The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn

by Robert P. Watson

  Yet another letter from a prisoner appeared in the Pennsylvania Packet in 1781. In it, the man, who was on board the Jersey, concluded, “There is nothing but death or entering into the British service before me.” The letter stated that most of the men in his crew had died aboard the ship and that they buried between six and eleven men a day, with “200 more sick and falling sick every day; the sickness is the yellow fever, small-pox, and in short every thing else that can be mentioned.” The prisoner ended his poignant tale with these words: “I had almost forgot to tell you, that our morning’s salutation is, ‘Rebels! Turn out your dead!’”

  Several newspapers alleged that the British were purposely “starving our people” in order to entice the prisoners to join His Majesty’s army and instill terror into the American public. It worked, but in a way not foreseen by the British. Public opinion across the land was changing. Anti-British sentiment was being fueled by, among other incidents, the alarming stories about the Jersey.

  British leaders had underestimated the support for the war among colonists, as they underestimated the blowback from their brutal prison ship policies. The same phenomenon had occurred in response to the Stamp Act, Intolerable Acts, and Boston Massacre years before. Their violent policies undermined the legitimacy of British rule, especially when force had been a measure of last resort for the colonists. Conducting “a war of ravage and destruction” only created “an irrecoverable hatred” among colonists. More than the heroics of John Paul Jones or George Washington, British mistakes and the change in public opinion helped the Revolutionary cause by making it a “just war” in response to injustices.

  A number of events helped rally colonials to the cause of war, including Paul Revere’s depiction of the Boston Massacre, the Committees of Correspondence established by colonial leaders to organize resistance, and Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.* Indeed, a revolution rooted in concepts such as “the will of the people” and “representative government” required both broad public support and an ongoing commitment to the effort by the people. Ironically, the Jersey would play a role in both matters.

  To counter such damning stories, which appeared with increasing regularity in American newspapers, the British resorted to propaganda. Like the leaders of the Revolution, they too needed to sway the hearts and minds of both colonials and taxpayers back in England who footed the bill for the war. And so they did. Newspapers whipped up anti-American feelings in England, labeling the “disloyal” colonists “outlaws,” “rebels,” and “traitors.”

  One effort involved denying that the prisons and notorious hulks were that bad. William Cunningham, the monstrous prison warden, appears to have forced prisoners to write complimentary accounts of their incarceration. Such was the case when the pro-British newspaper Gaine’s Mercury published an article on November 25, 1776, saying of the prisoners, “Their situation must have been doubly deplorable, but for the humanity of the king’s officers. Every possible attention has been given, considering their great numbers and necessary confinement, to alleviate their distress arising from guilt, sickness, and poverty.” The New York–based newspaper repeatedly made the case for the British, inventing fictitious accounts of the prisons.

  Another approach was to try to use the suffering in prisons and aboard the Jersey against the Americans. On November 25, 1776, the loyalist newspaper Gaine’s Mercury published a propaganda piece that claimed, “There are now 5,000 prisoners in town, many of them half naked. Congress deserts the poor wretches,—have sent them neither provisions nor clothing, not paid attention to their distress nor that of their families.” Likewise, British officers and guards on the prison ships regularly told the prisoners that their government and countrymen had given up on them. Prisoners were informed that General Washington refused to agree to prisoner exchanges because he did not care about the men on board the old hulks. Another loyalist newspaper claimed to have letters from American sailors who said they felt “deserted by our own countrymen.” It went on to claim that the British wanted to negotiate more prisoner exchanges but Washington did not.

  The reality of the matter was that the British admiralty and commissaries regularly refused Washington’s requests to inspect the prison ships. Instead, they conducted their own “investigation” into the allegations of neglect, abuse, and murder on the ships. It was headed by Captain George Dawson. On February 2, 1781, Dawson informed a three-member naval board of inquiry that he found no evidence of poor treatment aboard the prison ships. Incredibly, he even claimed the prisoners were well fed and received “full allowances” of bread, beef, pork, and butter. Captain Dawson also denied that the ships were overcrowded and blamed the prisoners for the high death toll, saying the “sickness at present among the prisoners arises from a want of cloathing and a proper attention in themselves in their own cleanliness.” The report, titled “The Extensive and Impartial Enquiry on Board His Majesty’s Prison Ship Jersey,” was sent to Washington and also contained coerced confessionals from the prisoners. The wicked commissary David Sproat conducted fake investigations as well, claiming that conditions on the prison ships were good, except that the prisoners needed more clothing.

  Furious with the outright lies and propaganda, Washington sent a letter a few days later saying that the British seamen in American possession would, from then on, receive the exact same substandard rations. Worried about the reprisal, Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot responded to Washington’s letter in April, writing, “I give you my honor, that the transaction was conducted with such strict care and impartiality that you may rely on its validity.” The preponderance of evidence suggested otherwise, and Washington knew it. The British concocted such reports, coerced prisoners into giving false testimony, and refused independent verification and access to the ships. As one American commissary complained in 1782, “I was refused permission to visit the prison-ships, for which I can conceive no other reason than your being ashamed to have these graves of our seamen seen by one who dared to represent the horrors of them to his countrymen.”

