Pembroke

In 1779 Howard the philanthropist visited Pembroke, and reported to this effect:

He found thirty-seven American prisoners of war herded together in an old house, some of them without shoes or stockings, all of them scantily clad and in a filthy condition. There were no tables of victualling and regulations hung up, nor did the prisoners know anything more about allowances than that they were the same as for the French prisoners. The floors were covered with straw which had not been changed for seven weeks. There were three patients in the hospital house, in which the accommodation was very poor.

Fifty-six French prisoners were in an old house adjoining the American prison. Most of them had no shoes or stockings, and some had no shirts. There was no victualling table and the prisoners knew nothing about their allowance. Two or three of them had a money allowance, which should have been 3/6 per week each, for aliment, but from this 6d. was always deducted. They lay on boards without straw, and there were only four hammocks in two rooms occupied by thirty-six prisoners. There was a court for airing, but no water and no sewer. In two rooms of the town jail were twenty French prisoners. They had some straw, but it had not been changed for many weeks. There was no supply of water in the jail, and as the prisoners were not allowed to go out and fetch it, they had to do without it. On one Sunday morning they had had no water since Friday evening. The bread was tolerable, the beer very small, the allowance of beef so scanty that the prisoners preferred the allowance of cheese and butter. In the hospital were nine French prisoners, besides five of the Culloden’s crew, and three Americans. All lay on straw with coverlets, but without sheets, mattresses, or bedsteads.

This was perhaps the worst prison visited by Howard, and he emphatically recommended the appointment of a regular inspector. In 1779 complaints came from Pembroke of the unnecessary use of fire-arms by the militiamen on guard, and that 150 prisoners were crowded into one small house with an airing yard twenty-five paces square—this was the year of Howard’s visit. His recommendations seem to have had little effect, for in 1781 twenty-six prisoners signed a complaint that the quantity and the quality of the provisions were deficient; that they had shown the Agent that the bread was ill-baked, black, and of bad taste, but he had taken no notice; that he gave them cow’s flesh, which was often bad, thinking that they would refuse it and buy other at their own expense; that he vexed them as much as he could, telling them that the bread and meat were too good for Frenchmen; that on their complaining about short measure and weight he refused to have the food measured and weighed in their presence in accordance with the regulations; that he tried to get a profit out of the straw supplied by making it last double the regulation time without changing it, so that they were obliged to buy it for themselves; and that he had promised them blankets, but, although it was the raw season of the year, none had yet been issued.

In 1797 the Admiralty inspector reported that the condition of the dépôt at Pembroke was very unsatisfactory; the discipline slack, as the Agent preferred to live away at Hubberstone, and only put in an occasional appearance; and that the state of the prisoners was mutinous to a dangerous degree.

The Fishguard affair of 1797

If the Great Western Railway had not brought Fishguard into prominence as a port of departure for America, it would still be famous as the scene of the last foreign invasion of England. On February 22, 1797, fifteen hundred Frenchmen, half of whom were picked men and half galley slaves, landed from four vessels, three of which were large frigates, under an Irish General Tate, at Cerrig Gwasted near Fishguard. They had previously been at Ilfracombe, where they had burned some shipping. There was a hasty gathering of ill-armed pitmen and peasants to withstand them, and these were presently joined by Lord Cawdor with 3,000 men, of whom 700 were well-trained Militia. Cawdor rode forward to reconnoitre, and General Tate, deceived, as a popular legend goes, into the belief that he was opposed by a British military force of great strength, by the appearance behind his lordship of a body of Welshwomen clad in their national red ‘whittles’ and high-crowned hats, surrendered.

Be the cause what it might, by February 24, without a shot being fired, 700 Frenchmen were lodged in Haverfordwest Jail, 500 in St. Mary’s Church, and the rest about the town. Later on, for security, 500 Frenchmen were shut up in the Golden Tower, Pembroke, and with this last body a romance is associated. Two girls were daily employed in cleaning the prison, and on their passage to and fro became aware of two handsome young Frenchmen among the prisoners selling their manufactures at the daily market, who were equally attracted by them. The natural results were flirtation and the concoction of a plan of escape for the prisoners. The girls contrived to smuggle into the prison some shin bones of horses and cows, which the prisoners shaped into digging tools, and started to excavate a passage sixty feet long under the prison walls to the outer ditch which was close to the harbour, the earth thus dug out being daily carried away by the girls in the pails they used in their cleaning operations. Six weeks of continuous secret labour saw the completion of the task, and all that now remained was to secure a vessel to carry the performers away. Lord Cawdor’s yacht at anchor offered the opportunity. Some reports say that a hundred prisoners got out by the tunnel and boarded the yacht and a sloop lying at hand; but at any rate, the two girls and five and twenty prisoners secured the yacht, and, favoured by a thick fog, weighed anchor and got away. For three days they drifted about; then, meeting a brig, they hailed her, represented themselves as shipwrecked mariners, and were taken aboard. They learned that a reward of £500 was being offered for the apprehension of the two girls who had liberated a hundred prisoners, and replied by clapping the brig’s crew under hatches, and setting their course for St. Malo, which they safely reached.

The girls married their lovers, and one of them, Madame Roux, ci-devant Eleanor Martin, returned to Wales when peace was declared, and is said to have kept an inn at Merthyr, her husband getting a berth at the iron-works.