American Prisoners of the Revolution Part 25

"Waterman was the first to leave the ship through the broken-open gun-port, and suspended to the rope by his hands, and at the end behind him (it was held) by several of our fellow prisoners whom we were leaving behind us, and with whom we affectionately parted with reciprocal good wishes. He succeeded in gaining the water and in leaving the ship without discovery from the British. It had been agreed, if detection was about to take place, that he should be received again into the ship. I had agreed to follow him in one minute in the same manner.

I left and followed in half that time, and succeeded in leaving the ship without giving the least alarm to those who had held us in captivity.

"I kept along close to the side of the ship until I gained the stern, and then left the ship. This was all done very slowly, sinking my body as deep in the water as possible, without stopping my course, until I was at such a distance from her that my motions in the water would not create attention from those on board. After gaining a suitable distance from the ship, I hailed Waterman three times. He did not answer me. *

* * I have never seen him since he left the Old Jersey to this day. His fate and success I have since learned from James Waterman, one of his brothers.

"In the meantime I kept on my course without thinking that any accident would befall him, as I knew him to be an excellent swimmer, and no fainthearted or timid fellow.

"I could take my course very well from the light reflected from the stern lanthorns of the prison, guards, and hospital ships, and also from the responses of the sentinels on sh.o.r.e; in the words, 'All's well.'

These responses were repeated every half hour on board the guard ship, and by the sentinels. * * * These repet.i.tions served me to keep the time I was employed in reaching the sh.o.r.e;--no object occupied my mind during this time so much as my friend Waterman, if I may except my own success in getting to land in safety.

"I flattered myself I should find him on sh.o.r.e or at the barn we had agreed to occupy after we might gain it. After I had been swimming nearly or quite two hours my knapsack had broken loose from my back, from the wearing off of the garters under my arms, in consequence of the friction in swimming. * * * This occurrence did not please me much. I endeavored to retain my knapsack by putting it under one arm, * * *

but soon found that this impeded my progress, and led me from my true course. * * * By this time I had become much chilled, and benumbed from cold, but could swim tolerably well. * * * I hesitated whether or not to retain my knapsack longer in my possession, or part from it forever, I soon determined on the latter, and sent it adrift. In this balancing state of mind and subsequent decision I was cool and self collected as perhaps at any time in my life. * * * I now soon found I was close in with the sh.o.r.e. * * * I swam within twelve feet of the sh.o.r.e before I could touch bottom, and in so doing I found I could not stand, I was so cold * * * but I moved around in shoal water until I found I could stand, then stept on sh.o.r.e. * * * I had not sent my clothes adrift more than twenty-five minutes or so before striking the sh.o.r.e. I was completely naked except for a small hat on my head which I had brought from the Old Jersey. What a situation was this, without covering to hide my naked body, in an enemy's country, without food or means to obtain any, and among Tories more unrelenting than the devil,--more perils to encounter and nothing to aid me but the interposition of heaven! Yet I had gained an important portion of my enterprise: I had got on land, after swimming in the water two hours and a half, and a distance of perhaps two miles and a half."

Hawkins at last found the barn and slept in it the rest of the night, but not before falling over a rock in the darkness, and bruising his naked body severely. Next morning a black girl came into the barn, apparently hunting for eggs, but he did not dare reveal himself to her.

He remained there all day, and endeavored to milk the cows, but they were afraid of a naked stranger. He left the place in the night and travelled east. In a field he found some overripe water melons, but they were neither wholesome nor palatable. After wandering a long time in the rain he came to another barn, and in it he slept soundly until late the next day. Nearly famished he again wandered on and found in an orchard a few half rotten pears. Near by was a potato patch which he entered hoping to get some of them. Here a young woman, who had been stooping down digging potatoes, started up. "I was, of course," he continues, "naked, my head excepted. She was, or appeared to be, excessively frightened, and ran towards a house, screeching and screaming at every step." Hawkins ran in the other direction, and got safely away. At last the poor boy found another barn, and lay, that night, upon a heap of flax. After sunrise next morning he concluded to go on his way. "I could see the farmers at their labor in the fields. I then concluded to still keep on my course, and go to some of these people then in sight. I was, by this time, almost worn out with hunger. I slowly approached two tall young men who were gathering garden sauce. They soon discovered me and appeared astonished at my appearance, and began to draw away from me, but I spoke to them in the following words:--'Don't be afraid of me: I am a human being!' They then made a halt and inquired of me, 'Are you scared?' 'No,' said I. They then advanced slowly towards me, and inquired, 'How came you here naked?'

