CHAPTER V.
It is now the last day of the year 1813; and we live pretty comfortably. Prisoners of war, confined in an old man-of-war hulk, must not expect to sleep on beds of down; or to fare sumptuously every day, as if we were at home with our indulgent mothers and sisters. All things taken into consideration, I believe we are nearly as well treated here, in the river Medway, as the British prisoners are in Salem or Boston; not quite so well fed with fresh meat, and a variety of vegetables, because this country does not admit of it. We nevertheless do suffer as we did at Halifax; and above all, we suffered on board the floating dungeons, the transports, and store-ship Malabar, beyond expression.
All the Frenchmen are sent out of the ship, excepting about forty officers; and these are all gamblers, ready and willing, and able to fleece us all, had we ever so much money. I wonder that the prison-ship-police has not put down this infamous practice. It is a fomenter of almost all the evil passions; of those particularly which do the least honor to the human heart. Our domestic faction have uttered a deal of nonsense about a French influence in America.—By what I have observed here, I never can believe that the French will ever have any influence to speak of, in the United States. We never agreed with them but in one point, and that was in our hatred to the English. There we united cordially; there we could fight at the same gun; and there we could mingle our blood together. The English may thank themselves for this. They, with their friends and allies, the Algerines and the Savages of our own wilderness, have made a breach in that great Christian family, whose native language was the English; which is every year growing wider and wider.
January, 1814.—We take two or three London newspapers, and through them know a little what is going forward in the world. We find by them that Joanna Southcote, and Molenaux, the black bruiser, engross the attention of the most respectable portion of John Bull's family. Not only the British officers, but the ladies wear the orange colored cockade, in honor of the Prince of Orange, because the Dutch have taken Holland. The yellow, or orange color, is all the rage; it has been even extended to the clothing of the prisoners. Our sailors say that it is because we are under the command of a yellow Admiral, or at least a yellow Commodore, which is about the same thing.
About this time there came on board of us a recruiting sergeant, to try to enlist some of our men in the service of the Prince Regent. He offered us sixteen guineas; but he met with no success. Some of them "bored" him pretty well. We had a very good will to throw the slave overboard; but as we dare not, we contented ourselves with telling him what a flogging the Yankees would give him and his platoon, when they got over to America.
About five hundred prisoners have recently arrived in this "reach," from Halifax. There are between one hundred and fifty and two hundred of Colonel Boestler's men, who were deceived, decoyed, and captured near Beaver Dams, on the twenty-third of June, 1813. These men were principally from Pennsylvania and Maryland. It is difficult to describe their wretched appearance; and as difficult to narrate their suffering on the passage, without getting into a rage, inconsistent with the character of an impartial journalist.
To the everlasting disgrace of the British government, and of a British man of war, be it known, that these miserable victims to hardheartedness, were crowded together in the black hole of a ship, as we were, just like sheep in a sheep-fold. They allowed but two to come upon deck at a time. They were covered with nastiness, and overrun with vermin; for these poor creatures were not allowed to wash their clothes, or themselves. O, how my soul did abhor the English, when I saw these poor soldiers! It is no wonder that people who only see and judge of the Americans by the prisoners, that they conceive us to be a horde of savages. They see us while prisoners, in the most degraded and odious light that we ever before saw or felt ourselves in. I can easily conceive how bad and scanty food, dirt, vermin, and a slow chronical disease, or low spirits, may change the temper and character of large bodies of men. I would advise all my countrymen, should it ever be their hard lot to be again in British bondage, to exert themselves to appear as clean and smart in their persons, as their situation will possibly admit. That I may not be accused of pronouncing the English a cruel people, without proving my assertions, I will here ask my reader to have recourse to the speech of Sir Robert Heron, made in Parliament, in April, 1816, where he recites the treatment of the poor in the alms-houses at Lincoln. After a painful recital of the miserable state of the work-house in that city, he mentioned "that there were five cells strongly guarded with iron bolts, not for the reception, of lunatics, but for the punishment of such poor persons as might fall into any transgression. In each of these were strong iron staples in the wall and floor, to which the poor delinquent was chained. Among several instances of cruelty, the worthy Baronet mentioned that a Chelsea pensioner, seventy years of age, and totally blind, had been for a whole fortnight chained to the floor, because he had been drunk! That a very young girl, having contracted a certain disease, had been chained in a similar manner to the floor, lest she should contaminate others. Would it be believed, said Sir Robert to the House, that one chain fixed round her body, had been weighed, and was found no less than twenty-eight pounds weight!"—From what I have heard of the generous turn of the Prince Regent, his sympathetic heart would be moved to compassion for these two frail mortals, the one very old, the other very young. But what are we to think of his master, the magnanimous John Bull? I believe a soldier feels more of the martial spirit when in uniform, than in a loose drab coat. The same feeling may extend to a judge in his robes, and to a parson in his gown. They all may feel braver, more consciencious, and pious, for this "outward and visible sign," of what the inward ought to be.
