It was proposed to confine captured American seamen in these ships, but they also served as prisons for thousands of patriot soldiers taken in the land engagements in and about New York. The men were crowded in these small vessels under conditions which pass belief. They suffered untold misery and died by hundreds from lack of food, from exposure, smallpox and other dreadful diseases, and from the cruelty of their captors. The average death rate on the Jersey alone was ten per night. A conservative estimate places the total number of victims at 11,500. The dead were carried ashore and thrown into shallow graves or trenches of sand and these conditions of horror continued from the beginning of the war until after peace was declared. Few prisoners escaped and not many were exchanged, for their conditions were such that commanding officers hesitated to exchange healthy British prisoners in fine condition for the wasted, worn-out, human wrecks from the prison ships. A very large proportion of the total number of these prisoners perished. Of the survivors, many never fully recovered from their sufferings.
In 1808, it was said of the prison ship martyrs: “Dreadful, beyond description, was the condition of these unfortunate prisoners of war. Their sufferings and their sorrows were great, and unbounded was their fortitude. Under every privation and every anguish of life, they firmly encountered the terrors of death, rather than desert the cause of their country. * * *
“There was no morsel of wholesome food, nor one drop of pure water. In these black abodes of wretchedness and woe, the grief worn prisoner lay, without a bed to rest his weary limbs, without a pillow to support his aching head—the tattered garment torn from his meager frame, and vermin preying on his flesh—his food was carrion, and his drink foul as the bilge water—there was no balm for his wounds, no cordial to revive his fainting spirits, no friend to comfort his heart, nor the soft hand of affection to close his dying eyes—heaped amongst the dead, while yet the spark of life lingered in his frame, and hurried to the grave before the cold arms of death had embraced him. * * *
“‘But,’ you will ask, ‘was there no relief for these victims of misery?’ No—there was no relief—their astonishing sufferings were concealed from the view of the world—and it was only from the few witnesses of the scene who afterwards lived to tell the cruelties they had endured, that our country became acquainted with their deplorable condition. The grim sentinels, faithful to their charge as the fiends of the nether world, barred the doors against the hand of charity, and godlike benevolence never entered there—compassion had fled from these mansions of despair, and pity wept over other woes.”
Numerous accounts of survivors of the prison ships have been preserved and some of them have been published. So great was popular sympathy for them that immediately after the close of the Revolutionary War an attempt was made to gather the testimony of the survivors and to provide a fitting memorial for those who had perished. So far as I have been able to learn most of the diaries and journals and other testimony of the prison ship victims relates to the later years of the war and particularly to the Jersey, the largest, most conspicuous, and most horrible of all the prison ships.
I have been so fortunate as to have access to a journal or diary kept by William Slade, of New Canaan, Conn, a young New Englander, who early responded to the call of his country and was captured by the British in 1776, shortly after his enlistment, and confined on one of the prison ships, the Grovner (or Grovesner). From internal evidence it would appear that this was the first or one of the first vessels used for the purpose and that Slade and the other prisoners with him were the first of the American soldiers thus confined. At any rate, throughout his diary he makes no mention of other bands of prisoners in the same condition The few small pages of this little diary, which was always kept in the possession of his family until it was deposited in the Sheldon Museum, of Middlebury, Vt, contain a plain record of every-day life throughout a period of great suffering. They do not discuss questions of State and policy, but they do seem to me to bring clearly before the mind’s eye conditions as they existed, and perhaps more clearly than elaborate treatises to give a picture of the sufferings of soldiers and sailors who preferred to endure all privations, hardships, and death itself rather than to renounce their allegiance to their country and enlist under the British flag.
The first entry in the Slade diary was made November 16, 1776, and the last January 28, 1777, so it covers about ten weeks.
The entries were as follows:
Fort Washington the 16th day November A.D. 1776. This day I, William Slade was taken with 2,800 more. We was allowed honours of War. We then marched to Harlem under guard, where we were turned into a barn. We got little rest that night being verry much crowded, as some trouble [illegible]. * * *
Sunday 17th. Such a Sabbath I never saw. We spent it in sorrow and hunger, having no mercy showd.