At Christmas 1786, after eighteen months’ happiness at Dover, he returned to Calais, and in obedience to his irresistible bent, joined the navy. In 1795, the Formidable, with Tom Souville on board, was taken by H.M.S. Queen Charlotte, off Isle-Croix, after a fight in which she lost 320 killed and wounded out of her complement of 717, and Tom with his Captain, Linois, of whom mention will be made later in this work, were taken to Portsmouth. Tom Souville refused to sign a parole form, so was put into the cachot of the Diamond hulk; but only for a short time, as he was soon exchanged. However, in 1797 he was again captured, this time on the Actif, and was confined on the Crown hulk.
Of life on the Crown he gives the usual description. He speaks of the prisoner professors (who were known as the ‘Académiciens’) being obliged to give their lessons at night, as the noise during the daytime made teaching impossible. But as no lights were allowed ‘tween decks after a certain hour, they saved up the fat of their ration meat, and put it into an oyster-shell with a wick of cotton threads, fencing it round with clothes. Sometimes the air was so foul that the light went out. If they were discovered, the guards destroyed everything, books, paper, slates, pens, &c.
Souville mentions one thing I have not noticed in any account of prison-ship life, that there were French women on board, ‘de basse extraction et extrêmement grossières’.
He emphasizes the incapacity and brutality of the British doctors, and particularizes one Weiss (not a British name, one is thankful to note!) as a type. He says that the orthodox treatment of the prisoners from San Domingo, who were suffering from the vomito negro, was to plunge them into icy water!
A system of signalling and holding conversation between one prison ship and another was carried out by the carpenters, who had their benches on the upper deck, a regular alphabet being arranged by means of hammer knocks and shifting the position of the benches. He is the first also to mention that theatricals were performed on a prison ship; the pieces given being a two-act vaudeville, Les Aventures d’une voyageuse sensible, and a drama in five acts, La Fiancée du Corsaire. The orchestra consisted of a flute and a violin; the female dresses were lent by the ladies of Portsmouth and Gosport, who also came as spectators. But the chief amusement, he says, was to vex the authorities as much as possible, to call the captain, who had an inflated sense of his own importance, a mere turnkey, to make songs on him, and above all to play tricks at the roll call, so as to create confusion and bewilderment.
The attempts to escape were very frequent, and this in spite of a recent savage threat that for every prisoner who escaped two should be hanged. Souville describes a daring escape which inspired him to action. A cutter laden with powder was alongside one of the hulks, waiting for morning to discharge into the Egmont man-of-war. Lieutenant Larivière and four or five other prisoners managed to slip out of the Crown and board her. They found the crew fast asleep, tied and gagged them securely, and adopted their clothes. At daybreak they hoisted their sail, Larivière giving loud commands in English, and passed by the Egmont, waiting for her powder. She hailed them to stop, but they crowded on all sail, and although the alarm was signalled, and they were pursued, they crossed safely to Roscoff.
As Souville, when he refused to be put on parole, had openly declared that he would escape at the first opportunity, he was carefully guarded. Thanks to his excellent knowledge of English he made friends among the bluejackets of the guard, and especially with one Will, whom he had helped with money when his mother’s home was threatened to be broken up for debt.
So he started the delicate and difficult operation of boring a hole in the ship’s side, large enough to admit the passage of a human body, above the water line, yet not too near the grated platform running round the ship, continually patrolled by guards. He counted on Will’s aid, and confided his scheme to him.
The very next morning he was conducted to the Black Hole, and was informed that his design had been betrayed, and he instantly guessed that his supposed friend Will was the betrayer, as he alone was in the secret. Whilst in the cachot he found a mysterious note merely saying that at a certain hour on a certain day the high tide would be over the mud-banks which had proved fatal to so many fugitives from the hulks. In the cachot with him were three men who had successfully shammed madness in order to get sent to France, and who were about to be liberated. One of them, whose form of assumed madness had been to crow day and night like a cock, gave Tom a clue to a hole he had commenced to bore in the event of his sham madness failing.
Souville found the hole, finished it, and on the date named in the note slipped out, and started for a three-mile swim towards a light ashore. After much labour, he negotiated the mud-banks, and landed. Exhausted, he fell asleep, and was awakened by a man. He sprang to his feet and prepared to defend himself from arrest; but the man impressed silence, and pointed to a fisher-hut whence a light shone, evidently that to which he had steered at first, but of which he had lost sight during his long struggle in the water.