under this heading are included various reminiscences of, and particulars about, the prison ships which could not be conveniently dealt with in the foregoing chapters.
in april 1759 five french prisoners from the royal oak hulk at plymouth were executed at exeter for the murder of jean maneaux, who had informed the agent that his comrades had forged passports in order to facilitate their escape to france. finding this out, they got maneaux into an obscure corner of the ship, tied him to a ringbolt, and gave him sixty lashes with a rope to the end of which was fastened an iron thimble as thick as a man’s wrist. he got loose, and fell back; they jumped on him till they broke his neck, then cut his body into small pieces, and conveyed them through a waste pipe overboard. the next day twenty-seven prisoners were arrested, and one of them pointed out the actual murderers.
in 1778 two prisoners escaped from the san rafael at plymouth, swam off to a lighter full of powder, overpowered the man in charge, ran down through all the ships in hamoaze, round drake’s island, and got safely away to france, where they sold the powder at a handsome price.
even more daring was the deed of eleven frenchmen who, early in the morning of april 7, 1808, made their escape from the hulk vigilant at portsmouth, by cutting a hole, and swimming to the amphitrite, a ship in ordinary, fitted up as the abode of the superintendent master. they boarded a boat, hanging on the davits, clothed themselves in the greatcoats of the boat’s crew, lowered her, and in the semi-darkness pulled away to the master attendant’s buoy boat, one of the finest unarmed crafts in the harbour, valued at ￡1,000. they boarded her, immediately got under way at about five a.m., 93and successfully navigated her to havre, or cherbourg, which they reached in the evening, and sold her for ￡700. she was fitted out, armed with eight six-pounders, and went forth as a privateer under the name of le buoy boat de portsmouth. her career, however, was short, for in november she was captured by the coquette.
the above-mentioned prison ship vigilant seems to have hardly deserved her name, for in the year 1810 alone no less than thirty-two prisoners escaped from her, and of these only eight were recaptured.
on another occasion three prisoners escaped from a hulk, got a small skiff, rowed to yantlett creek, where they boarded a fishing-smack of which the master and boy were asleep. the master made a stout resistance and called on the boy to help him, but he was too terrified to do so. the master was overpowered and severely beaten, and then managed to jump overboard. the frenchmen got off, taking the boy with them.
the sampson at chatham was evidently an ill-omened ship. it was on board her that occurred the disastrous event of may 31, 1811, when the half-starved prisoners, upon being docked of half their rations for the misdeeds of a few of their number, broke out into open mutiny, which was only quelled at the cost of six prisoners being killed and a great many wounded. on the sampson, also, was fought a particularly terrible duel in 1812. two prisoners quarrelled and determined to settle their difference quietly. so, attended only by their seconds, they betook themselves to the ordinary ship prison, which happened to be empty, and, armed with sticks to which scissor-blades had been fastened, fought. one of them received a mortal thrust in the abdomen, but, although his bowels were protruding, he continued to parry his opponent’s blows until he was exhausted. he died in spite of the surgeon’s attentions.
on board the same ship in 1813, three prisoners decided to murder the master’s mate and the sergeant of marines—men universally detested for their brutal behaviour—and drew lots as to who should do it. the lot fell upon charles manseraux. but he had ‘compunction of conscience’ because 94the sergeant was a married man with a family. however, he had to kill some one, and fixed on a private of the marines. he took the opportunity when the unfortunate man was doing duty on the fo’c’sle and drove a knife into his back. another prisoner saw the deed done, knocked manseraux down and secured him. manseraux and the others were tried at the maidstone assizes, found guilty, and executed.
duelling and crimes of violence seem to have been rampant on certain ships more than on others. the san damaso at portsmouth was one of these, although on the chatham hulks the unnatural deaths were so frequent that the coroner of rochester in 1812 claimed special fees from the transport office on account of the trebling of his duties, a claim which was not granted.
a very bold attempt at escape in broad daylight was made by some desperate prisoners of the canada hulk at chatham in 1812. beef was being hoisted on board the prison ship from a lighter alongside, on board of which were half a dozen american prisoners who were assisting in the operation. suddenly, they cut the painter, and, helped by a stiff breeze, actually sailed off, and, although the guards on all the prison ships fired at them, would have escaped if they had not run aground off commodore’s hard, gillingham. they sprang ashore here, and ran, but the mud was too much for them and they were captured.
the americans, whether ashore or afloat, were the hardest prisoners to guard of any. they seem never to have relaxed in their plans and attempts to escape, and as they were invariably better supplied with money than frenchmen and spaniards, they could add the power of the bribe to the power which knowledge of their captors’ language gave them. hence no estimate can be formed of the real number of americans who got away from the hulks, for, although a very exact system of roll call was in use, the ingenuity of the americans, immensely backed by their purses, contrived matters so that not merely were the numbers on board always complete at each roll call, but upon more than one occasion, by some over-exercise of ingenuity, the captain of a hulk actually found himself commanding more prisoners than there were!
