Rodney’s views were shared by Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot and Commissary David Sproat, who had long advocated harsh treatment of prisoners and forcibly pressing them into the service of the Royal Navy. Accordingly, during Admiral Rodney’s tenure with the Royal Navy, more prisoners were captured and fewer were exchanged. The prisoner population on the ships exploded and conditions worsened.
At the same time, British wardens and commissaries such as Joshua Loring, William Cunningham, and David Sproat viewed the cartels and exchanges as a way of making money. As one historical account of the negotiations noted, “It is a known fact, also, that whenever an exchange was to take place, the preference was always given to those who had, or could procure, the most money to present to the commissaries who conducted the exchange.” But the Americans responded by demanding payment as well. The British proved willing to pay when it came to senior officers even though, ironically, it contributed to the high costs of the war and helped provide funding for the Americans.
With the war in its final, fitful throes, one would expect both sides to have embraced prisoner exchanges. But even after 1781 there were still political, military, and personal impediments to prisoner exchanges. Thousands of Americans continued to suffer aboard the floating dungeons. Hope came in the form of Admiral Arbuthnot resigning his post after becoming ill in 1781 and returning to England, and the appointment of Admiral Robert Digby that September as commander of the North American station. It would be Digby who would end up presiding over the British evacuation of New York in late 1783.
Not only was Digby more inclined toward exchanges, but after General Lord Charles Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, the British were desperate to secure the release of their soldiers and officers. As General Washington remarked in a letter, “There is scarce any price which they would not give for their veteran Troops now prisoners.” Admiral Digby worried about the “distressed Situation” of British prisoners who would be treated as the American prisoners had been treated, and so he signaled a shift in policy governing releases and exchanges. Still, the British continued to raid American ships seeking additional prisoners and possible recruits. Washington, aware that the Royal Navy was targeting “every thing that floats on the face of the Waters” during the summer of 1782, understood that the British were still playing games with prisoners.
On March 25, 1782, Parliament finally declared Americans to be “prisoners of war,” a designation of much importance. A month later, Benjamin Franklin eagerly submitted a report from France on the benefits of the law. “The Parliament of Britain have just passed an act for exchanging American prisoners. They have near eleven hundred in the jails of England and Ireland, all committed as charged with high treason. The act is to empower the King, notwithstanding such commitments, to consider them as prisoners of war, according to the law of nations, and exchange them as such.” Franklin gushed with the good news that “this seems to be giving up their pretensions of considering us as rebellious subjects, and is a kind of acknowledgement of our independence. Transports are now taking up to carry back to their country the poor, brave fellows who have borne for years their cruel captivity, rather than serve our enemies and an equal number of English are to be delivered in return.”
One of the many prisoners exchanged at the end of the war was Andrew Sherburne, who was clinging to life after bouts with various diseases. A schooner dispatched from a cartel in Rhode Island arrived at the Jersey in February 1782. Prisoners were ordered on deck, and they waited anxiously as names were read aloud. However, when Sherburne’s name was read, he was not on the Jersey. Suffering from yet another illness, he had been taken off the ship and put aboard a nearby hospital ship. Sherburne nearly missed being exchanged, but at the last minute one of the prisoners announced that his fellow prisoner was still alive and was on the hospital ship. Surprisingly, the guards brought Sherburne to the schooner at anchor next to the old floating prison.
Filled with prisoners, the schooner sailed for Newport, Rhode Island. There they disembarked, but many, like Sherburne, were barely able to walk. The weather was cold, and Sherburne and a few of his crewmates went to a bakery to warm themselves. Fortunately for them, the baker was a kind man who invited the men to his home to eat. Sherburne remembered worrying about infesting the home because of the “lice and vermin” on his clothing and in his hair. But he was ravenously hungry and was treated to his first meal in months—ham, eggs, and chocolate! The former prisoners were so malnourished that they had to be careful not to eat too much. While they were eating, both the baker and his wife interrupted the feast to ask the men if they were from the Jersey—tales of the notorious Hell Ship were well known in New England coastal villages.
With a full stomach, Sherburne thanked the kind couple and went on his way. He had no money, was wearing torn clothing, and had as his only possession a hammock he had taken from the Jersey. Without a coat, he was worried he would freeze to death before making it home. But, as Sherburne recalled, “We had not walked twenty rods from the wharf” when a man called out to him and the other former prisoners, asking if they were from the Jersey. Sherburne responded in the affirmative, and a small crowd of people gathered to meet the men and welcome them home. Everyone, it seemed, knew about the wretched prison ship. The man who addressed them was the captain of a small ship, and he invited Sherburne and his mates to sail with him to Providence.
