The only furniture in the ship was a bench along each side and four in the middle, the prisoners squatting on deck at mess time. Each prisoner on arrival received a hammock, a thin coverlet, and a hair mattress weighing from two to three pounds. For a long time no distinction was made between officers and men, but latterly a special ship was allowed for officers. Some idea of the crowding on board may be gained from the facts that each battery, 130 feet long, 40 feet broad, and 6 feet high, held nearly 400 prisoners, and that the hammocks were so closely slung that there was no room to sleep on deck. The alimentation of the prisoners, humane and ample as it looks on paper, seems to have been a gross sham. Not only did the contractors cheat in quality and quantity, but what with forfeitures on account of breaches of discipline, and observance of the law imposed by the prisoners on themselves, that, deductions or no deductions, no man should have a larger ration than another, and contributions to men planning to escape, it was impossible for all to touch full rations. The prisoners elected their own cooks, and nominally a committee of fifteen prisoners was allowed to attend at the distribution to see that quality and quantity were just, but the guards rarely allowed them to do so. Six men formed a mess; no spoons, knives or forks were supplied, merely bowls and pannikins. The fish supplied on ‘maigre’ days—Wednesdays and Fridays—was usually uneatable, and the prisoners often sold the herrings at a penny each to the purveyors, who kept them for redistribution, so that it was said that some herrings had done duty for ten years! With the money thus made the prisoners bought butter or cheese. The cod they re-cooked; the bread was filthy and hard. Complaints were useless, and the result was constant hunger. All but the Raffalés, the scum, occupied themselves with trades or professions. There were tobacco manufacturers, professors of dancing, fencing, and stick-play, who charged one sou for a lesson, which often lasted an hour. Mathematics and languages were taught at the same rate. Whilst these and many other occupations were busy, up and down the battery passed the ‘merchants’ crying their wares, hungry men who offered their rags for sale, menders of shoes, and the occupants of favourable positions in the battery inviting bids for them, so that despite the rags and the hunger and the general misery, there was plenty of sound and movement, and general evidence of that capability for adapting themselves to circumstance which so invariably distinguished the French prisoners in England from the British prisoners in France. Garneray’s chief friend on board was a sturdy Breton privateer Captain named Bertaud. Bertaud hated the English fiercely, and, being somewhat of a bruiser, had won the esteem of his companions quite as much by his issue of the following challenge as by his personal qualities.