[pg 289]
EXPLOITS OF COMMODORE BARNEY.
This gentleman was one of the old fashioned commodores, a capital sailor, an intrepid warrior, and a thorough going patriot. He was born in Baltimore, in 1759. He entered the marine early in life. At the age of sixteen he served in the expedition of Commodore Hopkins to the Bahama Islands, and continued in active service through the whole revolutionary war.
[pg 290]
In 1780 he was captured by a British seventy-four, when taking a prize into port and sent with other prisoners to England. On the passage, the prisoners—amounting to about sixty—were confined in the most loathsome of dungeons, without light or pure air, and with a scanty supply of provisions.
They thought when they arrived at Plymouth, that their privations were at an end; but they were only removed to another prison-ship, which, although dirty and crowded, was, in some measure, better than the one they had left. From this, contrary to expectation, as soon as they were so much recovered as to be able to walk, they were brought on shore and confined in Mill prison, where they met the anxious faces of several hundred American prisoners, who had undergone the same privations as themselves.