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A journal, of a young man of Massachusetts, late a surgeon on board an American privateer, who was captured at sea by the British in May, eighteen hundred and thirteen and was confined first, at Melville Island, Halifax, then at Chatham, in England, and last at Dartmoor prison : $b Interspersed with observations, anecdotes and remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct engraving of Dartmoor prison, representing the massacre ofWaterhouse, Benjamin

History

A journal, of a young man of Massachusetts, late a surgeon on board an American privateer, who was captured at sea by the British in May, eighteen hundred and thirteen and was confined first, at Melville Island, Halifax, then at Chatham, in England, and last at Dartmoor prison : $b Interspersed with observations, anecdotes and remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct engraving of Dartmoor prison, representing the massacre of

Waterhouse, Benjamin

Dartmoor Prison; United States -- History -- War of 1812 -- Prisoners and prisons

I find all the prisoners here deeply exasperated against Captain
Shortland, and too much prejudiced to hear any thing in his favor. I
presume they have reason for it. As I have but just arrived, I have
had but little opportunity of seeing and judging his conduct. Instead
of his being a bad hearted man, I am disposed to believe that the
fault is in his understanding and education. I suspect that he is a
man of narrow views; that he has not sufficient information, or
capacity, to form a right judgment of the peculiar cast and character
of the people under his charge. He has never, perhaps, considered,
that these descendants of Englishmen, the free inhabitants of the new
world, have been born and brought up in, if we may speak so, Indian
freedom; on which freedom has been superinduced an education purely
democratic, in schools where degrading punishments are unknown; where
if a schoolmaster exercised the severity common in English and German
schools, they would tie the master's hands with his own bell-rope. He
has never considered that our potent militia choose their own
officers; and that the people choose all their officers and leaders
from among themselves; and that there are very few men indeed, none,
perhaps, in New-England, who would refuse to shake hands with a decent
yeoman. It is probable that Captain Shortland has never once reflected
that there are fewer grades of men between the lowest white man under
his charge and the highest in America, than there are between him and
the highest ranks in England. He has never considered the similarity
between the ancient Roman republican, and the republican of the United
States of America; nor why both republics deemed it abhorrent to
inflict stripes on their citizens. Shortland had not sufficient
sagacity to discover that playfulness, fun and frolic, formed a strong
trait in the character of the American sailor and militia man, for
they had hardly become, what is called in Europe, soldiers; drilling
and discipline had not obliterated the free and easy carriage of a
bold and fearless Yankee.

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