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 — John Shaqi
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
Had the agent informed us of the orders of his government, and made us
acquainted with our destination, we should have braced our minds up to
the occasion, and submitted to our hard fate like men. We should have
said to each other in the language of Shakespeare--"_if these things
be necessities, let's meet them like necessities_;" but to be deceived
and duped, and cajoled into a state of great joy and exultation, and
then, in an instant, precipitated into the dark and cold regions of
despair, was barbarous beyond expression. As much resentment as I feel
towards Miller and his subalterns, I cannot wish either of them to
suffer the pangs I felt at the idea of this floating dungeon.
The late Governor GERRY, in one of his communications to the
legislature of Massachusetts, when speaking of the impressment and ill
usage of our seamen by the English, calls a British man-of-war "_a
floating Pandemonium_." I never felt the force of that expression
until I entered on board this floating hell.
After some difficulty and delay we got ourselves and bedding up the
side of the ship; and as our names were called over, our bedding was
served out to us. We informed the officer that there were but seventy
blankets for an hundred men; to which he replied, that he had orders
to serve out blankets in the same proportion as they served out our
provisions. To understand this, the reader must know that the British
have been in the habit, all the war, of giving to their prisoners a
less quantity of food than to their own men. They uniformly gave to
_six_ of us the same quantity which they gave to _four_ of their own
sailors. If what they allowed to their own men was barely sufficient,
what they gave to us could not be enough to satisfy the cravings of
hunger; and this we all found to be the case.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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