  On the other hand, there were several reports on the conditions of British prisons and prison ships organized by colonial politicians and military leaders. One of the earliest efforts was led by Major Levi Wells, who collected affidavits from escaped and paroled prisoners, and issued his findings to the Connecticut Legislature in early December 1776. The colony’s governor, Jonathan Trumbull, was so disturbed by the report that he notified General Washington of the plight of the prisoners. “Their confinement is so close and crowded that they have scarce room to move or lie down, the air stagnant and corrupt; numbers dying daily,” he wrote. Trumbull also received a letter from a Connecticut sailor named Oliver Babcock, who was imprisoned aboard the Whitby in Wallabout Bay. The letter, written in January 1777, was filled with such painful descriptions of suffering that it prompted Trumbull to urge Washington to conduct prisoner exchanges.

  Numerous other reports were based on affidavits and depositions, such as those by the Committee for Detecting Conspiracies in New York and the Maryland Council of Safety, who found evidence that prisoners were “most cruelly and Inhumanely treated, confined in churches without fire, and Dying in great numbers.” Another study in 1777 by the Pennsylvania Council of Safety claimed in a letter of “Utmost Importance” to General Washington that, astonishingly, more than eleven thousand American prisoners had already died from a lack of food, water, and medical attention, and that the numbers continued to grow.

  Across the Atlantic, more accurate reports about the war and prison ships began finding their way to the public and political leaders. One result was that even the noted British statesman William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, questioned the war. Pitt, a former prime minister and influential leader during the French and Indian War in America, proclaimed in 1777, “If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms—never—never—never!” And the colonists did not.

  Even at the beginning of the
war, General Thomas Gage admitted that his troops were experiencing increasing opposition, to the extent that they were virtually “surrounded” in New England by an army of angry farmers. One British soldier observed, “The Americans lose 600 men in a day, and eight days later 1,200 others rejoin the army; whereas to replace ten men in the English army is quite an undertaking.” Likewise, as the historian John Shy described, “From the British viewpoint, the militia was the virtually inexhaustible reservoir of rebel military manpower.” And so it was. By the end of the war, the British found themselves under constant harassment by guerrilla-style attacks. It was a “constant skirmish” wherever the British went in the colonies. In the words of General Nathanael Greene, one of George Washington’s best commanders, the Americans’ motto was “Fight, get beat, rise, and fight again!”

  The longer the war dragged on, the more the British economy and trade suffered and support for the war back home plummeted. The British were not able to restore order by armed force alone and they never really seriously considered another approach. More important, they lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the colonists. It is safe to say that toward the end of the war most Americans no longer were interested in negotiating an end to hostilities or a return to British rule.

  As one historical account described, “Associations of intense horror are linked with the memory and the records of the cruelties practiced and sufferings endured in the prisons and prison ships at New York.” Foremost among them was the Hell Ship, which, according to a survivor, was so woeful that “for years, the very name of ‘the old Jersey,’ seemed to strike a terror to the hearts of those whose necessities required them to venture upon the ocean.” Story after gruesome story filled the pages of newspapers and were whispered with chilling effect in pubs, shops, and homes throughout the colonies, thus making the ship notorious. Another historical account stated in stark terms that “the mortality which prevailed on board her was well known throughout the country.… To be confined within her dungeons, was considered equal to a sentence of death, from which but little hope of escape remained.” The mere mention of the Jersey struck fear into patriots everywhere.

  Christopher Hawkins, Thomas Andros, and other escapees found this to be the case while they were on the run. Colonists they encountered, even if assistance was rendered, recoiled at the realization that they were meeting a survivor of the infamous ghost ship. The woman who gave Hawkins clothing during his escape was so afraid of getting caught that she told him he must not acknowledge her help; if asked, she said, he should lie and tell anyone he encountered that he stole the items. She did not want to be seen as aiding a prisoner from the Jersey, lest she be labeled a patriot or risk her son being sent to its wretched holds. The prisoner Thomas Dring even noted that a popular nickname for yellow fever became “the Old Jersey fever” and that both the term and awareness of the ship as a floating Hell were “well known throughout the whole country.”

  These grim stories had a devastating effect on the British war effort. They sparked outrage in the colonies and built support for the Revolution. As the morbid truth behind Britain’s prison policies became known, and as people learned the barbaric details about life on the Jersey and the ship’s shockingly high death toll, a public outcry for retribution and justice erupted. It might be said to have been the Jersey effect.

  17

  Freedom

  Remembrance shudders at this scene of fears,

  Still in my view some tyrant chief appears,

  Some base-born Hessian slave walks threatening by,

  Some servile Scot, with murder in his eye,

  Still haunts my sight, as vainly they bemoan

  Rebellions manag’d so unlike their own.

  —Philip Freneau, “The British Prison-Ship” (1781)

  Many prisoners died on the Jersey, and a few managed to escape, but others were released through prisoner exchanges. The Continental Congress had favored exchanges since the beginning of the war, passing a measure for prisoner swaps on December 2, 1775. As was mentioned earlier, a protocol was established whereby equivalent numbers of prisoners would be exchanged of similar rank—an officer for an officer, a soldier for a soldier.

