It happened that the officers of the _Rodney_ were not eager to see blood run on a man’s back, and Bates, by an active attention to duty, escaped a flogging. His chief cause of complaint was that not one of his letters home was forwarded. After getting transferred to the _Swiftsure_ he happened to learn this fact through finding one torn up which he had given to the first lieutenant to mail for him. But by sending one ashore in a market-boat it reached his father, and the father applied to President Madison to get a release. Governor Brooks, of Massachusetts, also took an interest in the matter, and a prominent New Bedford citizen, Captain C. Delano, took the papers to the Mediterranean to secure the release of the young man. Delano was received politely enough by the British Consul (the ship was at Port Mahon at the time). The admiral of the squadron also looked into the matter casually, but the result of all the efforts in behalf of the unfortunate was that the British Consul agreed for a consideration to supply him with money to buy clothing and some comforts beyond the usual allowance of a common sailor. It is possible, too, that these efforts also influenced the officers somewhat when, some months later (it was in 1812), Bates learned that war had been declared and asked to be transferred to the prison quarter as a prisoner of war. Anyway, not only Bates but twenty-one other Americans were confined as prisoners of war. But they were placed on a short allowance of food, were treated with contumely when below, and at frequent intervals were brought on deck, “where we were harangued and urged to enter the British Navy.” Perhaps the one feature of English periodicals printed between the years 1810 and 1815 that is most likely to anger an American, is the indignation the writers affected toward the Yankees for “seducing” British seamen into Yankee ships by the offer of higher wages than the English rate. These exhibitions of British wrath in the face of the fact that British ships held thousands of impressed Americans, is not unlikely to prove stirring to an American, even at the end of the nineteenth century. Some of the American companions of Bates yielded to the pressure. Bates was not that kind of a man, and after eight months’ resistance to starvation, insult, and importunity, he was sent to England. There, with seven hundred others, he was confined near Chatham dock-yard on the _Crown Princess_, a big ship of which the little Danish nation was robbed. It is but fair to say that the prisoners here were not starved by act of Parliament as they were in Milford prison during the previous war, but their allowance was scanty, and eventually an attempt was made by the officers in charge to cut it still further. At that the whole throng rebelled, refused to take anything, and made such a noise in the hold where they were confined, that the officers, who had their families on board, were obliged to yield.