The only furniture in the ship was a bench along each side and four in the middle, the prisoners squatting on deck at mess time. Each prisoner on arrival received a hammock, a thin coverlet, and a hair mattress weighing from two to three pounds. For a long time no distinction was made between officers and men, but latterly a special ship was allowed for officers. Some idea of the crowding on board may be gained from the facts that each battery, 130 feet long, 40 feet broad, and 6 feet high, held nearly 400 prisoners, and that the hammocks were so closely slung that there was no room to sleep on deck.
The alimentation of the prisoners, humane and ample as it looks on paper, seems to have been a gross sham. Not only did the contractors cheat in quality and quantity, but what with forfeitures on account of breaches of discipline, and observance of the law imposed by the prisoners on themselves, that, deductions or no deductions, no man should have a larger ration than another, and contributions to men planning to escape, it was impossible for all to touch full rations.
The prisoners elected their own cooks, and nominally a committee of fifteen prisoners was allowed to attend at the distribution to see that quality and quantity were just, but the guards rarely allowed them to do so. Six men formed a mess; no spoons, knives or forks were supplied, merely bowls and pannikins. The fish supplied on ‘maigre’ days—Wednesdays and Fridays—was usually uneatable, and the prisoners often sold the herrings at a penny each to the purveyors, who kept them for redistribution, so that it was said that some herrings had done duty for ten years! With the money thus made the prisoners bought butter or cheese. The cod they re-cooked; the bread was filthy and hard. Complaints were useless, and the result was constant hunger.
All but the Raffalés, the scum, occupied themselves with trades or professions. There were tobacco manufacturers, professors of dancing, fencing, and stick-play, who charged one sou for a lesson, which often lasted an hour. Mathematics and languages were taught at the same rate. Whilst these and many other occupations were busy, up and down the battery passed the ‘merchants’ crying their wares, hungry men who offered their rags for sale, menders of shoes, and the occupants of favourable positions in the battery inviting bids for them, so that despite the rags and the hunger and the general misery, there was plenty of sound and movement, and general evidence of that capability for adapting themselves to circumstance which so invariably distinguished the French prisoners in England from the British prisoners in France.
Garneray’s chief friend on board was a sturdy Breton privateer Captain named Bertaud. Bertaud hated the English fiercely, and, being somewhat of a bruiser, had won the esteem of his companions quite as much by his issue of the following challenge as by his personal qualities.
‘Challenge to the English! Long live French Brittany! The undersigned Bertaud, native of Saint-Brieuc, annoyed at hearing the English boast that they are the best boxers in the world, which is a lie, will fight any two of them, in any style with fists, but not to use legs.
‘He will also, in order to prove his contempt for these boasters, receive from his two adversaries ten blows with the fist before the fight wherever his adversaries choose, and afterwards he will thrash them. Simply, he stipulates that as soon as he has received the ten blows and before the fight begins he shall be paid two pounds sterling to compensate him for the teeth which shall have been broken.
‘Done on board the Prothée where Bertaud mopes himself to death!’
Garneray calls him a madman, and says that the ten blows alone will do for him. What is his game?
‘I shall pocket two pounds, and that will go into our escape fund,’ replied the Breton laughing.
Garneray and Bertaud had been saving up for some time for the escape they resolved to attempt, and, although Bertaud’s challenge was not taken up, they at last owned forty-five shillings, to which Garneray’s writing lessons at a shilling each to the little girl of the Prothée’s commander chiefly contributed. Each made himself a bag of tarred cloth to hold clothes and provisions, they had bored a hole through the ship’s side large enough to slip through, and only waited for a dark quiet night. As it was the month of July this soon came. Bertaud got through first, Garneray was on the point of following when a challenge rang out, followed by a musket-shot, and peeping through the hole, to his horror he saw poor Bertaud suspended over the water by the cord of his bag which had caught in an unnoticed nail in the ship’s side. Then was a terrible thing done. The soldiers hammered the helpless Frenchman with their musket butts, Garneray heard the fall of something heavy in the water; there was silence; then as if by magic the whole river was lit up, and boats from all the other vessels put off for the Prothée. Garneray slipped back to his hammock, but was presently turned out with all the other prisoners to be counted. His anxiety about the fate of his friend made him ask a sailor, who replied brutally, ‘Rascal, how should I know? So far as I am concerned I wish every Frenchman was at the bottom of the sea!’ For a consideration of a shilling, however, the man promised to find out, and told Garneray that the poor Breton had received three bayonet thrusts, a sabre-cut on the head, and musket-butt blows elsewhere, but that the dog still breathed! For twenty days the man gave his shilling bulletins, and then announced that the Breton was convalescent.
Garneray and Bertaud made another attempt some months later. Garneray had saved money he had earned by drawing designs for the straw-workers among the prisoners, who had hitherto not gone beyond birds and flowers, and who readily paid for his ships in full sail and other marine objects.