"I seated myself on the ground and told them the truth."

One of the young men told him to conceal himself from the sight of the neighbors, and he would go and consult with his mother what had best be done. He soon returned, bringing two large pieces of bread and b.u.t.ter and a decent pair of pantaloons. He then told him to go to the side of the barn and wait there for his mother, but not to allow himself to be seen. The boys' mother came out to speak to him with a shirt on her arm.

As he incautiously moved around the side of the barn to meet her, she exclaimed, "For G.o.d's sake don't let that black woman see you!" A slave was washing clothes near the back door of the farm house. The poor woman explained to Hawkins that this negress would betray him, "For she is as big a devil as any of the king's folks, and she will bring me out, and then we should all be put in the provost and die there, for my husband was put there more than two years ago, and rotted and died there not more than two weeks since."

The poor woman wept as she told her story, and the escaped prisoner wept with her. This woman and her two sons were Dutch, and their house was only nine miles from Brooklyn ferry. She now directed the boy to a house at Oyster Bay where she said there was a man who would a.s.sist him to escape.

After running many risks he found the house at last, but the woman who answered his knock told him that her husband was away and when he explained who he was she became very angry, and said that it was her duty to give him up. So he ran away from her, and at last fell into the hands of a party of British, who recaptured him, and declared that they would send him immediately back to the prison ship. They were quartered in a house near Oyster Bay, and here they locked him in a room, and he was told to lie down on some straw to sleep, as it was now night. In the night the fleas troubled him so much that he was very restless. A sentinel had been placed to guard him, and when this wretch heard him moving in the dark he exclaimed, "Lie still, G--d---you," and p.r.i.c.ked him several times with his bayonet, so that the poor boy felt the fresh blood running down his body. He begged the sentinel to spare his life, declaring that it was hard he should be killed merely because the fleas had made him restless. He now did not dare to move, and was obliged to endure the attacks the fleas and the stiffness of his wounds in perfect silence until the sentinel was relieved. The next sentinel was kind and humane and seemed to compa.s.sionate his sufferings. He said that some men were natural brutes, and seemed to take an interest in the boy, but could do little for him. At daylight he was sent to the quarters of a Tory colonel a mile from the guard room. The colonel was a tall man of fine appearance, who examined him, and then said he must be sent back to the Jersey. The poor lad was now left in an unlocked room on the ground floor of the colonel's house. He was given his breakfast, and a mulatto man was set to guard him. Now there was a pantry opening into this room, and a negro girl, who appeared very friendly with the mulatto, called him to eat his breakfast in this pantry. The mulatto, while eating, would look out every few minutes. Just after one of these inspections the boy got up softly, with his shoes in his hands, stepped across the room, out at the back door, and concealed himself in a patch of standing hemp. From thence he made his way into an orchard, and out into a wood lot. Here he hid himself and remained quiet for several hours, and although he heard several persons talking near him, he was not pursued.

At last he stole out, walked about six miles, and at night fall entered a barn and slept there. He was in rather better case than before his recapture, for a doctor belonging to the British service had taken pity on him the night before, and had furnished him with warm clothes, shoes, and a little money.

Next morning a woman who lived in a small house near the road gave him some bread and milk. The time of the year was autumn, it was a day or two before Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown. He now very fortunately met an acquaintance named Captain Daniel Havens. He was an uncle of a boy named John Sawyer, with whom young Hawkins had run away from New York some years before. Through the agency of this old friend Hawkins got on board a smuggler in the night and finally reached home in safety.

Christopher Hawkins's account of the Old Jersey is not so reliable as that of some others who were among her inmates. He was only on board that vessel three days, but in that time he saw enough to decide him to risk death in the attempt to escape rather than remain any longer on board of her. He declares that: "The cruel and unjustifiable treatment of the prisoners by the British soon produced the most demoralizing effects upon them. Boxing was tolerated without stint.... After I left the ship an American vessel came into the port of New York as a cartel for the exchange of prisoners.... A ship's mate was so fortunate as to be one of the exchanged. He had a large chest on board, and, as privately as he could, he put the cabin boy into the chest, locked him in, and carried him on board the cartel. A prisoner named Spicer had seen the boy put into the chest, and after he had been conveyed on board the cartel, Spicer communicated the affair to the commanding officer on board the Jersey. The cartel was immediately boarded, as she had not yet left the port, and the boy was found and brought back. Spicer paid for his treachery with his life. The prisoners knocked him down the hatchway, when they were going down for the night; they then fell upon him, cut off his ears, and mangled him in a shocking manner, so that he died in a day or two."

