American Merchant Ships and SailorsAbbot, Willis J. (Willis John)
History
American Merchant Ships and Sailors
Abbot, Willis J. (Willis John)
Merchant marine -- United States -- History
After about one-third of the captives made with this writer had been
seized and carried away to serve against their country on British
war-ships, the rest were conveyed to the "Jersey," which had been
originally a 74-gun ship, then cut down to a hulk and moored at the
Wallabout, at that time a lonely and deserted place on the Long Island
shore, now about the center of the Brooklyn river front. "I found myself,"
writes the captive, "in a loathsome prison among a collection of the most
wretched and disgusting objects I ever beheld in human form. Here was a
motley crew covered with rags and filth, visages pallid with disease,
emaciated with hunger and anxiety, and retaining hardly a trace of their
original appearance.... The first day we could obtain no food, and seldom
on the second could prisoners secure it in season for cooking it. Each
prisoner received one-third as much as was allotted to a tar in the
British navy. Our bill of fare was as follows: On Sunday, one pound of
biscuit, one pound of pork, and half a pint of peas; Monday, one pound of
biscuit, one pint of oatmeal, and two ounces of butter; Tuesday, one pound
of biscuit and two pounds of salt beef, etc., etc. If this food had been
of good quality and properly cooked, as we had no labor to perform, it
would have kept us comfortable; but all our food appeared to be damaged.
As for the pork, we were cheated out of more than half of it, and when it
was obtained one would have judged from its motley hues, exhibiting the
consistency and appearance of variegated fancy soap, that it was the flesh
of the porpoise or sea-hog, and had been an inhabitant of the ocean rather
than the sty. The peas were about as digestible as grape-shot; and the
butter--had it not been for its adhesive properties to retain together the
particles of biscuit that had been so riddled by the worms as to lose all
their attraction of cohesion, we should not have considered it a desirable
addition to our viands. The flour and oatmeal were sour, and the suet
might have been nosed the whole length of our ship. Many times since, when
I have seen in the country a large kettle of potatoes and pumpkins
steaming over the fire to satisfy the appetite of some farmer's swine, I
have thought of our destitute and starved condition, and what a luxury we
should have considered the contents of that kettle aboard the 'Jersey.'...
About two hours before sunset orders were given the prisoners to carry all
their things below; but we were permitted to remain above until we retired
for the night into our unhealthy and crowded dungeons. At sunset our ears
were saluted with the insulting and hateful sound from our keepers of
'Down, rebels, down,' and we were hurried below, the hatchways fastened
over us, and we were left to pass the night amid the accumulated horrors
of sighs and groans, of foul vapor, a nauseous and putrid atmosphere, in a
stifled and almost suffocating heat.... When any of the prisoners had
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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