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Updated: June 14, 2025
In his own memoranda he writes: "Four or five hundred Frenchmen were transferred as prisoners to the orlop deck of the Jersey. They were much better treated than we Americans on the deck above them. All, however, suffered very much for the want of water, crowding around two half hogsheads when they were brought on board, and often fighting for the first drink.
Beresford, and to take her below to the orlop deck; ordered the purser to serve out beef, biscuit, and grog to all hands, saying, "Men can't work on an empty stomach: and fighting is hard work;" then beckoned the officers to come round him.
"The doctor has sent for you, Weatherhelm," said the messenger, who was one of the hospital attendants. "There is a man dying, and he wants to see you." I slipped on my clothes and hurried down to the orlop deck. I found the purser, with the chaplain, standing near the hammock of a seaman. The surgeon came up at the same time. "I am glad to see you, Weatherhelm," he said in his usual kind way.
At her departure from Cochin in India, her draught of water was 31 feet; but at her arrival in Dartmouth, not above 26, being lightened 5 feet during her voyage by various causes. She contained 7 several stories; viz. one main orlop, three close decks, one forecastle, and a spar deck of two floors each.
And waiting for no more I stumbled down the quarter-ladder; but even as I went, the haze seemed to close about me thicker than ever, and groping my way to the ship's side I sank across the bulwark and was miserably sick. This agony passing, I made my way below until I reached the orlop; but now feeling my sickness upon me again I crept away into a dark corner and cast me down there.
Lieutenant Eliakim Palmer was again taken prisoner later in the war and again escaped. This time he was on board the Jersey. He cut away three iron bars let into an aperture on the side of the ship on the orlop deck, formerly a part of her hold. He swam ashore with his shirt and trousers tied to his head.
Why, you lean rogue, you, a man-of-war is to whalemen, as a metropolis to shire-towns, and sequestered hamlets. Here's the place for life and commotion; here's the place to be gentlemanly and jolly. And what did you know, you bumpkin! before you came on board this Andrew Miller? What knew you of gun-deck, or orlop, mustering round the capstan, beating to quarters, and piping to dinner?
Just after returning from my last journey to the trap, and before my attention had been otherwise directed by the singular conduct of Tiger, I had come to the resolution of making myself heard at all events by those on board, or, if I could not succeed in this directly, of trying to cut my way through the orlop deck.
Remain, and render me any assistance I may require." Having descended to the orlop deck, he was attempting to go down into the cockpit, when several men rushed by him, crying out that the fire was increasing.
The chronicles of the time also relate how at daylight on Christmas morning, when the water was reported as being up to the orlop deck and gaining two feet an hour, many of the people desponded and gave themselves up for lost.
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