When the declaration of war was made, the English vessels had a vast number of American seamen on board, most of them impressed, who flatly refused to fight against their country. Many of these, without having received the pay due them, were then sent to England as prisoners of war. Captures at sea swelled the number rapidly, which in the end amounted to nearly six thousand men. Officers of privateersmen and merchantmen on parole, were sent to Devonshire or Berkshire, where on thirty-three and a quarter cents per diem, they were allowed to subsist in comparative comfort; but the common sailors and merchant captains were scattered about in different prisons, the most, however, being collected and placed on board two old line-of-battle-ships in Portsmouth harbor. Hence, after a short imprisonment, characterized by a brutality not often found among half-civilized nations, they were transferred to Dartmoor prison, seventeen miles inland. This dreaded prison was situated high up on the side of a barren mountain, overlooking a bleak and desolate moor. It consisted of seven buildings, surrounded by two walls, the first a mile in extent and sixteen feet high; the second, thirty feet from the first, and surmounted by guards overlooking the spaces within. Each prison had but one apartment on a floor, around which, in tiers, six on a side, the hammocks were slung. Into one of these large cold apartments, nearly five hundred American prisoners were crowded during the year 1813. Their own Government had not then provided any thing towards their expenses, and they were dependent entirely on the allowance of the British officials. The garments they brought with them, at length wearing out, they were reduced to the most miserable shifts to cover their persons. As soon as it was dark, this half-famished multitude was turned into their prison, and left without a light to pass the long and dreary winter nights. Filthy, ragged, covered with vermin, they strolled around the yard in the day time, or lay basking in the sun to obtain a little warmth, and moody and despairing, gradually sank, through degrading companionship and the demoralization of want and suffering, lower and lower in the scale of humanity. A single bucket, only, containing the food, was allowed to a mess, around which they gathered with the avidity of starving men, and each with his wooden spoon struggled to eat fastest and most. To add to their sufferings the small-pox broke out among them, carrying many to their graves. Faint and far echoes from home would now and then rekindle hope in their bosoms, to be succeeded only by blank despair.