‘Fever and dysentery have been the prevalent complaints among the prisoners from Pampelune, whose deplorable state the Board of Inspection are in full possession of. (Among these were some forty women “in so wretched a state that they were wholly destitute of the appropriate dress of their sex”. Two of the British officers’ wives collected money for the poor creatures and clothed them.) Pneumonia has recently attacked many of these ill-conditioned men termed _Romans_, many of whom were sent here literally in a state of nudity, an old hammock in the boat to cover them being excepted.’ (The _Romans_ above mentioned were the most degraded and reckless of the Dartmoor prisoners, who had been sent to the hulks partly because there was no power in the prison that could keep them in order, and partly because their filthy and vicious habits were revolting to the other and more decent prisoners.) The horrors of the English prison ships were constantly quoted by French commanders as spurs to the exertions of their men. Bonaparte more than once dwelt on them. Phillipon, the gallant defender of Badajos, afterwards a prisoner on parole in England, reminded his men of them as they crowded to hurl our regiments from the breaches. ‘An appeal’, says Napier, ‘deeply felt, for the annals of civilized nations furnish nothing more inhuman towards captives of war than the prison ships of England.’ The accompanying drawing from Colonel Lebertre’s book may give some idea of the packing process practised on the hulks. It represents a view from above of the orlop deck of the _Brunswick_ prison ship at Chatham—a ship which was regarded as rather a good one to be sent to. The length of this deck was 125 feet, its breadth 40 feet in the widest part, and its height 4 feet 10 inches, so that only boys could pass along it without stooping. Within this space 460 persons slept, and as there was only space to swing 431 hammocks, 29 men had to sleep as best they could beneath the others. Something with an element of fun in it may serve as a relief to the prevalent gloom of this chapter. It has been shown how largely gambling entered into the daily life of the poor wretches on the hulks, and how every device and excuse for it were invented and employed, but the instance given by Captain Harris in his book upon Dartmoor is one of the oddest.