‘There is not much doubt that these earlier prisoners of war suffered very terribly. Their guards feared them more than the French. From the hulks came warnings of their skill and ingenuity, their courage, and their frantic endeavours to regain liberty. The American Agent for Prisoners of War at Plymouth, one Reuben Beasley, was either a knave or a fool, and never have unhappy sufferers in this sort endured more from a callous, cruel, or utterly inefficient and imbecile representative. With sleepless rigour and severity were the Americans treated in that stern time; certain advantages and privileges permitted to the French at Princetown were at first denied them, and to all their petitions, reasonable complaints, and remonstrances, the egregious Beasley turned a deaf ear, while the very medical officer at the gaol at that season lacked both knowledge of medicine and humanity, and justified his conduct with falsehood before he was removed from office.’ Theirs was indeed a hard lot. This last-mentioned brute, Dyer, took note of no sickness until it was too far gone to be treated, and refused patients admission to the hospital until the last moment: for fear, he said, of spreading the disease. They were, as Mr. Phillpotts says, denied many privileges and advantages allowed to Frenchmen of the lowest class; they were shut out from the usual markets, and had to buy through the French prisoners, at 25 per cent. above market prices. On May 18, 1813, 250 more Americans came from the _Hector_ hulk, and on July 1, 100 more. July 4, 1813, was a dark day in the history of the prison. The Americans, with the idea of getting up an Independence Day celebration, got two flags and asked permission to hold a quiet festival. Captain Cotgrave, the Governor, refused, and sent the guard to confiscate the flags. Resistance was offered; there was a struggle and one of the flags was captured. In the evening the disturbance was renewed, an attempt was made to recapture the flag, the guard fired upon the prisoners and wounded two. The feeling thus fostered burst out into a flame on July 10, when the ‘Romans’ in the two upper stories of No. 4 Prison collected weapons of all sorts, and attacked the Americans unexpectedly, with the avowed purpose of killing them all. A terrible encounter was the result, in the midst of which the guards charged in and separated the two parties, but not until forty on both sides had been badly wounded. After this a wall fifteen feet high was built to divide the airing ground of No. 4. Andrews describes the clothing of the prisoners as consisting of a cap of wool, one inch thick and coarser than rope yarn, a yellow jacket—not large enough to meet round the smallest man, although most of the prisoners were reduced by low living to skeletons—with the sleeves half-way up the arms, a short waistcoat, pants tight to the middle of the shin, shoes of list with wooden soles one and a half inches thick.