American Prisoners of the Revolution Part 27

"When I reflect how many hundreds of my brave and intrepid countrymen I have seen, in all the bloom of health, brought on board of that ship, and in a few days numbered with the dead, in consequence of the savage treatment they there received, I can but adore my Creator that He suffered me to escape; but I did not escape, Sir, without being brought to the very verge of the grave.

"This was the second time I was on board, which I shall mention more particularly hereafter. Those of us who had money fared much better than those who had none. I had made out to save, when taken, about twenty dollars, and with that I could buy from the b.u.mboats, that were permitted to come alongside, bread, fruit, etc.; but, Sir, the b.u.mboatmen were of the same kidney as the officers of the Jersey and we got nothing from them without paying through the nose for it, and I soon found the bottom of my purse; after which I fared no better than the rest. I was, however, fortunate in one respect; for after having been there about six weeks, two of my countrymen, (I am a Nantucket man) happened to come to New York to endeavor to recover a whaling sloop that had been captured, with a whaling license from Admiral Digby; and they found means to procure my release, pa.s.sing me for a Quaker, to which I confess I had no pretensions further than my mother being a member of that respectable society. Thus, Sir, I returned to my friends, fit for the newest fashion, after an absence of three years.

"For my whole wardrobe I carried on my back, which consisted of a jacket, shirt, and trousers, a pair of old shoes and a handkerchief, which served me for a hat, and had more than two months, for I lost my hat the day we were taken, from the maintop-gallant yard, furling the top-gallant sail.

"My clothing, I forgot to mention, was completed laced with locomotive tinsel, and moved as by instinct, in all directions; but as my mother was not fond of such company, she furnished me with a suit of my father's, who was absent at sea, and condemned my laced suit for the benefit of all concerned.

"Being then in the prime of youth, about eighteen years of age, and naturally of a roving disposition; I could not bear the idea of being idle at home. I therefore proceeded to Providence, R. I., and shipped on board the brig Betsy and Polly, Captain Robert Folger, bound for Virginia and Amsterdam. We sailed from Newport early in February, 1783; and were taken five days after, off the capes of Virginia, by the Fair American privateer, of those parts, mounting sixteen six-pounders, and having 85 men, commanded by one Burton, a refugee, most of whose officers were of the same stamp. We were immediately handcuffed two and two, and ordered into the hold in the cable-tier. Having been plundered of our beds and bedding, the softest bed we had was the soft side of a water cask, and the coils of a cable.

"The Fair American, after having been handsomely dressed by an United States vessel of half of her force, was obliged to put into New York, then in possession of the British army, to refit, and we arrived within the Hook about the beginning of March, and were put on board a pilot boat, and brought up to this city. The boat hauled up alongside the Crane-wharf, where we had our irons knocked off, the mark of which I carry to this day; and were put on board the same schooner, Relief, mentioned in a former part of this narrative, and sent up once more to the prison-ship.

"It was just three months from my leaving the Old Jersey to my being again a prisoner on board of her, and on my return I found but very few of the men I had left three months before. Some had made their escape; some had been exchanged; but the greater part had taken up their abode under the surface of the hill, which you can see from your windows, where their bones are mouldering to dust, mingled with mother earth; a lesson to Americans, written _in capitals, on British cruelty and injustice_.

"I found, on my return on board the Jersey, more prisoners than when I left her; and she being so crowded, they were obliged to send about 200 of us on board the John, a transport-ship of about 300 tons.

"There we were treated worse, if possible, than on board the Jersey, and our accommodations were infinitely worse, for the Jersey, being an old, condemned 64 gun ship had two tiers of ports fore and aft, air-ports, and large hatchways, which gave a pretty free circulation of air through the ship; whereas the John, being a merchant-ship, and with small hatchways, and the hatchways being laid down every night, and no man being allowed to go on deck * * * the effluvia arising from these, together with the already contaminated air, occasioned by the breath of so many people so pent up together, was enough to destroy men of the most healthy and robust const.i.tutions. All the time I was on board this ship, not a prisoner eat his allowance, bad as it was, cooked, more than three or four times; but eat it raw as it came out of the barrel. * *

* In the middle of the ship, between decks, was raised a platform of boards about two and a half feet high, for those prisoners to sleep on who had no hammocks. On this they used frequently to sit and play at cards to pa.s.s the time. One night in particular, several of us sat to see them play until about ten o'clock, and then retired to our hammocks.

About one A. M, we were called and told that one Bird was dying; we turned out and went to where he lay, and found him just expiring. Thus, at 10 P. M, the young man was apparently as well as any of us, and at one A. M. had paid the debt to nature. Many others went off in the same way. It will perhaps be said that men die suddenly anywhere. True, but do they die suddenly anywhere from the same cause? After all these things it is, I think, impossible for the mind to form any other conclusion than that there was a premeditated design to destroy as many Americans as they could on board the prison-ships; the treatment of the prisoners warrants the conclusion; but it is mean, base, and cowardly, to endeavor to conquer an enemy by such infamous means, and truly characteristic of base and cowardly wretches. The truly brave will always treat their prisoners well.

