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Updated: June 21, 2025
In those days of wretched misery and suffering, within view of the city by day, in the noisome ship's hold by night, Freneau thought out his best-remembered poem, The British Prison-Ship and many another line which in the later days of the Revolution was to rouse American feeling; verse that was to be distributed to the American soldiers, to be read by them on the march and by the light of the camp-fires; lines that were to commemorate the victories and the heroism of the soldiers of the Revolution; lines ridiculing each separate act of the British.
After undergoing an examination next day, I thought circumstances were going in my favour, but in three days an order was issued to put my seamen on board the prison-ship, the vessel's stores in the arsenal, and the schooner to be laid up. As for Mr.
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.
Poor fellow! in a prison-ship at Plymouth he had formed his opinion of England. He gave us some good hints about the price of provisions in this part of the country. The country through which we passed to-day is rather more interesting, with a considerable variety of hill and dale, wood and water, but the soil is still a miserable gravel.
He fought in the Revolutionary War, was taken prisoner, and confined in a British prison-ship, the arrangements of which he bitterly satirised in The British Prison Ship . He also wrote vigorous prose, of which Advice to Authors is an example.
In a Journal kept by Mr. Drowne on board of this ship, he writes: "The cruise is for two months and a half, though should New York fetch us up again, the time may be protracted, but it is not in the bargain to pay that potent city a visit this bout. It may easily be imagined what a sensible mortification it must be to dispense with the delicious sweets of a Prison-ship.
The late James Forten, of Philadelphia, well known as a colored man of wealth, intelligence, and philanthropy, enlisted in the American navy under Captain Decatur, of the Royal Louis, was taken prisoner during his second cruise, and, with nineteen other colored men, confined on board the horrible Jersey prison-ship; All the vessels in the American service at that period were partly manned by blacks.
His nature was hopeful, and his constitution strong and enduring. He attempted to make the best of his situation, and succeeded in leading as nearly a tolerable life on board the prison-ship as was possible. His book is too long for insertion in these pages, but we will endeavor to give the reader an abstract of it.
Nor do our people consider that running away, and the complaints of the slaves, are partly chargeable to the discontent and restlessness of human nature; but we seem to take it for granted that every one who flees from the South is as though he had escaped from a prison-ship.
"The said deponent saith, that he was taken prisoner on board the aforesaid ship on the 12 of March last by the ship Garland, belonging to the king of Great Britain, and carried into the city of New York, on the 15 of the same month, when he was immediately put on board the prison-ship Jersey, with the whole crew of the Admiral Youtman, and was close confined there until the first day of this month, when he made his escape; that the people on board the said prison-ship were very sickly insomuch that he is firmly persuaded, out of near 1000 persons, perfectly healthy when put on board the same ship, during the time of his confinement on board, there are not more than but three or four hundred now alive; that when he made his escape there were not three hundred men well on board, but upward of 140 very sick, as he understood and was informed by the physicians: that there were five or six men buried daily under a bank on the shore, without coffins; that all the larboard side of the said ship was made use of as a hospital for the sick, and was so offensive that he was obliged constantly to hold his nose as he passed from the gun-room up the hatchway; that he seen maggots creeping out of a wound of one Sullivan's shoulder, who was the mate of a vessel out of Virginia; and that his wound remained undressed for several days together; that every man was put into the hold a little after sundown every night, and the hatches put over him; and that the tubs which were kept for the use of the sick * were placed under the ladder from the hatchway to the hold, and so offensive day and night, that they were almost intolerable, and increased the number of the sick daily.
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