This event occured after he left the ship, according to his own narrative. The same story is told in a different way by an eye witness of undoubted veracity. He says that the prisoners were so incensed against Spicer that they determined to kill him. For this purpose some of them held him, while another was about to cut his throat, when the guards, hearing the uproar, rushed down the hatchway, and rescued him.

Hawkins also says: "I one day observed a prisoner on the forecastle of the ship, with his shirt in his hands, having stripped it from his body, deliberately picking the vermin from the pleats and putting them in his mouth. * * * I stepped very near the man and commenced a conversation with him. He said he had been on board two years and a half, or eighteen months. He had completely lost count of time, was a skeleton and nearly naked. This was only one case from perhaps a hundred similar. This man appeared in tolerable health as to body, his emaciation excepted. * * *

The discipline of the prisoners by the British was in many respects of the most shocking and appalling character. The roll of the prisoners, as I was informed, was called every three months, unless a large acquisiton of prisoners should render it necessary more often. The next day after our crew were put on board the roll was called, and the police regulations of the ship were read. I heard this. One of the new regulations was to the effect that every captive trying to get away should suffer instant death, and should not even be taken on board alive."

It appears that David Laird commanded the Old Jersey from 1778 until early in the year 1781. He was then relieved of the command, and this office was given to a man named John Sp.o.r.ne, or Spohn, until the 9th of April, 1783, when all the prisoners remaining in her were released, and she was abandoned. The dread of contagion kept visitors aloof. She was still moored in the mud of the Wallabout by chain cables, and gradually sank lower and lower. There is a beam of her preserved as a curiosity at the Naval Museum at Brooklyn.

David Laird, the Scotchman who commanded her until the early part of 1781, returned to New York after the peace of 1783 as captain of a merchant ship, and moored his vessel at or near Peck's Slip. A number of persons who had been prisoners on board the Jersey, and had suffered by his cruelty, a.s.sembled on the wharf to receive him, but he deemed it prudent to remain on ship-board during the short time his vessel was there.

It is in the recollections of Ebenezer Fox that we have the only mention ever made of a woman on board that dreadful place, the Old Jersey, and although she may have been and probably was an abandoned character, yet she seems to have been merciful, and unwilling to see the prisoners who were attempting to escape, butchered before her eyes. It is indeed to be hoped that no other woman ever set foot in that terrible place to suffer with the prisoners, and yet there are a few women's names in the list of these wretched creatures given in the appendix to this book. It is most likely, however, that these were men, and that their feminine appellations were nicknames. [Footnote: One is named Nancy and one Bella, etc.]

CHAPTER XXIX

TESTIMONY OF PRISONERS ON BOARD THE JERSEY

We must again quote from Ebenezer Fox, whose description of the provisions dealt out to the prisoners on board the prison ships shall now be given.

"The prisoners received their mess rations at nine in the morning. * *

* All our food appeared to be damaged. The bread was mostly mouldy, and filled with worms. It required considerable rapping upon the deck, before these worms could be dislodged from their lurking places in a biscuit. As for the pork, we were cheated out of it more than half the time, and when it was obtained one would have judged from its motley hues, exhibiting the consistence and appearance of variegated soap, that it was the flesh of the porpoise or sea hog, and had been an inhabitant of the ocean, rather than a sty. * * * The flavor was so unsavory that it would have been rejected as unfit for the stuffing of even Bologna sausages. The provisions were generally damaged, and from the imperfect manner in which they were cooked were about as indigestible as grape shot. The flour and oatmeal was often sour, and when the suet was mixed with the flour it might be nosed half the length of the ship. The first view of the beef would excite an idea of veneration for its antiquity, * * * its color was a dark mahagony, and its solidity would have set the keenest edge of a broad axe at defiance to cut across the grain, though like oak.u.m it could be pulled to pieces, one way, in strings, like rope yarn. * * * It was so completely saturated with salt that after having been boiled in water taken from the sea, it was found to be considerably freshened by the process. * * * Such was our food, but the quality was not all of which we had to complain. * * * The cooking was done in a great copper vessel. * * * The Jersey, from her size, and lying near the sh.o.r.e, was embedded in the mud, and I don't recollect seeing her afloat the whole time I was a prisoner. All the filth that acc.u.mulated among upwards of a thousand men was daily thrown overboard, and would remain there until carried away by the tide. The impurity of the water may be easily conceived, and in that water our meat was boiled. It will be recollected, too, that the water was salt, which caused the inside of the copper to be corroded to such a degree that it was lined with a coat of verdigris. Meat thus cooked must, in some degree, be poisoned, and the effects of it were manifest in the cadaverous countenances of the emaciated beings who had remained on board for any length of time.