95by way of relief to the monotony of this guerre à outrance between captors and captives we may quote instances when the better humanity of the hapless ones came to the fore.
in 1812 a prisoner made an attempt to set the hulk ganges on fire at plymouth, and a large hole was burned in her side. the other prisoners helped to extinguish the flames, and were so angry with the incendiary that they were with difficulty prevented from tearing him to pieces.
three officers of the inverness militia were sailing in the harbour at portsmouth in the same year, when a squall upset their boat, and they were thrown into the water. one of the officers could not swim, and seeing him struggling for life, a french prisoner on the crown hulk at once sprang overboard and brought him safely to the ship. he was at once liberated and returned to france.
but even heroism became a cloak for trickery among these weary, hopeless, desperate exiles ever on the watch for a chance of escaping. in 1810 a french prisoner at plymouth obtained his freedom by saving a british sentry from drowning, but the number of british sentries who, after this, met with accidents which tumbled them overboard, and the unfailing regularity with which heroic prisoner-rescuers appeared on the scene, awakened the suspicions of the authorities, who found out that these occurrences were purely commercial transactions. so they stopped automatically.
it is equally pleasing to come across, in this continually dreary record of crime and misery, a foreign testimony to english kindness. the following letter was kindly lent to me by mr. j. e. mace, of tenterden, kent, to whose grandfather it was addressed:
‘chatham. le 10 janvier, 1798.
‘a monsieur mace, tenterden.
‘cher monsieur:
‘s’il est cruel d’être livré aux dégo?ts et aux peines que cause la captivité la plus dure, il est bien doux de trouver des êtres sensibles qui, comme vous, cher monsieur, savent plaindre le sort rigoureux des victimes de la guerre. ce que vous avez eu la bonté de m’envoyer, plus encore, l’expression des beaux sentiments me touche, me pénètre de la plus vive reconnaissance, et me fait sentir avec une nouvelle force cette 96vérité constante:—l’humanité rapproche et unit tous les c?urs faits pour elle. comme vous, cher monsieur, et avec vous, je désire avec ferveur que les principes de notre divin législateur reprennent leur empire sur la terre, la conséquence en est si belle!
‘dieu vous garde beaucoup d’années.
‘farbouriet, colonel 12me hussards.’
in 1807, as a consequence of the bombardment of copenhagen and the subsequent surrender to england of the danish fleet, there were 1,840 danish prisoners in england, who received double the allowance of french prisoners, inasmuch as they were rather hostages than prisoners—hostages for the good behaviour of denmark as regards napoleon;—the captain of a man-of-war got four shillings per diem, a commanding officer two shillings, the captain of an indiaman three shillings, and so on. in other respects they were treated as prisoners of war.
these danes were largely taken from the hulks to man our merchant navy, and one wipperman, a danish clerk on h.m.s. utile, seems to have made this transfer business a very profitable one, until the accusation brought against him by a danish prisoner of war of having obtained a watch and some money under false pretences, brought to light the fact that his men rarely if ever joined the british merchant service except to desert at the first opportunity, and generally went at large as free men. he was severely punished, and his exposure brought to an end an extensive crimping system by which hundreds of dangerous foreigners had been let loose from the prison ships, many of them spies and escape-aiders.
foreign writers have included among their various complaints against the british government its reluctance to allow religious ministration among the prisoners of war. but the transport office, as we shall see later, had learned by experience that the garb of sanctity was by no means always the guarantee of sanctity, and so when in 1808 a danish parson applied to be allowed on the prison ships at chatham, he got his permission only on the condition that ‘he does not repeat, the old offence of talking upon matters unconnected with his mission and so cause much incorrect inferences’—a vague expression which 97probably meant talking about outside affairs to prisoners, who had no other source of information.
in 1813 the transport office replied to the bishop of angoulême, who requested that a priest named paucheron might minister on the prison ships at chatham, that they could not accede inasmuch as paucheron had been guilty ‘of highly improper conduct in solemnizing a marriage between a prisoner of war and a woman in disguise of a man’.
