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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

The Frenchmen were now (in the month of May) leaving the reach. Many
of them had been in prison ever since 1803. These men are going home
to live under a government forced upon them by foreigners! How unlike
Americans, who had rather perish under tortures, than submit to the
yoke of a foreigner. Our Frenchmen always spoke in raptures of the
emperor NAPOLEON, and with contempt of _Louis_. When we spoke in
praise of Bonaparte, they would throw their arms around us, and cry
out, one bon American! But these men are all passion and no principle;
they are fit for any thing but liberty. I cannot judge of the whole
nation; but those I have seen here, are an abandoned set of men. I
dare not write down their incredible vices. There has been a great cry
of _French influence_ by the British party in New England. I never
thought it ever existed, and I am very certain that it never will
exist, unless they, and we should become a very altered people. It is
a happy circumstance that the wide Atlantic rolls between us and
France, and between us and England.

LOUIS 18th, passed through Chatham this month, for France. The tops of
the carriages, only, were to be seen by the prisoners. On this
occasion, the cannon were firing from London to Sheerness. Our
Frenchmen looked blacker than ever. They were, be sure, obliged to
stick the white cockade on their hats, but they told us they had
Bonaparte's cockade in their hearts. They checked the expression of
their feelings lest it should retard their liberation.

On the news of taking of Paris, and of the flight of Bonaparte to
Elba, all our prison-keepers were alive for joy.--"Thank God that I am
an _Englishman_," says our commander, lieut. O.--and "thank God I am a
_Briton_," says our surgeon, who is a Scotchman. _John Bull_ is now on
the very top of the steeple, hourrowing and swinging his hat, and
crying out to the whole universe, "_I'm thinking Johnny Bull_, the
magnanimous John Bull, the soul of the continental war, the protector
of France, the restorer of his holiness the Pope, and of Ferdinand the
_Great_, the terror and admiration of the whole world. I have nothing
now left me to do, but to flog the yankees, and depose MADISON; and
burn the city of Washington, disperse the Congress, establish in their
place the _Hartford Convention_, and raise Caleb Strong to the high
rank his devotion merits. After this, I will divide the world between
me and ----. _Prevost_, who is, beyond doubt, at this very moment, at
the city of Hartford, in Connecticut; or at the city of North Hampton,
the capital of my province of Massachusetts."

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