Perhaps it is worth noting that although the gun-boat was within easy musket range, the gunners of the Erebus did not hit her with even one shot save in the rigging.
CHAPTER XIII
IN BRITISH PRISONS
A TYPICAL STORY OF THE LIFE OF AN AMERICAN SEAMAN WHO WAS IMPRESSED IN 1810 AND ALLOWED TO BECOME A PRISONER WHEN WAR WAS DECLARED—LUCK IN ESCAPING A FLOGGING—LETTERS TO HIS FATHER DESTROYED—BRITISH REGARD FOR THE MAN’S RIGHTS WHEN THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT TOOK UP THE CASE—A NARRAGANSETT INDIAN IMPRESSED—TO DARTMOOR PRISON—MUSTERED NAKED MEN IN THE SNOWS OF WINTER AND KEPT THEM IN ROOMS WHERE BUCKETS OF WATER FROZE SOLID—MURDER OF PRISONERS SIX WEEKS AFTER IT WAS OFFICIALLY KNOWN THAT THE TREATY OF PEACE HAD BEEN RATIFIED—NOTABLE SELF-RESTRAINT OF THE AMERICANS—SMOOTHED OVER WITH A DISAVOWAL.
Shall the men who suffered in prison because of their love of the flag be forgotten in a story of the deeds of the American naval heroes? The reader will remember that the British authorities acknowledged that more than 2,000 Americans were serving in British ships through impressment when the war broke out. In some cases when these Americans asked to be treated as prisoners of war their request was granted; not all British commanders were as brutal as those of the Macedonian and the Peacock. For a manifestly truthful account of the treatment these men received from the British there is nothing surpassing the autobiography of the Rev. Joseph Bates, printed by the press association of the Seventh Day Adventists. Because his experience was rather easier than the common one; because it included the crowning outrage at the Dartmoor prison when the war was over, and because his story is amply authenticated by other printed accounts, a brief résumé of it will be given here to illustrate the life which the unfortunates like him endured.
Bates, at the age of eighteen, was a full-fledged sailor, hailing from New Bedford, Massachusetts, where his father, a soldier of the Revolution, lived. In the spring of 1810, after a voyage that terminated at Belfast, Ireland, Bates went across to Liverpool looking for a berth on a ship bound to America. While there awaiting a chance to ship, the boarding-house was visited by a press-gang that included an officer and twelve men, who gathered in all the likely looking seamen. Bates produced his papers, authenticated by the Collector of Customs in New York, but was cursed for his pains and taken to a house kept for the purpose by the Admiralty, where he went through the form of an examination by a British lieutenant, who at once decided that Bates was an Irishman, and the “protection” papers fraudulent. So Bates was sent, on April 27, 1810, on board the ship Princess, where he found sixty of his countrymen impressed in like fashion.
A few days later, on the occasion of a funeral which took nearly all the officers ashore, these Americans knocked the bars from the porthole of the room where they were confined and were forming in line to plunge through it and swim for liberty, when they were detected. For this they were nearly all frightfully flogged, a few escaping (including Bates) because ordered to another ship before their turn came.
Bates was taken to the Rodney, where he was exhibited to all the boats’ crews by her commander, Captain Bolton, who told the crews that if ever the Yankee was allowed to get into any one of the boats the entire crew should be flogged. Thereafter the Rodney was sent to the Mediterranean, where the life of Bates as compared with that of the unfortunates sent to the African and other fever coasts, was bearable. Bates notes that the ship provided two books for each ten men of the crew. One was an abridged life of Nelson, and the other the prayer-book of the Church of England. Bates did not approve of the service of that church, but the boatswain’s mates “were required to carry a piece of rope with which to start the sailors” when ordering them to attend church-service as well as to any work. So he went through the forms when piped to prayers. And when the band played “God Save the King,” the mates were particular to see that the Yankee took off his hat.
It happened that the officers of the Rodney were not eager to see blood run on a man’s back, and Bates, by an active attention to duty, escaped a flogging. His chief cause of complaint was that not one of his letters home was forwarded. After getting transferred to the Swiftsure he happened to learn this fact through finding one torn up which he had given to the first lieutenant to mail for him. But by sending one ashore in a market-boat it reached his father, and the father applied to President Madison to get a release. Governor Brooks, of Massachusetts, also took an interest in the matter, and a prominent New Bedford citizen, Captain C. Delano, took the papers to the Mediterranean to secure the release of the young man. Delano was received politely enough by the British Consul (the ship was at Port Mahon at the time). The admiral of the squadron also looked into the matter casually, but the result of all the efforts in behalf of the unfortunate was that the British Consul agreed for a consideration to supply him with money to buy clothing and some comforts beyond the usual allowance of a common sailor. It is possible, too, that these efforts also influenced the officers somewhat when, some months later (it was in 1812), Bates learned that war had been declared and asked to be transferred to the prison quarter as a prisoner of war. Anyway, not only Bates but twenty-one other Americans were confined as prisoners of war. But they were placed on a short allowance of food, were treated with contumely when below, and at frequent intervals were brought on deck, “where we were harangued and urged to enter the British Navy.” Perhaps the one feature of English periodicals printed between the years 1810 and 1815 that is most likely to anger an American, is the indignation the writers affected toward the Yankees for “seducing” British seamen into Yankee ships by the offer of higher wages than the English rate. These exhibitions of British wrath in the face of the fact that British ships held thousands of impressed Americans, is not unlikely to prove stirring to an American, even at the end of the nineteenth century.
Some of the American companions of Bates yielded to the pressure. Bates was not that kind of a man, and after eight months’ resistance to starvation, insult, and importunity, he was sent to England. There, with seven hundred others, he was confined near Chatham dock-yard on the Crown Princess, a big ship of which the little Danish nation was robbed.
It is but fair to say that the prisoners here were not starved by act of Parliament as they were in Milford prison during the previous war, but their allowance was scanty, and eventually an attempt was made by the officers in charge to cut it still further. At that the whole throng rebelled, refused to take anything, and made such a noise in the hold where they were confined, that the officers, who had their families on board, were obliged to yield.