An escape of a similar character to the foregoing was effected from one of the Portsmouth hulks. On one occasion a prisoner acted the part of a female so naturally, that an English naval Captain was deceived completely. He proposed to the supposed girl to elope. The pseudo-maiden was nothing loth, and (said the late Rev. G. N. Godwin in a lecture from which I take this) there is an amusing sketch showing the Captain in full uniform passing the gangway with the lady on his arm, the sentry presenting arms meanwhile. Of course, when the gallant officer discovered his mistake, there was nothing for it but to assist in the escape of the astute prisoner.
In 1812, Hageman, the bread contractor, was brought up for fraudulent dealing, and was mulcted in £3,000, others concerned in the transactions being imprisoned for long terms.
I am glad to be able to ring a change in the somewhat monotonous tone of the prisoners’ complaints, inasmuch as American prisoners have placed on record their experiences: one of them, Andrews, in a very comprehensive and detailed form.
From the autumn of 1812 to April of 1813, there were 900 American prisoners at Chatham, 100 at Portsmouth, 700 at Plymouth, ‘most of them destitute of clothes and swarming with vermin.’ On April 2, 1813, the Transport Board ordered them all to Dartmoor, no doubt because of their ceaseless attempts to escape from the hulks. They were horrified, for they knew it to have the reputation of being the worst prison in England.
From the Plymouth hulks Hector and Le Brave, 250 were landed at New Passage, and marched the seventeen miles to Dartmoor, where were already 5,000 French prisoners. On May 1, 1813, Cotgrave, the Governor, ordered all the American prisoners to be transferred to No. 4 caserne, where were already 900 French ‘Romans’.
Dartmoor. The Original Main Entrance.
(From a sketch by the Author.)
The garrison at Dartmoor consisted of from 1,200 to 1,500 men, who, says Andrews, without the smallest foundation of fact, had been told off for this duty as punishment for offences. The truth is, that as our small regular army was on duty in many places elsewhere, the Militia had to be drawn upon for the garrisoning of war-prisons, and that on account of the many ‘pickings’ to be had, war-prison duty was rather sought than shunned. The garrison was frequently changed at all the war-prisons for no other reason than that between guards and guarded an undesirable intimacy usually developed.
The American prisoners, who, throughout the war, were generally of a superior type to the Frenchmen, very much resented this association of them with the low-class ruffians in No. 4. I may here quote Mr. Eden Phillpotts’s remarks in his Farm of the Dagger.
‘There is not much doubt that these earlier prisoners of war suffered very terribly. Their guards feared them more than the French. From the hulks came warnings of their skill and ingenuity, their courage, and their frantic endeavours to regain liberty. The American Agent for Prisoners of War at Plymouth, one Reuben Beasley, was either a knave or a fool, and never have unhappy sufferers in this sort endured more from a callous, cruel, or utterly inefficient and imbecile representative. With sleepless rigour and severity were the Americans treated in that stern time; certain advantages and privileges permitted to the French at Princetown were at first denied them, and to all their petitions, reasonable complaints, and remonstrances, the egregious Beasley turned a deaf ear, while the very medical officer at the gaol at that season lacked both knowledge of medicine and humanity, and justified his conduct with falsehood before he was removed from office.’