Two desperate and elaborate attempts at escape by tunnelling were made by American prisoners in 1814. Digging was done in three barracks simultaneously—from No. 4, in which there were 1,200 men, from No. 5, which was empty, and from No. 6, lately opened and now holding 800 men—down in each case twenty feet, and then 250 feet of tunnel in an easterly direction towards the road outside the boundary wall. On September 2 Captain Shortland, the new Agent, discovered it; some say it was betrayed to him, but the prisoners themselves attributed it to indiscreet talking. The enormous amount of soil taken out was either thrown into the stream running through the prison, or was used for plastering walls which were under repair, coating it with whitewash. When the excitement attendant on this discovery had subsided, the indefatigable Americans got to work again. The discovered shafts having been partially blocked by the authorities with large stones, the plotters started another tunnel from the vacant No. 5 prison, to connect with the old one beyond the point of stoppage. Mr. Basil Thomson has kindly allowed me to publish an interesting discovery relative to this, made in December, 1911: ‘While excavating for the foundations of the new hall at Dartmoor, which is being built on the site of IV. A and B Prison, the excavators broke into what proved to be one of the subterranean passages which were secretly dug by the American prisoners in 1814 with a view to escape. Number IV Prison, then known as Number V, was at that time empty, and, as Charles Andrews tells us, the plan was to tunnel under the boundary walls and then, armed with daggers forged at the blacksmith’s shop, to emerge on a stormy night and make for Torbay, where there were believed to be fishing boats sufficient to take them to the French coast. No one was to be taken alive. The scheme was betrayed by a prisoner named Bagley (of Portsmouth, New Hampshire), who, to save him from the fury of the prisoners, was liberated and sent home.... One of these tunnels was disclosed when the foundation of IV. C Hall were dug in 1881. The tunnel found last month may have been the excavation made after the first shaft had been filled up. It was 14 feet below the floor of the prison, 3 feet in height, and 4 feet wide. More than one person explored it on hands and knees as far as it went, which was about 20 feet in the direction of the boundary wall. A marlin spike and a ship’s scraper of ancient pattern were found among the débris, and are now in the Prison Museum.’