Sherburne arrived in the city in late March and experienced a similarly warm welcome. A young girl noticed the men and invited them to her home, introducing them to her mother by saying, “I really believe these men came from the same place.” It turned out that a family friend had been imprisoned on the Jersey. When the girl’s mother said the prisoner’s name was Jack Robinson, a hatter from Providence, Sherburne was in shock. He knew Robinson and was overjoyed to announce that the hatter had also been released to a cartel. At the surprising news, the young girl raced out the door to the Robinsons’ hat store to inform the family that their son was alive and on his way home.
Sherburne was taken to the Robinson home, where he was greeted with sobs of “God bless you!” He was fed, clothed, and invited to sleep at their house, which he did, curling up with blankets near the warm fireplace.
On the road to the family home in Rye, New York, Sherburne was met by his brother Samuel, who had heard from neighbors that a prisoner had arrived. The family that had sent him away for years as a boy now welcomed him home. Sherburne’s mother, likely filled with guilt for neglecting her son as a child, nearly fainted at the sight of her long-lost boy. Sherburne remembered that his first order of business was to wash.
His physical recovery was long and tedious—he had, after all, survived several illnesses during his incarceration. Once he recovered, Sherburne’s next priority was to visit the families of crewmates throughout New York who had perished on the Jersey.
Thomas Dring survived the deadly nighttime attack at the stern of the Jersey. His friends who had attempted to escape, however, were not so fortunate. It was a trying few weeks for the Rhode Island officer after the failed escape attempt. He and other prisoners were unnerved by the savagery of the Hessian guards and the painful death of their friend Lawrence. Not long afterward, a disease tore through the ship, and the mortality rate among the prisoners, which was already alarmingly high, increased. The result was that the prisoners on the Hell Ship were filled with despair and the sense that they all were going to die.
Too weak to attempt another escape, Dring and his fellow officers determined that the only way to survive was to appeal directly to General Washington for a prisoner exchange. In 1782, they wrote to General Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander who had replaced General Howe in New York, with a request that one of the officers aboard the Jersey be permitted to take a message to General Washington. Surprisingly, the request was granted—and not for just one, but for three officers from the ship to travel to meet with the American commander. Permission came from Admiral Digby, who agreed that the
envoys could inform Washington of the “sufferings” on the prison ships. Worried about the threat of American retaliation on the large number of British soldiers and officers in American custody near the end of the war, Digby was now forced to recommend mass prisoner exchanges. Therefore, his decision to parole the three prisoners was likely meant to facilitate those exchanges. However, the condition was that they had to carry a letter, drafted by Digby’s staff, that presented a watered-down version of the grim realities aboard the Jersey. The envoys also had to pledge to return to the ship or their fellow prisoners still aboard the Hell Ship would be made to suffer.
A large prisoner exchange had been in the works for several months. On June 1, 1782, Commissary Sproat wrote to his American counterpart, Abraham Skinner, with news that Admiral Digby was requesting the exchange. He also warned that the situation was dire, saying, “The very great increase of Prisoners and the heat of the weather baffles all our care and attention to keep them healthy.” But Sproat tried to reassure Skinner that the Americans were well cared for, claiming falsely that “five ships have been taken up for their reception to prevent their being crowded, and a great number permitted to go on parole.”
Skinner replied on June 9: “From the present situation of the American Naval Prisoners on board your Prison ship, I am induced to propose to you the exchange of as many of them as I can give you British Naval Prisoners for, leaving the balance already due you to be paid when in our power.” The letters resulted in the release of more than thirteen hundred British prisoners. However, Sproat failed to uphold his end of the deal. He blamed the delay on the Americans not having released enough sailors from His Majesty’s navy; Skinner had released soldiers because the Americans held few sailors in their custody.
Soon after, Skinner fired off a terse response. “We are unable at present to give you seamen for seamen, and thereby relieve the Prison ships of their dreadful burden,” he explained, and he added a warning: “It ought to be remembered that there is a large balance of British soldiers due the U.S. since February last, and we may be disposed to place the British soldiers in our possession in as disagreeable a situation as the men are on board the Prison ships.” The war was all but over, momentum for the exchange was growing, and the Americans held all the cards.
Accordingly, Washington managed to negotiate with Digby for slight improvements on the Jersey, including the construction of an awning to shield prisoners from the sun when on the upper deck, a wind sail for fresh air belowdecks, an allotment of bread and butter provided by the Continental Army, the ability to send correspondence, and an agreement that a surgeon from the hospital ship Hunter would visit the Jersey. The improvements were minor, but gave hope to the prisoners; several of them, however, recorded that they never saw the surgeon.
Washington agreed to meet with the three prisoners, but sent a letter to Digby expressing his frustration with the deplorable conditions on the “infectious prison ships” and the ongoing refusal by Commissary Sproat and the British command to allow his commissaries and officers to inspect the old hulk. Washington was still reluctant to engage in large-scale exchanges unless all his demands were met. He did not trust the British and hesitated to exchange British prisoners for anyone but members of the Continental Army under his direct command, of which there were few on the Jersey. Privateers were not a part of the army.
