February 5. It is a pay-day for bounty, on board this ship, (the Bellisle,) which occasions a great market on board.
6. We begin to grow very sickly, and twenty or thirty of us are suffering with the itch, and we are all dreadfully infested with vermin. I make a constant practice of examining my clothes every day, when we are permitted to go upon deck. I often find them swarming with these.
We are informed that the Admiral was heard to say, that no favor was to be shown to us, on account of our orders. We are also told by some, that we are to be removed, soon, on board the Ocean, which is the Admiral’s ship; by others, that we shall be removed to prison.
This afternoon, about one hundred pressed men were brought on board this ship.
7. We were removed from the Bellisle, after having been on board nineteen days, and were carried up to Ammores, and put on board the “Tarbay,” a ship of seventy-four guns, and confined in the bay, between decks, where there was not room for all of us to lay down; it is parted off, like a sheep-pen, and takes in two side-ports only.
8. Pleasant weather, but very cold for persons in our condition, as we are obliged to lay upon a wet deck, without either bedding or clothes, more than what we have on our backs—except a very few who have an old blanket apiece. As there is not room enough within our narrow quarters for every one to lay down at night, some are obliged to sit up all night.
9. There are now sixteen of our number on the doctor’s list, and there are but very few of us but what are either complaining with bad colds or rheumatic pains; and if there are ten sick with as many different complaints, they give them all alike the same medicine.
10. Rough, cold, and some snow; all the way we have to keep ourselves warm, in the day time, is by play, and making ourselves merry.
11. We hear that General Lee is taken. I had to-day a handful of bread given to me by a woman, which I joyfully received.
12. We are informed that Parliament has passed an act that all Americans taken in arms against the King, shall be deemed rebels; and those taken in armed vessels, upon the high seas, as pirates.