  One of the first exchanges involved ships and was described in the Virginia Gazette: “The prisoners taken at Lexington were exchanged. The wounded privates were soon sent on board the Levity. At about three a signal was made by the Levity that they were ready to deliver up our prisoners, upon which General Putnam and Major Moncrief went to the ferry, where they received nine prisoners.” The newspaper wrote that a few prisoners cried with joy. Nevertheless, General Washington wrote to General Gage, his British counterpart, angry that the men had been jailed “with no consideration of their rank” and were not “treated with care and kindness.”

  Most of the exchanges were organized by cartels, who collected food and clothing for the prisoners, negotiated the time and date of the exchange, and took delivery of the prisoners under a flag of truce. The Connecticut Gazette chronicled one such effort by a local cartel that was supported by the Connecticut Assembly, who assisted them in gathering “a sufficient supply” of shirts and pants for the prisoners.

  Several colonial governors, such as Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut, organized their own cartels and exchanges, as did towns such as New London. Governor Trumbull wrote to General Washington asking for help in supporting the cartels, pleading, “In New York between three and four thousand prisoners, the privates all close confined, upon about half allowance; great number of them almost naked; their confinement is so close and crowded that they have scarce room to move or lie down, the air stagnate and corrupt; numbers dying daily.” Governor George Clinton of New York was also an ardent advocate for exchanges, providing food, clothing, and funds to them from 1777 all the way until the final months of the British occupation of New York. As late as September 1783, during the final days of the war, he was still funding relief missions to the prison ships.

  A number of other cartels were established, including a few that operated from the beginning of the war. In one such instance, a cartel from New London negotiated with General Howe in November 1776 to exchange sailors. Another cartel from the town was able to obtain the release of 136 prisoners from Connecticut in February 1779. Sadly, sixteen of the prisoners died on the way home and another sixty were so weak and ill that they could not even stand. The exchanges were covered by newspapers, which reported the gruesome details of the treatment of prisoners and conditions aboard the prison ships. The account rallied the people of New London and elsewhere to demand more exchanges. And it happened.

  According to a New London newspaper, that August the town’s cartel secured the release of “five or six hundred American prisoners… chiefly from New England,” followed by another 117 in September 1780 and 130 in December 1781. As the New London paper reported, these men were in the “most deplorable condition; great part since dead, and the survivors so debilitated that they will drag out a miserable existence.” The British did not even try to clean or assist the prisoners during such exchanges, reflecting their attitude toward their former colonists. As another report stated, one of the cartels returned in September 1779 with 180 prisoners whose “countenances indicate that they have undergone every conceivable inhumanity.” The men had been on the Jersey.

  Some of the earliest descriptions of the suffering and brutality aboard the prison ships came from newspaper reports of prisoner exchanges. Such reports only further incited revolution and emboldened the cartels, of which those in New London were among the most active and effective. They also prompted the Continental Congress to initiate an official inquiry into the prison ships in April 1777. The findings were disturbing. “The prisoners, instead of that humane treatment which those taken by the United States experienced,” the report found, “were in general treated with the greatest barbarity. Many of them were kept near four days without food altogether.… Multitudes died in prison.” The report concluded in flourishing
terms that such brutality was “never known to happen in any similar case in a Christian country.”

  Anger and impatience with British policies were growing throughout the colonies. The public demanded more exchanges. One of the frustrated leaders was General Samuel Holden Parsons, who had been born in Connecticut and raised in Massachusetts. Parsons even went so far as to develop a plan in May 1777 to conduct a military raid in New York to rescue the prisoners. Although Washington cared deeply for the prisoners and was emotionally torn by the situation, he disapproved of the lawyer-turned-general’s plan and rejected it. Despite the growing support for the war and exchanges, Washington had little choice save to back the difficult but strategic decision that exchanging dying farmers and blacksmiths who had volunteered for service for relatively healthy, professional soldiers benefited the British. As he stated in a letter to the Continental Congress, “It may be thought contrary to our interest to go into an exchange, as the enemy would derive more immediate advantage from it than we should. I cannot doubt that Congress will authorize me through commissioners to settle a cartel, any resolutions heretofore to the contrary notwithstanding.” Intense pressure was building on both sides for additional, massive exchanges.

  Then entered an unexpected development in the form of Admiral Sir George Rodney, the man believed to have ordered the Jersey converted from hospital ship to floating prison because it was “unfit” and “totally useless.” In 1780, Rodney seized fourteen hundred American sailors and, reflecting the earlier policy of using the hellish prison ships as a psychological weapon of terror, announced that capturing additional prisoners and refusing to release them would weaken the American navy and deter privateers from joining the war. He also maintained that the Americans were not worthy of exchanges, as he indicated in a letter to the Admiralty: “The Wretches with which their Privateers are Mann’d have no principal whatever, they live by Piracy.” Rodney complained that, when exchanged “out of humanity to return to their families and live by honest Industry, they forget the Mercy that had been shown them, and instantly return to renew their Acts of Piracy.”