With Waterhouse’s experiences at Dartmoor I deal in the chapter devoted to that prison. CHAPTER VI PRISON-SHIP SUNDRIES Under this heading are included various reminiscences of, and particulars about, the prison ships which could not be conveniently dealt with in the foregoing chapters. In April 1759 five French prisoners from the _Royal Oak_ hulk at Plymouth were executed at Exeter for the murder of Jean Maneaux, who had informed the agent that his comrades had forged passports in order to facilitate their escape to France. Finding this out, they got Maneaux into an obscure corner of the ship, tied him to a ringbolt, and gave him sixty lashes with a rope to the end of which was fastened an iron thimble as thick as a man’s wrist. He got loose, and fell back; they jumped on him till they broke his neck, then cut his body into small pieces, and conveyed them through a waste pipe overboard. The next day twenty-seven prisoners were arrested, and one of them pointed out the actual murderers. In 1778 two prisoners escaped from the _San Rafael_ at Plymouth, swam off to a lighter full of powder, overpowered the man in charge, ran down through all the ships in Hamoaze, round Drake’s Island, and got safely away to France, where they sold the powder at a handsome price. Even more daring was the deed of eleven Frenchmen who, early in the morning of April 7, 1808, made their escape from the hulk _Vigilant_ at Portsmouth, by cutting a hole, and swimming to the _Amphitrite_, a ship in ordinary, fitted up as the abode of the Superintendent Master. They boarded a boat, hanging on the davits, clothed themselves in the greatcoats of the boat’s crew, lowered her, and in the semi-darkness pulled away to the Master Attendant’s buoy boat, one of the finest unarmed crafts in the harbour, valued at £1,000. They boarded her, immediately got under way at about five a.m., and successfully navigated her to Havre, or Cherbourg, which they reached in the evening, and sold her for £700. She was fitted out, armed with eight six-pounders, and went forth as a privateer under the name of _Le Buoy Boat de Portsmouth_. Her career, however, was short, for in November she was captured by the _Coquette_. The above-mentioned prison ship _Vigilant_ seems to have hardly deserved her name, for in the year 1810 alone no less than thirty-two prisoners escaped from her, and of these only eight were recaptured. On another occasion three prisoners escaped from a hulk, got a small skiff, rowed to Yantlett Creek, where they boarded a fishing-smack of which the master and boy were asleep. The master made a stout resistance and called on the boy to help him, but he was too terrified to do so. The master was overpowered and severely beaten, and then managed to jump overboard. The Frenchmen got off, taking the boy with them.