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 fact of an order having been given at first, provided the firing was under the existing circumstances justifiable, does not appear very material in any other point of view, than as shewing a want of self possession and discipline in the troops if they should have fired without order.

With regard to the above most important consideration, of whether the firing was justifiable or not, we are of opinion, under all the circumstances of the case, from the apprehension which the soldiers might fairly entertain, owing to the numbers and conduct of the prisoners, that this firing to a certain extent was justifiable in a military point of view, in order to intimidate the prisoners, and compel them thereby to desist from all acts of violence, and to retire as they were ordered, from a situation in which the responsibility of the agents, and the military, could not permit them with safety to remain.

From the fact of the crowd being so close and the firing at first being attended with very little injury, it appears probable that a large proportion of the muskets were, as stated by one or two of the witnesses, levelled over the heads of the prisoners; a circumstance in some respects to be lamented, as it induced them to cry out "blank cartridges," and merely irritated and encouraged them to renew their insults to the soldiery, which produced a repetition of the firing in a manner much more destructive.

The firing in the square having continued for some time, by which several of the prisoners sustained injuries, the greater part of them appear to have been running back with the utmost precipitation and confusion to their respective prisons, and the cause for further firing seems at this period to have ceased. It appears, accordingly, that captain Shortland was in the market square exerting himself and giving orders to that effect, and that lieutenant Fortye had succeeded in stopping the fire of his part of the guard.

Under these circumstances, it is very difficult to find any justification for the further continuance and renewal of the firing, which certainly took place both in the prison yards and elsewhere; though we have some evidence of subsequent provocation given to the military, and resistance to the turnkeys in shutting the prisons, and of stones being thrown out from within the prison doors.

The subsequent firing rather appears to have arisen from the state of individual irritation and exasperation on the part of the soldiers, who followed the prisoners into their yards, and from the absence of nearly all of the officers who might have restrained it as well as from the great difficulty of putting an end to a firing when once commenced under such circumstances. Captain Shortland was from this time busily occupied with the turnkeys in the square, receiving and taking care of the wounded. Ensign White remained with his guard at the breach, and lieutenants Ayelyne and Fortye, the only other subalterns known to have been present, continued with the main bodies of their respective guards.

The time of the day, which was the officers' dinner hour, will in some measure explain this, as it caused the absence of every officer from the prison whose presence was not indispensable there. And this circumstance which has been urged as an argument to prove the intention of the prisoners to take this opportunity to escape, tended to increase the confusion, and to prevent those great exertions being made which might perhaps have obviated a portion at least of the mischief which ensued.

At the same time that the firing was going on in the square, a cross fire was also kept up from several of the platforms on the walls round the prisoners where the sentries stand, by straggling parties of soldiers who ran up there for that purpose. As far as this fire was directed to disperse the men assembled round the breach, for which purpose it was most effectual, it seems to stand upon the same ground as that in the first instance in the square.—That part which it is positively sworn was directed against straggling parties of prisoners running about the yards and endeavoring to enter in the few doors which the turnkeys, according to their usual practice, had left open, does seem, as stated, to have been wholly without object or excuse, and to have been a wanton attack upon the lives of defenceless, and at that time, unoffending individuals.

In the same, or even more severe terms, we must remark upon what was proved as to the firing in the door-ways of the prisons, more particularly into that of No. 3 prison, at a time when the men were in crowds at the entrance. From the position of the prison and the door, and from the marks of the balls which were pointed out to us, as well as from the evidence, it was clear this firing must have proceeded from soldiers a very few feet from the door way; and although it was certainly sworn that the prisoners were at the time of part of the firing at least, continuing to insult and occasionally to throw stones at the soldiers, and that they were standing in the way of, and impeding the turnkey, who was there for the purpose of closing the door, yet still there was nothing stated which could, in our view, at all justify such excessively harsh and severe treatment of helpless and unarmed prisoners, when all idea of escape was at an end.

Under these impressions, we used every endeavor to ascertain if there was the least prospect of identifying any of the soldiers who had been guilty of the particular outrages here alluded to, or of tracing any particular death, at that time to the firing of any particular individual, but without success; and all hopes of bringing the offenders to punishment would seem to be at an end.