“This is my passport!”
The officer, who had the courage of his convictions, made a rush at him and succeeded in deflecting the aim of the pistol. The next moment the guards rushed in and secured Tandy. Before daylight he and his associates were handcuffed and confined in the local prison by order of Sir James Crawford.
A few hours after the arrest of the culprits Monsieur Maragan, the French resident, wrote to the Senate at Hamburg claiming Tandy and his colleagues as French citizens and threatening to leave the place unless they were released. The British minister opposed this demand very forcibly, and, needless to say, carried his point. The French chargé d’affaires noticed that Tandy was in very poor health and it is said that he offered a large sum to the officer of the guard to permit the Irishman’s escape. But the influence of the British minister was strong enough to overcome all obstacles from the French side of the house. The action of the Senate at Hamburg in giving Tandy and his colleagues over to the British created quite a sensation, and was the cause of a prolonged controversy.
That Tandy suffered dreadfully from his confinement is proven by many letters and papers that have since come to light. His sufferings in prison he said were so severe that life was a burden, and more than once he prayed to be led out on the ramparts and shot. John Philpot Curran, writing of his sufferings, says:
“He was confined in a dungeon little larger than a grave. He was loaded with irons; he was chained by an iron that communicated from his arm to his leg and that was so short as to grind into his flesh. Food was cut into shapeless lumps and flung to him by his keepers as he lay on the ground, as if he had been a beast; he had no bed to lie on, not even straw to coil himself up on, if he could have slept.”
Corbett, who was one of the prisoners, gives details of the detention which are hardly less painful.
“What happened to me,” he writes, “would have naturally discouraged and prevented me from making any new attempts; nevertheless, I managed to correspond with my two companions in misfortune; and we all three stood so well with our guards, the greater number of whom we had gained, that we resolved to arm ourselves and place ourselves at their head to deliver Tandy, who was in another prison, and afterwards to repair to the house of the French ambassador. Our measures were so well taken that we hoped this time at least to recover our liberty in spite of the impediments which fortune might place in our way. But the same traitor who had formerly deranged my plan discovered all to the English minister Crawford, who immediately gave orders that our guard should be changed and even that those of the different posts of Hamburg should be doubled, which continued even to our departure. Such was the result of the last struggle we made to obtain our liberty at Hamburg.”
Finally at midnight on September 29, 1799, after ten months’ detention, Tandy and his companions were taken from prison and put on an English frigate. As they were leaving, Tandy said to the officer in charge:
“What right did you have to arrest us? You are surely not ignorant of the fact that we were French officers.”
The man in charge shrugged his shoulders.