Captain Shortland was not really a brutal Governor, and the barbarities of which he was accused were not barbarities at all, but the exercise of very necessary discipline. But he was lacking in capacity for such a responsible post, at such a time.
So the British Government must have considered him, for he was promoted to be Superintendent of Port Royal Dockyard in Jamaica, where he died of yellow fever in 1825.
The most thoroughly reliable authority for the “massacre” is the “Message from the President of the United States, transmitting a Report of the Secretary of State, prepared in obedience to a Resolution of the House of Representatives of the 4th inst., in relation to the Transactions at Dartmoor Prison, in the month of April last, so far as the American Prisoners of war, there confined, were affected by such Transactions,” January 31, 1816, “Read and ordered to lie upon the table,” Washington, 1816. Next come “The Prisoners’ Memoirs, or Dartmoor Prison; containing a Complete and Impartial History of the entire captivity of the Americans in England, from the commencement of the late War between the United States and Great Britain, until all Prisoners were released by the treaty of Ghent. Also a particular detail of all the occurrences relative to that Horrid Massacre at Dartmoor, on the fatal evening of the 6th April, 1815. The whole carefully compiled from the Journal of Charles Andrews, a Prisoner in England from the commencement of the War, until the release of all the Prisoners.” New York, 1815.
According to him 269 American prisoners died on Dartmoor between April, 1813, and 20 April, 1815, and twenty-one succeeded in making their escape.
Waterhouse (Henry), Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, confined at Dartmoor Prison. Boston, 1816.
He arrived at the Dartmoor Prison but a short while before the outbreak. His account confirms that of Andrews. He gives the Remonstrance of the prisoners on the hasty and hardly impartial manner in which the Commissioners investigated the circumstances.
The Dartmoor Massacre, by I. H. W. (Isaac H. Williamson, of New Jersey), 1815. This is, however, a mere rhymed account, based on the narrative in the Boston papers and the New York Commercial Advertiser of 6 June, 1815. “Being the Authentic and Particular Account of the tragic Massacre at Dartmoor Prison in England, on the 6th April last (1815), in which sixty-seven American sailors, prisoners there, fell the victims to the jailor’s revenge, for obtaining their due allowance of bread which had been withheld from them by the jailor’s orders.”
Melish (John), Description of Dartmoor Prison. Philadelphia, 1815.
He confirms the account of Andrews, and insists that the examination was not properly and honestly carried out; and he asserts positively that Capt. Shortland gave the order to fire.
Justin Winsor, in his Narrative and Critical History of America, has treated of the matter in a temperate spirit.