These poor soldiers were, of all men among us, the most miserable; they had suffered greatly for want of good and sufficient food; as six of them had to feed on that quantity which the British allowed to four of their own men. By what we could gather, the most barbarous, the most unfeeling neglect, and actual ill treatment, was experienced on board the Nemesis. This ship seems, like the Malabar, to be damned to everlasting reproach. I forgot to enquire whether her Captain and her Surgeon were Scotchmen.
We turn with disgust and resentment from such ships as the Regulus, the Malabar, and the Nemesis, and mention with pleasure the Poictiers, of 74 guns. The captain and officers of this ship behaved to the prisoners she brought, with the same kindness and humanity, as I presume the captain, officers and crew of an American man of war would towards British prisoners. They considered our men as living, sensitive beings, feeling the inconveniences of hunger and thirst, and the pleasure of the gratifications of these instinctive appetites; they seemed to consider, also, that we were rational beings; and it is possible they may have suspected that some of us might have had our rational and improvable faculty increased by education; they might, moreover, have thought we had, like them, the powers of reminescence, and the same dispositions to revenge; or they might not have thought much on the subject, but acted from their own generous and humane feelings. I wish it were in my power to record the names of the officers of the Poictiers. Of this ship we can remark, that she had long been on the American station; long enough to know the American character, and to respect it. Her officers had a noble specimen of American bravery and humanity, when the American sloop Wasp took the British sloop Frolic, and both were soon after taken by the Poictiers. The humane, and we dare say, brave Capt. Beresford, has the homage of respect for his proper line of conduct towards those Americans whom the fortune of war put under his command. We drank the healths, in the best beer we could get, of the captain, officers and crew, of his Britannic Majesty's line of battle ship, Poictiers.
That we may not be thought to accuse the British of barbarity without proof, we shall give an instance of their shocking inhumanity towards the inhabitants of Canada, in the year 1759, when their army was under the command of a Wolfe, extracted from Knox's historical journal of the British campaign in Canada, p. 322, vol. 1st, dedicated by permission to Gen. Anchers. "Yesterday Capt. Starks brought in two prisoners, one of them a lad of fifteen years of age, the other a man of forty, who was very sullen, and who would not answer any questions. This officer also took two male children, and, as he and his party were returning, they saw themselves closely pursued by a much superior body, some of whom were Indians, (probably the father and mother of the young children, and other relatives, and a few humane Indians)—he wished to be freed from the children, as, by their innocent cries and screeches, they directed the pursuers where to follow. Capt. Stark's lieutenant made many signs to them to go away and leave him, but they not understanding him, still redoubled their lamentations, and finding them hard pressed, he gave orders that the infants should be taken aside and KILLED, which was done"!!!—What is the reason this diabolical barbarity was never before condemned in print? The reason is plain—they were the children of Frenchmen. This shocking deed was perpetrated by the officers of General Wolfe's army, and published by one of his captains, under the sanction of Lord Amherst!
