“In South Carolina the British officer called Fraser, after trying in every manner to induce the prisoners to enlist, said to them: ‘Go to your dungeons in the prison ships, where you shall perish and rot, but first let me tell you that the rations which have been hitherto allowed for your wives and children shall, from this moment, cease forever; and you shall die assured that they are starving in the public streets, and that _you_ are the authors of their fate.’ “A sentence so terribly awful appalled the firm soul of every listening hero. A solemn silence followed the declaration; they cast their wondering eyes one upon the other, and valor, for a moment, hung suspended between love of family, and love of country. Love of country at length rose superior to every other consideration, and moved by one impulse, this glorious band of patriots thundered into the astonished ears of their persecutors, ‘The prison-ships and Death, or Washington and our country!’ “Meagre famine shook hands with haggard pestilence, joining a league to appall, conquer, and destroy the glorious spirit of liberty.” CHAPTER XXIII A POET ON A PRISON SHIP Philip Freneau, the poet of the Revolution, as he has been called, was of French Huguenot ancestry. The Freneaus came to New York in 1685. His mother was Agnes Watson, a resident of New York, and the poet was born on the second of January, 1752. In the year 1780 a vessel of which he was the owner, called the Aurora, was taken by the British. Freneau was on board, though he was not the captain of the ship. The British man-of-war, Iris, made the Aurora her prize, after a fight in which the sailing master and many of the crew were killed. This was in May, 1780. The survivors were brought to New York, and confined on board the prison ship, Scorpion. Freneau has left a poem describing the horrors of his captivity in very strong language, and it is easy to conceive that his suffering must have been intense to have aroused such bitter feelings. We give a part of his poem, as it contains the best description of the indignities inflicted upon the prisoners, and their mental and physical sufferings that we have found in any work on the subject. PART OF PHILIP FRENEAU’S POEM ON THE PRISON SHIPS Conveyed to York we found, at length, too late, That Death was better than the prisoner’s fate There doomed to famine, shackles, and despair, Condemned to breathe a foul, infected air, In sickly hulks, devoted while we lay,-- Successive funerals gloomed each dismal day The various horrors of these hulks to tell-- These prison ships where Pain and Penance dwell, Where Death in ten-fold vengeance holds his reign, And injured ghosts, yet unavenged, complain: This be my task--ungenerous Britons, you Conspire to murder whom you can’t subdue * * * * *