in no branch of art did french prisoners show themselves more proficient than in that of forgery, and, although when we come to treat of the prisons ashore we shall find that, from the easier accessibility to implements there, the imitation of passports and bank notes was more perfectly effected than by the prisoners on the hulks, the latter were not always unsuccessful in their attempts.
in 1809 guiller and collas, two prisoners on el firme at plymouth, opened negotiations with the captain’s clerk to get exchanged to the généreux, telling him what their object was and promising a good reward. he pretended to entertain their proposals, but privately told the captain. their exchange was effected, and their ally supplied them with paper, ink, and pencils of fine hair, with which they imitated notes of the bank of england, the naval and commercial bank, and an okehampton bank. not having the official perforated stamp, they copied it to perfection by means of smooth halfpennies and sail-makers’ needles. when all was ready, the clerk gave the word to the authorities, and the clever rascals got their reward on the gallows at exeter in 1810, being among the first war prisoners to be executed for forgery.
in 1812 two french prisoners on a portsmouth hulk, dubois and benry, were condemned to be hanged at winchester for the forgery of a ￡1 bank of england note. whilst lying in the jail there they tried to take their own lives by opening veins in their arm with broken glass and enlarging the wounds with rusty nails, declaring that they would die as soldiers, not as dogs, and were only prevented by force from carrying out their resolve. they died crying ‘vive l’empereur!’
in 1814 six officers were found to have obtained their liberty by forged passports. these men were, in their own 98vernacular, ‘broke-paroles’—men who had been sent from parole places to prison ships, for the crime of forging passports. further investigation caused suspicion to be fixed upon a woman calling herself madame carpenter, who was ostensibly a tea and sugar dealer at 46 foley street, portland chapel, london, but who had gained some influence at the transport office through having rendered services to british prisoners in france, which enabled her to have access to the prison ships in her pretended trade, although she was a frenchwoman. i cannot discover what punishment she received. we shall hear more of her in the chapter upon stapleton prison.
a clever quibble saved the life of a prisoner on the san rafael hulk at plymouth. he was tried at exeter for imitating a ￡2 note with indian ink, but pleaded that as he was under the protection of no laws he had not broken any, and was acquitted. this was before cases of murder and forgery were brought under the civil jurisdiction.
well-deserved releases of prisoners in recognition of good actions done by them in the past were not rare. in 1808 a prisoner on the sampson at chatham, named sabatier, was released without exchange on the representation of the london missionary society, who acted for captain carbonel of the famous privateer grand bonaparte, who had shown great kindness to the crew and passengers of the ship duff which he had captured.
in the same year a prisoner at plymouth, named verdie, was released unconditionally on the petition of lieut. ross, r.n., for having kindly treated the lieutenant’s father when the latter was a prisoner in france.
in 1810 a portsmouth prisoner was unconditionally liberated upon his proving satisfactorily that he had helped midshipman holgate of the shannon to escape from imprisonment in france.
almost to the very last the care of sick prisoners on the hulks seems to have been criminally neglected. for instance, the in-letters to the transport office during the year 1810 are full of vehement or pathetic complaints about the miserable state of the sick on the marengo and princess sophia hospital ships at portsmouth. partly this may be due to an economical 99craze which affected the authorities at this time, but it must be chiefly attributed to medical inefficiency and neglect. most of the chief medical officers of the prison ships had their own private practices ashore, with what results to the poor foreigners, nominally their sole care, can be imagined, and all of them resented the very necessary condition that they should sleep on the ships.
in this year 1810, dr. kirkwood, of the europe hospital ship at plymouth, was convicted of culpable neglect in regularly sleeping ashore, and was superseded. as a result of an inquiry into the causes of abnormal sickness on the vigilant and at forton prison, portsmouth, the surgeons were all superseded, and the order was issued that all prison-ship surgeons should daily examine the healthy prisoners so as to check incipient sickness. i append the states of the renown hospital ship at plymouth for february 1814:
‘staff:
2 surgeons, 1 assistant surgeon, 1 matron, 1 interpreter, 1 cook, 1 barber, 1 mattress maker, 1 tailor, 1 washerwoman, and 10 nurses.
received 141. discharged 69. died 19. remaining 53.
‘fever and dysentery have been the prevalent complaints among the prisoners from pampelune, whose deplorable state the board of inspection are in full possession of. (among these were some forty women “in so wretched a state that they were wholly destitute of the appropriate dress of their sex”. two of the british officers’ wives collected money for the poor creatures and clothed them.) pneumonia has recently attacked many of these ill-conditioned men termed romans, many of whom were sent here literally in a state of nudity, an old hammock in the boat to cover them being excepted.’