It may be tedious to our readers, especially if they be British, but we cannot yet leave the subject of the inhuman treatment of the American prisoners of war, while on their passage from Halifax to Chatham. The condition of the soldiers was the most deplorable. Some of these men were born in the interior, and had never seen the salt ocean; they enlisted in Boestler's regiment, and were taken by the British and Indians, somewhere between fort George and York, the capital of Upper Canada. They were pretty much stripped of their clothing, soon after they were taken, and their march to Montreal was conducted with very little regard to their feelings; but when sick, they were well attended to by the medical men of the enemy; their passage from Quebec to Halifax, down the river St. Lawrence, was barbarous. They suffered for victuals, clothes, and every other conveniency. The men say that they had more instances of real kindness from the Indians, than from the British. But on their passage across the Atlantic, their situation was horrible, as may be well supposed, when it is considered that these soldiers had never been at sea, and of course could not shift, and shirk about, as the sailors call it, as could the seamen; they were of course, sea sick; and were continually groping and tumbling about in the dark prison of a ship's hold. They suffered a double portion of misery compared with the sailors, to whom the rolling of the ship in a gale of wind, and the stench of bilge-water, were matters of no grievance; but were serious evils to these landsmen, who were constantly treading upon, or running against, and tumbling over each other. Many of them were weary of their lives; and some layed down dejected in despair, hoping never to rise again. Disheartened, and of course sick, these young men became negligent of their persons, not caring whether they ever added another day to their wretched existence; so that when they came on board the prison ship, they were loathsome objects of disgust. A mother could not have known her own son; nor a sister her brother, disguised and half consumed as they were, with a variety of wretchedness. They were half naked, and it was now the middle of winter, and within thirty miles of London, in the nineteenth century; an era famous for bible societies, for missionary and humane societies, and for all proud boastings of Christian and evangelical virtue; under the reign of a king and prince, renowned for their liberality and magnanimity towards French catholics; (but not Irish ones,) and towards Ferdinand the bigot, his holiness the Pope, and the venerable institution of the holy Inquisition. Alas! poor old John Bull! though art in thy dotage, with thy thousand ships in the great salt ocean; and thy half a dozen victorious ones in the Serpentine River, alias the splendid gutter, dug out in Hyde Park, for the amusement of British children six feet high! Can the world wonder that America, in her present age of chivalry, should knock over these doating old fellows, and make them the derision of the universe?
I can no otherwise account for this base treatment of the Americans, than by supposing that the British government had concluded in the summer and autumn of 1813, that America could not stand the tug of war with England; that Madison was unpopular; and that the federalists, or British faction in America, were prevailing, especially in New-England; and that, being sure of conquest, they should commence the subjugation of the United States by degrading its soldiery and seamen; as they have the brave Irish.—They may have been led into this error by our federal newspapers, which are generally vehicles of misinformation. The faction may impede, and embarrass for a time; but they never can long confine the nervous arm of the American Hercules.
Candor influences me to confess, that there were more attempts than one, to rise and take these men of war transports. I find that several experiments were made, but that they were always betrayed, by some Englishman, or Irishman, that had crept into American citizenship. I hope the time is not far off, when we shall reject from our service every man not known absolutely to have been born in the United States. Whenever these foreigners get drunk, they betray their partiality to their own country, and their dislike of ours. I hope our navy never will be disgraced or endangered by these renegadoes. Every man is more or less a villain, who fights against his own country. The Irish are so ill treated at home, that it is no wonder that they quit their native soil, for a land of more liberty and, plenty; and they are often faithful to the country that adopts them; but never trust an Englishman, and above all a Scotchman. It is a happy circumstance that America wants neither. She had rather have one English manufacturer than an hundred English sailors. We labor under the inconvenience of speaking the same language with the enemies of our rising greatness. I know by my own personal experience, that English books, published since our revolutionary war, have a pernicious tendency in anglifying the American character. I have been amused in listening to the wrangling conversation of an English, Irish and American sailor, when all three were half drunk; and this was very often the case during this month of January, as many of our men who had been in the British naval service, received payment from government; and this filled our abode with noise, riot, confusion, and sometimes fighting. The day was spent in gambling, and the night in drunkenness; for now all would attempt to forget their misery, and steep their senses in forgetfulness. The French officers among us, seldom indulged in drinking to excess. Our men said they kept sober in order to strip the boozy sailor of his money, by gambling.
