Ethan Allen, the Robin Hood of Vermont

by Henry Hall

The reader is now invited back to the time I was put into irons. I requested the privilege to write to General Prescott, which was granted. I reminded him of the kind and generous manner of my treatment of the prisoners I took at Ticonderoga; the injustice and ungentlemanlike usage I had met with from him, and demanded better usage, but received no answer from him. I soon after wrote to General Carleton, which met the same success. In the mean while, many of those who were permitted to see me were very insulting.

I was confined in the manner I have related, on board the Gaspee schooner, about six weeks, during which time I was obliged to throw out plenty of extravagant language, which answered certain purposes, at that time, better than to grace a history.

To give an instance: upon being insulted, in a fit of anger, I twisted off a nail with my teeth, which I took to be a ten-penny nail; it went through the mortise of the band of my handcuff, and at the same time I swaggered over those who abused me, particularly a Doctor Dace, who told me that I was outlawed by New York, and deserved death for several years past; was at last fully ripened for the halter, and in a fair way to obtain it. When I challenged him, he excused himself, in consequence, as he said, of my being a criminal; but I flung such a flood of language at him that it shocked him and the spectators, for my anger was very great. I heard one say, "Him! he can eat iron!" After that, a small padlock was fixed to the handcuff instead of the nail, and as they were mean-spirited in their treatment to me, so it appeared to me that they were equally timorous and cowardly.

I was after sent with the prisoners taken with me to an armed vessel in the river, which lay off against Quebec under the command of Captain M'Cloud of the British, who treated me in a very generous and obliging manner, and according to my rank; in about twenty-four hours I bid him farewell with regret, but my good fortune still continued. The name of the captain of the vessel I was put on board was Littlejohn, who with his officers behaved in a polite, generous, and friendly manner. I lived with them in the cabin and fared on the best, my irons being taken off, contrary to the order he had received from the commanding officer, but Captain Littlejohn swore that a brave man should not be used as a rascal on board his ship.

That I found myself in possession of happiness once more, and the evils I had lately suffered gave me an uncommon relish for it.

Captain Littlejohn used to go to Quebec almost every day in order to pay his respects to certain gentlemen and ladies; being there on a certain day, he happened to meet with some disagreeable treatment as he imagined, from a Lieutenant of a man-of-war and one word brought on another, until the Lieutenant challenged him to a duel on the plains of Abraham. Captain Littlejohn was a gentleman, who entertained a high sense of honor, and could do no less than accept the challenge.

At nine o'clock the next morning they were to fight. The captain returned in the evening, and acquainted his lieutenant and me with the affair. His lieutenant was a high-blooded Scotchman, as well as himself, who replied to his captain that he should not want for a second. With this I interrupted him and gave the captain to understand that since an opportunity had presented, I would be glad to testify my gratitude to him by acting the part of a faithful second; on which he gave me his hand, and said that he wanted no better man. Says he, I am a king's officer, and you a prisoner under my care; you must therefore go with me to the place appointed in disguise, and added further: "You must engage me, upon the honor of a gentleman, that whether I die or live, or whatever happens, provided you live, that you will return to my lieutenant on board this ship." All this I solemnly engaged him. The combatants were to discharge each a pocket pistol, and then to fall on with their iron-hilted muckle whangers, and one of that sort was allotted for me; but some British officers, who interposed early in the morning, settled the controversy without fighting.

Now having enjoyed eight or nine days' happiness from the polite and generous treatment of Captain Littlejohn and his officers, I was obliged to bid them farewell, parting with them in as friendly a manner as we had lived together, which, to the best of my memory, was the eleventh of November; when a detachment of General Arnold's little army appeared on Point Levi, opposite Quebec, who had performed an extraordinary march through a wilderness country with design to have surprised the capital of Canada; I was then taken on board a vessel called the Adamant, together with the prisoners taken with me, and put under the power of an English merchant from London, whose name was Brook Watson; a man of malicious and cruel disposition, and who was probably excited, in the exercise of his malevolence, by a junto of tories who sailed with him to England; among whom were Colonel Guy Johnson, Colonel Closs, and their attendants and associates, to the number of about thirty.

All the ship's crew, Colonel Closs in his personal behavior excepted, behaved toward the prisoners with that spirit of bitterness which is the peculiar characteristic of tories when they have the friends of America in their power, measuring their loyalty to the English king by the barbarity, fraud and deceit which they exercised toward the whigs.

A small place in the vessel, inclosed with white-oak plank, was assigned for the prisoners, and for me among the rest. I should imagine that it was not more than twenty feet one way, and twenty-two the other. Into this place we were all, to the number of thirty-four, thrust and handcuffed, two prisoners more being added to our number, and were provided with two excrement tubs; in this circumference we were obliged to eat and perform the offices of evacuation during the voyage to England, and were insulted by every blackguard sailor and tory on board, in the cruellest manner; but what is the most surprising thing is, that not one of us died in the passage. When I was first ordered to go into the filthy inclosure, through a small sort of door, I positively refused, and endeavored to reason the before-named Brook Watson out of a conduct so derogatory to every sentiment of honor and humanity, but all to no purpose, my men being forced in the den already; and the rascal who had the charge of the prisoners commanded me to go immediately in among the rest. He further added, that the place was good enough for a rebel; that it was impertinent for a capital offender to talk of honor or humanity; that anything short of a halter was too good for me, and that would be my portion soon after I landed in England, for which purpose only I was sent thither. About the same time a lieutenant among the tories insulted me in a grievous manner, saying I ought to have been executed for my rebellion against New York, and spit in my face, upon which, though I was in handcuffs, I sprang at him with both hands and knocked him partly down, but he scrambled along into the cabin, and I after him; there he got under the protection of some men with fixed bayonets, who were ordered to make ready to drive me into the place aforementioned. I challenged him to fight, notwithstanding the impediments that were on my hands, and had the exalted pleasure to see the rascal tremble for fear; his name I have forgot, but Watson ordered his guard to get me into the place with the other prisoners, dead or alive; and I had almost as lieve died as do it, standing it out till they environed me round with bayonets, and brutish, prejudiced, abandoned wretches they were, from whom I could expect nothing but wounds or death; however, I told them that they were good honest fellows, that I could not blame them; that I was only in dispute with a calico merchant, who knew not how to behave toward a gentleman of the military establishment. This was spoken rather to appease them for my own preservation, as well as to treat Watson with contempt; but still I found they were determined to force me into the wretched circumstances, which their prejudiced and depraved minds had prepared for me; therefore, rather than die I submitted to their indignities, being drove with bayonets into the filthy dungeon with the other prisoners, where we were denied fresh water, except a small allowance, which was very inadequate to our wants; and in consequence of the stench of the place, each of us was soon followed with a diarrhœa and fever, which occasioned intolerable thirst. When we asked for water, we were, most commonly, instead of obtaining it, insulted and derided; and to add to all the horrors of the place, it was so dark that we could not see each other, and were overspread with body-lice. We had, notwithstanding these severities, full allowance of salt provisions, and a gill of rum per day; the latter of which was of the utmost service to us, and, probably, was the means of saving several of our lives. About forty days we existed in this manner, when the land's end of England was discovered from the mast head; soon after which, the prisoners were taken from their gloomy abode, being permitted to see the light of the sun, and breathe fresh air, which to us was very refreshing. The day following we landed at Falmouth.