I next give the remarks of Colonel Lebertre, who, having broken his parole by escaping from Alresford, was captured, and put on the Canada hulk at Chatham. This was in 1811. He complains bitterly that officers in the hulks were placed on a level with common prisoners, and even with negroes, and says that even the Brunswick, which was considered a better hulk than the others, swarmed with vermin, and that although cleanliness was strongly enjoined by the authorities, no allowance for soap was made, no leave given to bathe even in summer, and that fresh clothing was very rarely issued.
But most strongly does he condemn the conduct of the idle curious who would come off from the shore to see the prisoners on the hulks.
‘Les femmes même ont montré une indifférence vraiment choquante. On en a vu rester des heures entières les yeux fixés sur le Parc où se tiennent les prisonniers, sans que e spectacle de misère qui affecterait si vivement une Française ait fait couler une seule larme; le rire insultant était, au contraire, sur leurs lèvres. Les prisonniers n’ont connu qu’un seul exemple d’une femme qui s’évanouît à la vue du Parc.’
In the House of Commons on December 26, 1812, during a debate upon the condition of the foreign prisoners of war in England, Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty, declared that he had inspected the hulks at Portsmouth, and had found the prisoners thereon ‘comfortable and happy and well provided with amusement’, and Sir George Warrender said much the same about Chatham.
Colonel Lebertre remarks on this:
‘Men sensual and hardened by pleasures! You who in full Parliament outrage your victims and declare that the prisoners are happy! Would you know the full horror of their condition, come without giving notice beforehand; dare to descend before daylight into the tombs in which you bury living creatures who are human beings like yourselves; try to breathe for one minute the sepulchral vapour which these unfortunates breathe for many years, and which sometimes suffocates them; see them tossing in their hammocks, assailed by thousands of insects, and wooing in vain the sleep which could soften for one moment their sufferings!’
He describes, as did the Baron de Bonnefoux, the Raffalés who sold all their clothes, and went naked in obedience to one of the laws of their camaraderie, who slept huddled together for warmth in ranks which changed position by words of command. He says that some of the prisoners were so utterly miserable that they accepted pay from the authorities to act as spies upon their fellows. He describes the rude courts of justice held, and instances how one man who stole five louis received thirty blows with a rope’s end; he refers to the terrible vice prevalent upon the prison ships, and remarks that ‘life on them is the touchstone of a man’s character’.
When he arrived on the Canada there was no vacant sleeping place, but for 120 francs he bought a spot in the middle of the battery, not near a port, ‘just big enough to hold his dead body’. Still, he admits that the officers treated him with as much consideration as their orders would allow.
On August 11, 1812, in response to many urgent remonstrances from influential prisoners against the custom of herding officers and men together, all the officers on the hulks at Chatham were transferred to the lower or thirty-six gun battery of the Brunswick, in number 460. Here they had to submit to the same tyranny as on the other ships, except that they were allowed to have wine if they could afford to pay six francs a bottle for it, which few of them could do. Later, General Pillet and other ‘broke paroles’, on account of the insulting letters they wrote on the subject of being allowed rum or other spirits, were confined to the regulation small beer. The Transport Office wrote: ‘Indeed, when the former unprincipled conduct of these officers is considered, with their present combination to break through the rules, obviously tending to insurrection and a consequent renewal of bloodshed, we think it proper that they should immediately be removed to separate prison ships.’
We now come to the most rabid of the Frenchmen, General Pillet. Pillet was severely wounded and taken prisoner at Vimiero in 1808, and—in violation, he says, of the second article of the Convention of Cintra, which provided that no French should be considered prisoners of war, but should be taken out of Portugal with arms, &c., by British ships—was brought to England, with many other officers. He was at once allowed to be on parole at Alresford, but, not considering himself bound by any parole terms, attempted to escape with Paolucci, Captain of the Friedland captured in 1808 by the Standard and Active, but was recaptured and sent to the dépôt at Norman Cross. Here his conduct was so reprehensible that he was sent to the Brunswick at Chatham. From the Brunswick he tried to escape in a vegetable boat, but this attempt failed, and it is to the subsequent rigour of his treatment that must be attributed his vitriolic hatred of Britain.