While the Frenchmen keep sober, the American and English sailor would indulge in their favorite grog. In this respect, I see no difference between English and American. Over the can of grog, the English tar forgets all his hardships and his slavery—yes, slavery; for where is there a greater slavery among white men, than that of impressed Englishmen on board of one of their own men of war? The American, over his grog, seems equally happy, and equally forgetful of his harsh treatment. The Englishman, when his skin, is full of grog, glows with idolatry for his country, and his favorite lass; and so does the American: The former sings the victories of Bembow, How, Jervase and Nelson; while the latter sing the same songs, only substituting the names of Preble, Hull, Decatur and Bainbridge, Perry and Macdonough. Our men parodied all the English national songs.—"Rule Britannia, rule the waves," was "Rule Columbia," &c. "God save great George, our King," was sung by our boys, "God save great Madison;" for every thing like federalism was banished from our hearts and ears; whatever we were before, we were all staunch Madisonians in a foreign land. The two great and ruling passions among the British sailors and the American sailors, seemed, precisely the same, viz. love of their country, and love of the fair sex. These two subjects alone entered into all their songs, and seemed to be the only dear objects of their souls, when half drunk. On these two strings hang all our nation's glory; while, to my surprize, I found, or thought I found, that the love of money was that string which vibrated oftenest in a Frenchman's heart; but I may be mistaken; all the nation may not be gamblers.—Remember, politicians, philosophers, admirals, and generals, that Love and Patriotism are the two, and I almost said, the only two passions of that class of men, who are destined to carry your flag in triumph abound the terraqueous globe, by skillfully controlling the powers of the winds, and of vapor.
One word more, before I quit this national trait. The English naval muse, which I presume must be a Mermaid, half woman and half fish, has, by her simple and half the time, nonsensical songs, done more for the British flag than all her gunnery, or naval discipline and tactics. This inspiration of the tenth muse, with libations of grog, have actually made the English believe they were invincible on the ocean, and, what is still more extraordinary, the French and Spaniards were made to believe it also. This belief constituted a magical circle, that secured their ships from destruction, until two American youths, Isaac Hull, from Connecticut, and Oliver H. Perry, from Rhode Island, broke this spell by the thunder of their cannon, and annihilated the delusion. Is not this business of national songs a subject of some importance? Love and Patriotism, daring amplification, with here and there a dash of the supernatural, are all that is requisite in forming this national band of naval music. We all know that "Yankee Doodle," is the favorite national tune of America, although it commenced with the British officers and Tories, in derision, in the year 1775. When that animating tune is struck up in our Theatres, it electrifies the pit and the upper galleries. When our soldiers are marching to that tune, they "tread the air." "With that tune," said general M——, the same gallant officer, who took nine pieces of cannon from the British, planted on an eminence, at the battle of Bridgewater—"with that tune these fellows would follow me into hell, and pull the devil by the nose." For want of native compositions, we had sung British songs until we had imbibed their spirit, and the feelings and sentiments imbibed in our youth, are apt to stick to us through life. It is high time we had new songs put in our mouths.
Unless we attend to the effects of these early impressions, it is almost incredible, the number of false notions that we imbibe, and carry to our graves. A considerable party in the United States have sung Nelson's victories, until those victories seemed to be their own. Even on the day of the celebration of the Peace, the following Ode was sung in the hall of the University of Cambridge—a captain and a lieutenant of the navy being among the invited guests. It was written by the son of the keeper of the States Prison, in Massachusetts.
ODE, &c.
Columbia and Britannia
Have ceased from Warfare wild;
No more in battle's rage they meet,
The parent and the child.
Each gallant nation now lament
The heroes who have died.
But the brave, on the wave,
Shall yet in friendship ride,
To bear Britannia's ancient name,
And swell Columbia's pride.
The flag-staff of Columbia
Shall be her mountain Pine;
Her Commerce on the foaming sea
Shall be her golden mine.
Her wealth from every nation borne,
Shall swell the ocean wide,
And the brave, on the wave, &c. &c.
To Britain's Faith and Prowess,
Shall distant nations bow,
The Cross upon her topmast head,
The Lion at her prow.
No haughty foe shall dare insult,
No Infidel deride;
For the brave, on the wave, &c. &c.
