American Prisoners of the RevolutionDandridge, Danske
History
American Prisoners of the Revolution
Dandridge, Danske
United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Prisoners and prisons
ought to be raised a Colossal Column whose base sinking to Hell, should
let the murderers read their infamy inscribed upon it; and whose capital
of Corinthian laurel ascending to Heaven, should show the sainted
Patriots that they have triumphed.
“Deep and dreadful as the coloring of this picture may appear, it is
but a taint and imperfect sketch of the original. You must remember a
thousand unutterable calamities; a thousand instances of domestic as
well as national anxiety and distress; which mock description. You
ought to remember them; you ought to hand them down in tradition to your
posterity, that they may know the awful price their fathers paid for
freedom.”
CHAPTER XXV
A DESCRIPTION OF THE JERSEY
SONNET
SUGGESTED BY A VISION OF THE JERSEY PRISON SHIP
BY W P P
O Sea! in whose unfathomable gloom
A world forlorn of wreck and ruin lies,
In thy avenging majesty arise,
And with a sound as of the trump of doom
Whelm from all eyes for aye yon living tomb,
Wherein the martyr patriots groaned for years,
A prey to hunger and the bitter jeers
Of foes in whose relentless breasts no room
Was ever found for pity or remorse;
But haunting anger and a savage hate,
That spared not e’en their victim’s very corse,
But left it, outcast, to its carrion fate
Wherefore, arise, O Sea! and sternly sweep
This floating dungeon to thy lowest deep
It was stated in the portion of the eloquent oration given in our last
chapter that more than 11,000 prisoners perished on board the Jersey
alone, during the space of three years and a half that she was moored in
the waters of Wallabout Bay. This statement has never been contradicted,
as far as we know, by British authority. Yet we trust that it is
exaggerated. It would give an average of more than three thousand deaths
a year. The whole number of names copied from the English War Records
of prisoners on board the Jersey is about 8,000. This, however, is an
incomplete list. You will in vain search through its pages to find the
recorded names of many prisoners who have left well attested accounts of
their captivity on board that fatal vessel. All that we can say now is
that the number who perished there is very great.
As late as 1841 the bones of many of these victims were still to be
found on the shores of Walabout Bay, in and around the Navy Yard. On the
4th of February of that year some workmen, while engaged in digging
away an embankment in Jackson Street, Brooklyn, near the Navy Yard,
accidentally uncovered a quantity of human bones, among which was a
skeleton having a pair of iron manacles still upon the wrists. (See
Thompson’s History of Long Island, Vol. 1, page 247.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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