Royal Navy Prisons and Prison Ships

Throughout history, man’s inhumanity to man has perhaps best been exemplified by the brutal conditions to which prisoners of war have too often been subjected. Whether due to physical torture or psychological terror, the end result for many prisoners has been either death or a survival that would make death seem a better alternative.

Interior of the HMS Jersey

Few places in history have harbored worse conditions for prisoners than did New York during the Revolutionary War. Since New York served as the principle British base in North America during the conflict, it was here that the most gut-wrenching atrocities were perpetrated. This is not to suggest that Americans were saintly in their treatment of British prisoners of war. It is simply to say that the historical record on the British side is far more revealing.

The principle reason why the British treated American prisoners so poorly is because they did not recognize captured Americans as prisoners of war. Since to their minds the revolution was a traitorous act, American rebels captured by the British deserved to die a traitor’s death. What happened to these individuals as a consequence of falling into British hands was of no great concern to either the British military or British citizenry.   

HMS Jersey

British prisons in America were mostly in old decrepit ships known as “prison hulks,” the worst of which was HMS Jersey, a former 60-gun fourth rate ship of the line that was dismantled at the start of the war. Save for a fortunate few who managed to escape its clutches, being sentenced to this horrific hulk of oak was tantamount to a death sentence. Stripped of its spas and rigging and lower decks, Jersey was anchored in Wallabout Bay (later to become the site of the Brooklyn Navy Yard). Once hauled aboard, captured American sailors and soldiers were shoved below into a black hole of purposeful neglect and untold misery. On average, eight American prisoners died each day in Jersey, their bodies picked up each morning by a boat and taken ashore to the mud flats for a quick and unceremonial burial.

During the course of the rebellion, 11,500 men and woman died aboard these prison hulks, more than twice the number of Americans who died in every battle of the Revolution combined. On one prison hulk, the Whitby, desperate prisoners set the ship ablaze, preferring a quick death by fire to a slow and painful death by starvation.

In England, American prisoners were treated somewhat better, in large part because they normally shared a compound with French prisoners. Great Britain was also at war with France at the time, and captured French military personnel were awarded prisoner of war status. One such prison is profiled in A Matter of Honor, Volume I of the Cutler Family Chronicles. The compound is Old Mill Prison in Falmouth, England, and it is here that protagonist Richard Cutler is incarcerated following his capture during the raid on Whitehaven. (See a previous blog, Raid on Whitehaven.) In Old Mill he meets fellow prisoners and future naval heroes Silas Talbot, the second captain of USS Constitution, with whom Richard serves briefly in The Power and the Glory (published October 2011 by the Naval Institute Press), and Richard Dale, commodore of the first Mediterranean squadron in A Call To Arms (to be published in October 2012). Following is an excerpt from chapter seven:

“Diversions from soul-dulling drudgery were created by bored men and mandated by their morose conditions. Whittling had become a popular past-time, an activity encouraged by wardens who ensured that ample supplies of wood were made available around the inner yard. They even gave prisoners, upon request, small knives with blunted tips to use for whittling. Such curios as model ships, ladles, and makeshift mallets were sculpted from wood and sold to local citizens visiting Old Mill on Sunday afternoons. Whatever coins the prisoners received was more often than not snapped up by other locals hawking their wares in every corner of the compound. Barter was also a mainstay of commerce. In exchange for a toy pistol Richard had fashioned from a slab of oak, an elderly woman agreed to post a letter he had written to his family in Hingham [Massachusetts], telling them simply where he was and that he was in good health. She was a kind and caring woman, for she had paid good money for an object that any discerning eye would agree was a poor replica of a pistol. Richard felt certain she would actually post the letter; whether it would ever reach Hingham was another matter.”

   

Not much to write home about, perhaps, but one has a hard time imagining local citizens and merchants of New York fancying a row out to the prison ship Jersey on a summer Sunday afternoon, to buy or sell anything..