The remainder of the Crown Prince Americans were transferred to the Bahama on October 15, 1814. Here they found 300 of their countrymen of the vicious, baser sort, gamblers all, and without any men of influence to order them. Danes occupied the main deck and Americans the lower. Jail fever had played havoc among Danes and Americans—no less than 84 of the latter being buried in the marshes in three months.
Next to the Bahama lay the Belliqueux hulk, full of harmless and dull Scandinavians, so that the captain thereof, having nothing to do in his own ship, started to spy upon the doings aboard the Bahama, and succeeded in getting a marine punished for smuggling liquor. Next day, the rations were fish and potatoes. The Americans collected all their potatoes, and watched for the appearance of the Belliqueux commander for his spying promenade on his quarter deck, the result being that when he did appear, he was greeted with such a hail of potatoes that he was fain to beat an undignified retreat. Soon he came off in his boat to complain to Commander Wilson of the Bahama of his treatment. Wilson, a passionate, hot-tempered, but just and humane man, said he was very sorry, but could do nothing, so back the discomfited officer had to go, pelted with more potatoes and some coals. Said Wilson: ‘These Americans are the sauciest dogs I ever saw; but d—n me if I can help liking them, nor can I ever hate men who are so much like ourselves.’
In October 1814 two hundred Americans were sent to Plymouth, where they were at once boarded by an army of loose women.
With Waterhouse’s experiences at Dartmoor I deal in the chapter devoted to that prison.
CHAPTER VI
PRISON-SHIP SUNDRIES
Under this heading are included various reminiscences of, and particulars about, the prison ships which could not be conveniently dealt with in the foregoing chapters.
In April 1759 five French prisoners from the Royal Oak hulk at Plymouth were executed at Exeter for the murder of Jean Maneaux, who had informed the agent that his comrades had forged passports in order to facilitate their escape to France. Finding this out, they got Maneaux into an obscure corner of the ship, tied him to a ringbolt, and gave him sixty lashes with a rope to the end of which was fastened an iron thimble as thick as a man’s wrist. He got loose, and fell back; they jumped on him till they broke his neck, then cut his body into small pieces, and conveyed them through a waste pipe overboard. The next day twenty-seven prisoners were arrested, and one of them pointed out the actual murderers.
In 1778 two prisoners escaped from the San Rafael at Plymouth, swam off to a lighter full of powder, overpowered the man in charge, ran down through all the ships in Hamoaze, round Drake’s Island, and got safely away to France, where they sold the powder at a handsome price.
Even more daring was the deed of eleven Frenchmen who, early in the morning of April 7, 1808, made their escape from the hulk Vigilant at Portsmouth, by cutting a hole, and swimming to the Amphitrite, a ship in ordinary, fitted up as the abode of the Superintendent Master. They boarded a boat, hanging on the davits, clothed themselves in the greatcoats of the boat’s crew, lowered her, and in the semi-darkness pulled away to the Master Attendant’s buoy boat, one of the finest unarmed crafts in the harbour, valued at £1,000. They boarded her, immediately got under way at about five a.m., and successfully navigated her to Havre, or Cherbourg, which they reached in the evening, and sold her for £700. She was fitted out, armed with eight six-pounders, and went forth as a privateer under the name of Le Buoy Boat de Portsmouth. Her career, however, was short, for in November she was captured by the Coquette.
The above-mentioned prison ship Vigilant seems to have hardly deserved her name, for in the year 1810 alone no less than thirty-two prisoners escaped from her, and of these only eight were recaptured.