinement
for marking the traitors on the face, were taken out of the custody
of the agent of prisoners of war at this place, by a writ of _habeas
corpus ad respodendum_, and removed to the criminal prison at Exeter,
to be tried for the offence by the civil laws of this country. They
were removed in irons. The prisoners then made a contribution for the
support of these men while at Exeter.
On the tenth, we received London papers, which gave an account of
Bonaparte’s having arrived in France at the head of about one thousand
men, and that he was making the most rapid advances toward Paris, and
thousands joining him; that the greatest confusion was taking place in
the affairs of France.
This intelligence struck the greatest astonishment in all England, and
created a very serious concern among all the military, who expected to
be relieved on the arrival of the treaty ratified by the President, but
now they must despair of that idea, as new wars must inevitably follow
the steps of that gigantic monster.
On the fourteenth, a universal joy was diffused through the whole
prison, and “a smile lighted up in the aspect of woe;” the Favorite,
the welcome messenger of peace, arrived, and brought the treaty,
ratified by the President of the United States.
I cannot better express the joy that diffused itself through the whole
country, Englishmen as well as prisoners, than by giving the following
lines from a great author:
“The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego,
And leap exulting like the bounding roe.
No sigh nor murmur the wide world shall hear,
From ev’ry face he wipes off ev’ry tear.”
We raised the ensigns and pendant on each prison; presented to Capt.
Shortland, and gentlemen under his command, an address in poetry.
On the seventeenth, we were informed by Capt. Shortland, that he
had received orders from the Board of Transport to discharge the
prisoners whenever Mr. Beasley was ready to receive them. To the great
disappointment of all the prisoners we had received no information
from Mr. Beasley for six weeks, and the prisoners now were in the
greatest anxiety. They reasonably expected that on the arrival of
this ratified treaty, Mr. Beasley would have everything in a state of
readiness for their immediate conveyance to the United States, and
that he would inform them in what manner they were to proceed there;
but not a syllable was received from the agent of our country till the
eighteenth, when a very cold and unpleasant letter was received from
him, which read as follows:
_Fellow-citizens_,--
I am informed that great numbers of the prisoners refuse being
inoculated with the small-pox, which I hear has been very mortal among
you, I therefore acquaint you that it will be impossible for me to
send home any prisoners unless they have gone through the same. Yours,
&c.,