"* * * We pa.s.sed the night amid the acc.u.mulated horrors of sighs and groans; of foul vapor; a nauseous and putrid atmosphere, in a stifling and almost suffocating heat. * * * Little sleep could be enjoyed, for the vermin were so horribly abundant that all the personal cleanliness we could practice would not protect us from their attacks."

The public papers of the day often contained accounts of the cruelties practiced upon the prisoners on the ships. In the _Pennsylvania Packet_ of Sept. 4th, 1781, there is an extract from a letter written by a prisoner whose name is not given.

"EXTRACT FROM A LETTER DATED ON BOARD THE JERSEY (VULGARLY CALLED h.e.l.l) PRISON SHIP

"New York August 10th 1781

"There is nothing but death or entering into the British service before me. Our ship's company is reduced by death and entering into the British service to the small number of 19. * * * I am not able to give you even the outlines of my exile; but this much I will inform you, that we bury 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 in a day. We have 200 more sick and falling sick every day; the sickness is the yellow fever, small pox, and in short everything else that can be mentioned."

"New London. Conn. March 3rd. 1782. Sunday last a flag ship returned from New York which brought twenty Americans who had been a long time on board a prison ship. About 1,000 of our countrymen remain in the prison ships at New York, great part of whom have been in close confinement for more than six months, and in the most deplorable condition: many of them seeing no prospect of release are entering into the British service to elude the contagion with which the ships are fraught."

EXTRACT OF A LETTER WRITTEN ON BOARD THE PRISON SHIP JERSEY, APRIL 26TH, 1782.

"I am sorry to write you from this miserable place. I can a.s.sure you that since I have been here we have had only twenty men exchanged, although we are in number upwards of 700, exclusive of the sick in the Hospital ships, who died like sheep; therefore my intention is, if possible, to enter on board some merchant or transport vessel, as it is impossible for so many men to keep alive in one vessel."

"Providence. May 25th 1782. Sunday last a flag of truce returned here from New York and brought a few prisoners. We learn that 1100 Americans were on board the prison and hospital ships at New York, when the flag sailed from thence, and that from six to seven were generally buried every day."

"Salem. Ma.s.s. Extract from a letter of an officer on board the Jersey.--'The deplorable situation I am in cannot be expressed. The captains, lieutenants, and sailing masters have gone to the Provost, but they have only gotten out of the frying pan into the fire. I am left here with about 700 miserable objects, eaten up by lice, and daily taking fevers, which carry them off fast. Nov 9th 1782."

By repeated acts of cruelty on the part of the British the Americans were, at last, stung to attempt something like retaliation. In 1782 a prison ship, given that name, was fitted up and stationed in the Thames near New London, as we learn from the following extract:

"New London, Conn. May 24th 1782. Last Sat.u.r.day the Retaliation prison ship was safely moored in the river Thames, about a mile from the ferry, for the receipt of such British prisoners as may fall into our hands, since which about 100 prisoners have been put on board."

It is said that this ship was in use but a short time, and we have been unable to learn anything further of her history.

Thomas Philbrook, who was a prisoner on board the Jersey for several months was one of the "working-party," whose duty it was to scrub the decks, attend to the sick, and bring up the dead. He says: "As the morning dawned there would be heard the loud, unfeeling, and horrid cry, 'Rebels! Bring up your dead!'

"Staggering under the weight of some stark, still form, I would at length gain the upper deck, when I would be met with the salutation: 'What! _you alive yet?_ Well, you are a tough one!'"

CHAPTER x.x.x

RECOLLECTIONS OF ANDREW SHERBURNE

Andrew Sherburne, a lad of seventeen, shipped on the Scorpion, Captain R. Salter, a small vessel, with a crew of eighteen men. This vessel was captured by the Amphion, about the middle of November, 1782. Sherburne says that the sailors plundered them of everything they possessed, and that thirteen of them were put on board the Amphion, and sent down to the cable tiers between the two decks, where they found nearly a hundred of their countrymen, who were prisoners of war.

"We were very much crowded, and having nothing but the cables to lay on, our beds were as hard and unpleasant as though they were made of cord wood, and indeed we had not sufficient room for each to stretch himself at the same time.

"After about two weeks we arrived at New York, and were put on board that wretched ship the Jersey. The New York prison ships had been the terror of American tars for years. The Old Jersey had become notorious in consequence of the unparallelled mortality on board her. * * *