"There were two or three hospital-ships near the prison-ships; and so soon as any of the prisoners complained of being sick, they were sent on board of one of them; and I verily believe that not one out of a hundred ever returned or recovered. I am sure I never knew but one to recover.

Almost, and in fact I believe I may say every morning, a large boat from each of the hospital ships went loaded with dead bodies, which were all tumbled together into a hole dug for the purpose, on the hill where the national navy-yard now is.

"A singular affair happened on board of one of the hospital-ships, and no less true than singular. All the prisoners that died after the boat with the load had gone ash.o.r.e were sewed up in hammocks, and left on deck till next morning. As usual, a great number had thus been disposed of. In the morning, while employed in loading the boat, one of the seamen perceived motion in one of the hammocks, just as they were about launching it down the board placel for that purpose from the gunwale of the ship into the boat, and exclaimed, 'd.a.m.n my eyes! That fellow isn't dead!' and if I have been rightly informed, and I believe I have, there was quite a dispute between the man and the others about it. They swore he was dead enough, and should go into the boat; he swore he should not be launched, as they termed it, and took his knife and ripped open the hammock, and behold, the man was really alive. There had been a heavy rain during the night; and as the vital functions had not totally ceased, but were merely suspended in consequence of the main-spring being out of order, this seasonable moistening must have given tone and elasticity to the great spring, which must have communicated to the lesser ones, and put the whole machinery again into motion. You know better about this than I do, and can better judge of the cause of the re-animation of the man. * * * He was a native of Rhode Island; his name was Gavot. He went to Rhode Island in the same flag of truce as myself, about a month afterwards. I felt extremely ill, but made out to keep about until I got home. My parents then lived on the island of Nantucket. I was then taken down, and lay in my bed six weeks in the most deplorable situation; my body was swelled to a great degree, and my legs were as big round as my body now is, and affected with the most excruciating pains. What my disorder was I will not pretend to say; but Dr. Tupper, quite an eminent physician, and a noted tory, who attended me, declared to my mother that he knew of nothing that would operate in the manner that my disorder did, but poison. For the truth of that I refer to my father and brothers, and to Mr. Henry Coffin, father to Captain Peter Coffin, of the Manchester Packet of this point.

"Thus, Sir, in some haste, without much attention to order or diction, I have given you part of the history of my life and sufferings, but I endeavored to bear them as became an American. And I must mention before I close, to the everlasting honor of those unfortunate Americans who were on board the Jersey, that notwithstanding the savage treatment they received, and death staring them in the face, every attempt which was made by the British to persuade them to enter their ships of war or in their army, was treated with the utmost contempt; and I saw only one instance of defection while I was on board, and that person was hooted at and abused by the prisoners till the boat was out of hearing. Their patriotism in preferring such treatment, and even death in its most frightful shapes, to the service of the British, and fighting against their own country has seldom been equalled, certainly never excelled, and if there be no monument raised with hands to commemorate the virtue of those men, it is stamped in capitals on the heart of every American acquainted with their merit and sufferings, and will there remain as long as the blood flows from its fountains."

We have already seen that many of the prisoners on board the Jersey were impressed into the service of British men-of-war, and that others voluntarily enlisted for garrison duty in the West Indies. It seems probable, however, that, as Captain Coffin a.s.serts, few enlisted in the service to fight against their own countrymen, and those few were probably actuated by the hope of deserting. It is certain that thousands preferred death to such a method of escaping from prison, as is proved by the mult.i.tudes of corpses interred in the sand of the Wallabout, all of whom could, in this way, have saved their lives. Conditions changed on board the Jersey, from time to time. Thus, the water supply that was at one time brought by the schooner Relief from New York, was, at other times, procured from a beautiful spring on Long Island, as we will see in our next chapter.

Some of the prisoners speak of the foul air on board the prison ship caused by the fact that all her port holes were closed, and a few openings cut in her sides, which were insufficient to ventilate her.

Coffin says there was a good pa.s.sage of air through the vessel from her port holes. It is probable that the Jersey became so notorious as a death trap that at last, for very shame, some attempt was made to secure more sanitary conditions. Thus, just before peace was established, she was, for the first time, overhauled and cleaned, the wretched occupants being sent away for the purpose. The port holes were very probably opened, and this is the more likely as we read of some of the prisoners freezing to death during the last year of the war. From that calamity, at least, they were safe as long as they were deprived of outer air.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

A WONDERFUL DELIVERANCE

There are few records of religious feeling on board the "Jersey, vulgarly called 'h.e.l.l.'" 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 G.o.d that He could deliver him, even "from the nethermost h.e.l.l."

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 t.i.tle, "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 sh.o.r.e. 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 a.s.sisted 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 pa.s.s 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 ash.o.r.e." 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 G.o.d. He writes: "G.o.d, who had something more for me to do, undertook for me." Mr. Emery, the sailing master, was going ash.o.r.e for water. Andros stepped up to him and asked: "Mr. Emery, may I go on sh.o.r.e 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 compa.s.sion for the poor, apparently dying, young man.