Privateers and Privateering

by Edward Phillips Statham

However, Barney was free, and he had friends near by who concealed him, and took him on to the house of an old clergyman in Plymouth in the evening. No immediate inquiry was made for him in the prison, for he had provided a substitute to answer his name at roll-call in the cell every day—a "slender youth," we are told, "who was able to creep through the window-bars at pleasure," and so crawled into Barney's cell and answered for him. We are not told who the "slender youth" was, or how, if he was an American prisoner, he contrived also to answer for himself in his own cell. Anyhow, this was an amazingly slack prison, for any such freak to be possible.

Finding two fellow-countrymen who had been captured as passengers in a merchant vessel and were looking for a chance of returning, they secured a fishing-smack, Barney rigged himself up in an old coat tied with tarred rope round the waist and a tarpaulin hat, and soon after daybreak they sailed down the River Plym, past the forts and men-of-war, and safely out to sea.

But they were not destined so easily to reach the coast of France, whence they hoped to find a passage to America. An inconveniently zealous British privateer from Guernsey boarded the smack, and the skipper was unduly inquisitive. Upon Barney opening his coat and showing his British uniform, the privateersman, though more polite, was obviously suspicious. What business had a British officer on the enemy's coast?—for Barney had stated that he was bound there. Barney made an official mystery of his "business," and refused to reveal it—a state secret, and so on.

No use! The privateer captain's sensitive conscience would not permit him to let the smack go, and so the two vessels beat up for the English coast in company, and on the following morning came to anchor in a small harbour about six miles from Plymouth, probably Causand Bay. Here the privateer captain went on shore, on his way to Plymouth, to report to Admiral Digby, while most of his crew also landed to avoid the risk of being taken by the press-gang on board. Barney, however, though he was treated with courtesy, was detained on board the privateer.

There was a boat made fast astern, and into this the American quietly slipped, hurting his leg as he did so, and sculled on shore, shouting to some of the idlers on the beach to help him haul up the boat.

The customs officer was disposed to be inquisitive and talkative, but Barney pointed to the blood oozing through his stocking, and said he must go off and get his leg tied up.

"Pray, sir," he said, "can you tell me where our people are?"

He was told they were at the Red Lion, at the end of the village, which he discovered, much to his annoyance, that he was obliged to pass. He had almost succeeded in doing so unobserved, when one of the men shouted after him, and, approaching, gave him to understand that some of the privateer's crew had an idea of shipping in the Navy, and wanted some particulars from him; showing that his disguise had deceived them.

Barney invited the man to accompany him to Plymouth, walking away rapidly while he spoke; but, as Mr. Maclay puts it, the tar "seemed to think better of his plan of entering a navy noted for its cruelty to seamen," and accordingly turned back.

Barney now began to be very anxious about his safety. He was on the high road to Plymouth, where he might at any moment encounter a guard sent out to recapture him; so he jumped over a hedge into Lord Mount-Edgecumbe's grounds, where the gardener, pacified by a "tip," let him out by a private gate to the waterside—and none too soon, for, as he passed out, the guard sent to seek him tramped along on the other side of the hedge he had jumped over. A butcher, conveying some stock by water, took him across the river, and that night he found himself back at the old clergyman's house from which he had started. His two friends of the fishing-smack adventure here joined him once more, and while they were at supper the town-crier bawled under the window that five guineas reward would be paid for the capture of Joshua Barney, a rebel deserter from Mill Prison.