For now the kindred nations
Shall wage the fight no more;
No more in dreadful thunder dash
The billows to the shore:
Save when in firm alliance bound
Some common foe defied;
Then the brave, on the wave, &c. &c.
This captivity in a foreign land, has been to me a season of thoughtfulness. Sometimes I thought I was like a despised Jew, among the sons of the modern Babylon, which I might have sunk under, but for the first principles of a serious education; for I was born and educated in the state of Massachusetts, near an hundred miles from Boston. The subject of education has greatly occupied my mind, and I rejoiced that I was born in that part of the United States, where it is most attended to. It is an injury to our national character, that most of the books we read in early life, were written by Englishmen; as with their knowledge we imbibe their narrow prejudices. The present war, has, in a degree, corrected this evil; but time alone can effect all we wish.
A dispute arose between us and our commander, relative to the article of bread, which served to show Englishmen how tenacious we, Americans, are on what we consider to be our rights.
Whenever the contractor omitted to send us off soft bread, provided the weather did not forbid, the said contractor forfeited half a pound of bread to each man. The prisoners were not acquainted with this rule, until they were informed of it by the worthy captain Hutchinson; and they determined to enforce the regulation on the next act of delinquency of the contractor. This opportunity soon occurred. He omitted to send us off soft bread in fair weather; our commander, Mr. O. thereupon ordered us to be served with hard ship bread. This we declined accepting, and contended that the contractor was bound to send us off the soft bread, with an additional half pound, which he forfeited to us for his breach of punctuality. Now the contractor had again and again incurred this forfeiture, which went into Mr. O's pocket, instead of our stomachs, and this mal-practice we were resolved to correct. Our commander then swore from the teeth outwards, that if we refused his hard bread, we should have none; and we swore from the teeth, inwardly, that we would adhere to our first declaration, and maintain our rights. Finding us obstinate, he ordered us all to be driven into the pound by the marines, and the ladder drawn up. Some of the prisoners, rather imprudently, cast some reflections on Mr. O. and his family; in consequence of which, he ordered us all to be driven below, and the hatches closed upon us; and he represented to the commodore that the prisoners were in a state of mutiny. He was so alarmed that he sent the female part of his family on shore for safety, and requested a reinforcement of marines. At the same time we made a representation to the commodore, and stated our grievances, in our own way, and we demanded the extra half pound of soft bread, forfeited by the contractor. In all this business we were as fierce and as stubborn, and talked as big as a combination of collegians, to redress bad commons. We remained in this situation two days; one from each mess going on deck for a supply of water, was all the intercourse we had with our superiors. During all this time, we found we had got hold of the heaviest end of the timber. We found it very hard contending against increasing hunger, and should have been very glad of a few hard biscuit. Some began to grow slack in their resistance; and even the most obstinate allowed their ire to cool a little. To lay such an embargo on our own bowels was, be sure, a pretty tough piece of self-denial; for we found; in all our sufferings, that bread was, the staff of life. We were about taking the general opinion by a vote, whether it was best to eat hard biscuit, or starve? Just as we were about taking this important vote, in which, I suspect, we should have been unanimous, the commodore and Capt. Hutchinson came on board to inquire into the cause of the dispute; and this lucky, and well timed visit, saved our credit; and established the Yankee character for inflexibility, beyond all doubt or controversy. These two worthy gentlemen soon discovered that Mr. O. had made representations not altogether correct. They therefore ordered the hatches to be taken off, and proper bread to be served out, and so the dispute ended.
What added to our present satisfaction was, that Mr. my Lord Beasly was to allow us two pence half penny sterling per day, for coffee, tobacco, &c. We now, to use the sailor's own expressive phrase, looked up one or two points nearer the wind than ever.
That Mr. O. had been in the royal navy from his infancy, and now, at the age of forty five, ranks no higher than a lieutenant. He once commanded a sloop, and had the character of severity. He had an amiable wife and many children, who lived in the prison ship. Lieut. O. was not the wisest man in all England. He exercised his cunning, it was said, in making money out of his station; but he was under the immediate control of two honorable gentlemen, otherwise, it is probable, we should have felt more instances of his revenge than he dared, at all times, show.