Instantly, Barney resolved to play a game of bluff. Luckily, in changing his attire he had not left the British uniform behind. The boat came alongside and a privateer officer came aboard and asked Barney his business.
‘Government business to France,’ replied Barney with dignity—and displayed the British uniform.
The officer was not satisfied, and said that he must report to his captain. This he did; the privateer captain was no more satisfied than his lieutenant, and politely but firmly declared his intention of carrying Barney back to Plymouth, adding that it must be funny business to take a British officer in uniform over to France in a fishing boat.
‘Very well,’ said Barney, calm and dignified to the end; ‘then I hold you responsible, for the interruption of my errand, to Admiral Digby, to whose flag-ship I will trouble you to take me.’
All the same Barney saw that the game was up, and back towards Plymouth he had to turn. Barney’s story is not very clear as to how he managed to escape the notice of the crew of the privateer, on board which he now was, but he slipped into a boat alongside, cut her adrift, and made for ‘Cawsen’. Landing here, and striking away inland, he thought it best to leave the high road, and so, climbing over a hedge, he found himself in Edgcumbe Park. Presently he came upon an old gardener at work. Barney accosted him, but all the reply he got was: ‘It’s a fine of half a guinea for crossing a hedge.’ Barney had no money, but plenty of pleasant talk, the result of which was that the old man passed him out by a side gate and showed him a by-way towards the river. Barney, for obvious reasons, wished to avoid the public ferry, so crossed over in a butcher’s boat, and passing under the very wall of Mill Prison, was soon in Plymouth and at the clergyman’s house.
He had had a narrow escape, for in less than an hour after Admiral Digby had received the privateer captain’s report, a guard had been sent off from Mill Prison to Cawsand, and had he kept to the high road he would assuredly have been captured. Whilst at the clergyman’s house, the Town Crier passed under the window, proclaiming the reward of five guineas for the apprehension of ‘Joshua Barney, a Rebel Deserter from Mill Prison’.
Barney remained here three days. Then, with a fresh outfit, he took a post chaise for Exeter. At midnight the Town Gate was reached, and a soldier closely examined Barney and compared him with his description on the Apprehension bill. Again his sang-froid came to the rescue, and he so contorted his face and eyes that he was allowed to proceed, and his escape was accomplished.
In 1783 Barney was at Plymouth again; this time as a representative of the Republic in a time of peace, and although an individual of importance, entertaining all the great officials of the port on the George Washington, and being entertained by them in return, he found time not only to visit the kindly clergyman who had befriended him, but to look up the old gardener at Mount Edgcumbe, amply pay the fine so long due, and discover that the old man was the father of the sentry who had enabled him to escape from Mill Prison!
An account by another American, Andrew Sherburne, published at Utica, in 1825, of a sojourn in Mill Prison in 1781, is quoted only for his remarks on the hospital system, which do not accord with those of other writers. He says:
‘However inhuman and tyrannical the British Government was in other respects, they were to be praised and respected for the suitable provision they made for the sick in the hospitals at Mill Prison.’