(the romans above mentioned were the most degraded and reckless of the dartmoor prisoners, who had been sent to the hulks partly because there was no power in the prison that could keep them in order, and partly because their filthy and vicious habits were revolting to the other and more decent prisoners.)
the horrors of the english prison ships were constantly quoted by french commanders as spurs to the exertions of their men. bonaparte more than once dwelt on them. phillipon, 100the gallant defender of badajos, afterwards a prisoner on parole in england, reminded his men of them as they crowded to hurl our regiments from the breaches. ‘an appeal’, says napier, ‘deeply felt, for the annals of civilized nations furnish nothing more inhuman towards captives of war than the prison ships of england.’
the accompanying drawing from colonel lebertre’s book may give some idea of the packing process practised on the hulks. it represents a view from above of the orlop deck of the brunswick prison ship at chatham—a ship which was regarded as rather a good one to be sent to. the length of this deck was 125 feet, its breadth 40 feet in the widest part, and its height 4 feet 10 inches, so that only boys could pass along it without stooping. within this space 460 persons slept, and as there was only space to swing 431 hammocks, 29 men had to sleep as best they could beneath the others.
something with an element of fun in it may serve as a relief to the prevalent gloom of this chapter. it has been shown how largely gambling entered into the daily life of the poor wretches on the hulks, and how every device and excuse for it were invented and employed, but the instance given by captain harris in his book upon dartmoor is one of the oddest.
‘when the lights were extinguished’, he says, ‘and the ship’s lantern alone cast a dim glimmer through the long room, the rats were accustomed to show themselves in search of the rare crumbs to be found below the hammocks. a specially tempting morsel having been placed on an open space, the arrival of the performers was anxiously looked for. they were all known by name, and thus each player was able to select his champion for the evening. as soon as a certain number had gained the open space, a sudden whistle, given by a disinterested spectator, sent them back to their holes, and the first to reach his hole was declared the winner. an old grey rat called “père ratapon” was a great favourite with the gamblers, for, though not so active as his younger brethren, he was always on the alert to secure a good start when disturbed.’
in justice to our ancient foe i give here a couple of extracts, for which i have to thank mr. gates of portsmouth, from the hampshire telegraph, illustrative of generous behaviour towards englishmen who had been forced to aid prisoners to escape.
101
orlop deck of brunswick prison ship, chatham.
(after colonel lebertre.)
length, 125 feet. breadth in widest part, 40 feet. height, 4 feet 10 inches. number of prisoners, 460.
102
‘july 20th, 1801. in a cartel vessel which arrived last week from france, came over one stephen buckle, a waterman of this town. three gentlemen had hired this waterman to take them to the isle of wight, and they had not proceeded farther than calshot castle when they rose upon him, gagged him, tied him hand and foot, and threatened him with instant death if he made the slightest noise or resistance. the boatman begged for mercy, and promised his assistance in any undertaking if they would spare his life; on which he was released, and was told they were french prisoners, and ordered to make for the nearest port in france, at his peril. the darkness of the night, and the calmness of the wind, favoured their intentions, for after rowing two days and nights in a small, open skiff, without having the least sustenance, they arrived safe at cherbourg. the waterman was interrogated at the custom house as to the prisoners’ escape; when, after giving the particulars and identifying the persons, saying they threatened to murder him, the officers took the three frenchmen into custody, to take their respective trials. the poor man’s case being made known to the government, he was ordered to be liberated, and his boat restored.’
‘september 21st, 1807. between 9 and 10 o’clock on the evening of last sunday three weeks, two men engaged thomas hart, a ferryman, to take them from gosport beach to spithead, to go on board a ship there, as they said. when the boat reached spithead they pretended the ship had gone to st. helens, and requested the waterman to go out after her. having reached that place, one of them, who could speak english, took a dagger from under his coat, and swore he would take the life of the waterman if he did not land them in france.
‘under this threat the man consented to follow their directions, and landed them at fécamp. the men appeared to be in the uniform of officers of the british navy. the waterman was lodged in prison at havre de grace, and kept there for ten days. he was then released on representing himself to be a fisherman, his boat was returned to him, and the frenchmen gave him six or seven pounds of bread, some cyder, and a pocket compass, and a pass to prevent his being interrupted by any french vessel he might meet with. in this state they set him adrift; he brought several letters from english prisoners in france, and from french persons to their friends in prison in this country.’
