A journal, of a young man of Massachusetts, late a surgeon on board an American privateer, who was captured at sea by the British in May, eighteen hundred and thirteen and was confined first, at Melville Island, Halifax, then at Chatham, in England, and last at Dartmoor prison

by Benjamin Waterhouse

The language and phraseology of these market people are very rude. When puffing off the qualities of their goods, when they talk very fast, we can hardly understand them. They do not speak near so good English as our common market people do in America. The best of them use the pronoun he in a singular manner—as can he pay me? Can he change? For can you pay me? Or you change? I am fully of opinion with those who say that the American people taken collectively, as a nation, speak the English language with more purity than the Britons, taken collectively. Every man or boy of every part of the United States would be promptly understood by the men of letters in London; but every man and boy of Old England would not be promptly understood by the lettered men in the capital towns of America. Is it not the bible that has preserved the purity of our language in America? These English men and women do not speak with the grammatical correctness of our people. As to the Scotch, their barbarisms that are to be found even in print, are affrontive to the descendants of Englishmen. Where, among the white people of the United States, can we find such shocking barbarities as we hear from the common people of Scotland? And yet we find that the Prince Regent is at the head of an institution for perpetuating the unwritten language to the highlanders. We shall expect to hear of a similar undertaking, under the same patronage, for keeping alive the language of his dear allies, the Kickapoos and Pottowattomies!! for the language of slaves or savages, are the needed props of some of the thrones in Europe.

I am sorry to remark that the Christmas holy-days have been recently marked with no small degree of intoxication, and its natural consequence, quarrelling among the prisoners. The news of peace; and the expectation of being soon freed from all restraint, have operated to unsettle the minds of the most unruly, and to encourage riot. Drinking, carousing, and noise, with little foolish tricks, are now too common.—Some one took off a shutter, or blind, from a window of No. 6, and as the persons were not delivered up by the standing committee, Captain Shortland punished the whole, college fashion, by stopping the market, or as this great man was pleased wittily to call it, an embargo. At length the men were given up to Shortland, who put them in the black hole for ten days.

To be a cook is the most disagreeable and dangerous office at this depot. They are always suspected, watched and hated, from an apprehension that they defraud the prisoner of his just allowance. One was flogged the other day for skimming the fat off the soup. The grand Vizier's office at Constantinople, is not more dangerous than a cook's, at this prison, where are collected four or five thousand hungry American sons of liberty. The prisoners take it upon themselves to punish these pot-skimmers in their own way.

We have in this collection of prisoners, a gang of hard-fisted fellows, who call themselves "THE ROUGH ALLIES." They have assumed to themselves the office of accuser, judge and executioner. In my opinion, they are as great villains as could be collected in the United States. They appear to have little principle, and as little humanity, and many of them are given up to every vice; and yet these ragamuffins have been allowed to hold the scale and rod of justice. These rough allies make summary work with the accused, and seldom fail to drag him to punishment. I am wearied out with such lawless anti-American conduct.

January 30th. The principal conversation among the most considerate is, when will the treaty be returned, ratified; for knowing the high character of our commissioners, none doubt but that the President and Senate will ratify, what they have approved. We are all in an uneasy, and unsettled state of mind; more so than before the news of peace. Before that news arrived, we had settled down in a degree of despair; but now we are preparing and planning our peaceable departure from this loathsome place.

I would ask the reader's attention to the conduct of Capt. Shortland, the commanding officer of this depot of prisoners, as well as to the conduct of the men under his charge, as the conduct and events of this period have led on to a tragedy that has filled our native land with mourning and indignation. I shall aim at truth and impartiality, and the reader may make such allowance as our situation may naturally afford, and his cool judgment suggest.

In the month of January, 1815, Captain Shortland commenced a practice of counting over the prisoners out of their respective prisons, in the cold, raw air of the yard, where we were exposed above an hour, unnecessarily to the severity of the weather. After submitting to this caprice of our keeper, for several mornings, in hopes he would be satisfied as to the accurate number of the men in prison, we all refused to go out again in wet and raw weather. Shortland pursued his usual method of stopping the market; but finding that it had no effect, he determined on using force; and sent his soldiers into the yard, and ordered them to drive the prisoners into the prison in the middle of the afternoon, whereas they heretofore remained out until the sun had set, and then they all went quietly into their dormitories. The regiment of regulars had been withdrawn, and a regiment of Somersetshire militia had taken their place, a set of stupid fellows, and generally speaking ignorant officers. The regiment of regulars were clever fellows, and Shortland was awed by their character; but he felt no awe, or respect, for these irregulars.

The prisoners told the soldiers that this was an unusual time of day for them to leave the yard; and that they would not tamely submit to such caprice. The soldiers could only answer by repeating their orders. More soldiers were sent for; but they took special care to assume a position to secure their protection. The soldiers began now to use force with their bayonets. All this time Shortland stood on the military walk with the major of the regiment, observing the progress of his orders. Our men stood their ground. On observing this opposition, Shortland became enraged; and ordered the major to give the word for the soldiers to fire. The soldiers were drawn up in a half circle, to keep them from scattering.

We were now hemmed in between No. 7, and the wall, that divided this from the yard of No. 4. The major then gave orders to the officer in the yard, to "charge bayonet." This did not occasion our prisoners to retreat; they rather advanced; and some of them told the soldiers, that if they pricked a single man, they would disarm them. Shortland was watching all these movements from behind the gate; and finding that he had not men enough to drive them in, drew his soldiers out of the yard. After this, the prisoners went into the prison of their own accord, when the turnkey sounded a horn.

These militia men have been somewhat intimidated by the threatenings of the "rough allies," before mentioned. These national guards thought they could drive us about like so many Frenchmen; but they have found their mistake. A man escaped from the black-hole, who had been condemned to remain in it during the war, for attempting to blow up a ship. The prisoners were determined to protect him; and when Shortland found that the prisoners would not betray him into his hands, he resorted to his usual embargo of the market; and sent his soldiers in after the prisoner; but he might as well have sought a needle in a hay-mow; for such was the difficulty of finding an individual among six thousand. They ransacked every birth, and lurking place, and passed frequently by the man without being able to identify him, as our fellow had disguised himself both in face, and in person. The prisoners mixed in so entirely with the soldiers, that the latter could not act, and were actually fearful of being disarmed. When these Somersetshire militia found that we were far from being afraid of them, they ceased to be insolent, and treated us with something like respect. There was a considerable degree of friendship between us and the late regiment of regulars, who were gentlemen, compared with these clumsy militia.