For the mission to meet Washington in the summer of 1782, the officers on the Jersey selected three men who had been officers on the Chance, the ill-fated privateer captured by the British. The envoys—the ship’s captain, Daniel Aborn, the ship’s surgeon, Joseph Bowen, and Dring—affixed their names to the document to be presented to Washington and departed for his headquarters, where they were given an audience with the commander. During the meeting, they told the general the full extent of the horrors of the Hell Ship and shared stories of prisoners accepting death as preferable to the torment of their captivity. The three prisoners also stated that if Washington agreed to the exchange, they would swear to join the Continental Army after their release.
The general heard their case but explained that it was difficult to exchange privateers for regulars in His Majesty’s army. The Continental Army, they discovered, had far fewer British prisoners than the British had American prisoners. The general also shared with his three guests his successful efforts to get British generals and Commissary Sproat to improve the conditions aboard the ships and his goal of having Britain abandon all the floating prisons. He also told them of his threat to treat the prisoners he held in the same way. In the end, Washington agreed to intervene.
Dring returned to the Jersey carrying a letter from Washington. He ordered all the prisoners to assemble on the upper deck and read it. He also announced to his comrades, “[Washington] had perused our communication, and had received with due consideration the account which our messengers had laid before him; that he viewed our situation with a high degree of interest; and that although our application was made in relation to a subject over which he had no direct control, yet that it was his intention to lay our Memorial before Congress.” To shouts of joy, Dring continued, “In the mean time we might be assured that no exertion on [Washington’s] part should be spared which could tend to a mitigation of our sufferings.”
It appears Dr. Bowen chose to flee rather than return to the Hell Ship. Captain Aborn, as the senior officer of the mission, was set free by the British, but asked his former first lieutenant, John Tillinghast, to make a list of all the men from their old privateer, Chance, who had died on board the Jersey. He also encouraged the prisoners to write letters to friends and family, and promised that he would deliver the letters of the survivors and pay respects at the homes of the deceased. Dring assisted Tillinghast in helping the men to draft letters. However, the guards on the Jersey required that the letters first be submitted to them for inspection. The men worried that the malicious guards would destroy all the letters, as usually happened, but this time the guards permitted them to be organized for Captain Aborn. The only one of the three emissaries to return to the holds of the Jersey was Dring.
Captain Aborn arrived the next day at the accommodation ladder to collect the lists and letters, but was careful not to board the ship because of contagion. Lieutenant Tillinghast delivered the materials to Aborn, who sent the lieutenant back with a promise that he would send clothing and supplies back to the ship, and work to arrange an exchange. And then he was off.
Even though the British seemed eager to release prisoners and had started sending many of the diseased and sick ashore to nearby Blackwell’s Island, Commissary Sproat announced to the prisoners still aboard the Jersey that the mission by Captain Aborn, Dr. Bowen, and Dring was a failure.* The bad news was met with stiflingly hot weather and another outbreak of disease that tore through the ship. Dring worried that he could not hold out for the awaited exchange. Month after agonizing month, the men fought for their lives, taking solace from the hope that Sproat might be wrong and that Washington was arranging an exchange or that Captain Aborn was passing along letters to their loved ones back home and working on an exchange. Dring occupied the long days by helping the sick and trying to stay alive. However, he began to doubt that Captain Aborn had succeeded or that General Washington had pursued the exchange. To survive this long, only to perish at the end of the war…
Finally one October afternoon a sloop pulled up alongside the Jersey. The craft flew a white flag at her masthead, indicating that the sloop had been sent by a cartel to take the prisoners home. Excitedly the prisoners clamored to get to the upper deck, but the guards beat them back below the hatches. Men rushed to the grated openings on the side of the Jersey hoping to get a glimpse of their salvation, but a terrible sight awaited them. The sloop’s deck contained roughly forty emaciated prisoners. There looked to be no room for additional passengers, and the officer standing on the deck was none other than David Sproat, the notorious prison commissary.
Small launches were lowered from the sloop an
d the prisoners began gathering in them. A few at a time, the prisoners were shuttled to the shore. As Dring and the men aboard the Jersey watched through the narrow grates with much agitation, they wondered what could be the reason for the transfer.
Finally an American captain named William Corey came aboard the Jersey with an announcement. He had been sent by a private cartel from Providence, Rhode Island, arranged by Captain Aborn with the blessing of General Washington, and the prisoners on the sloop who had been ferried ashore were British sailors and soldiers being exchanged for prisoners from the Jersey. Captain Corey informed the anxious prisoners that he was there to take the surviving members of the privateer Chance to freedom! The others’ hearts sank as he went on to say that he was authorized to accept only forty prisoners. He then asked the Chance’s crew to line up and prepare to board the sloop.
Dring and the surviving members of the Chance ran belowdecks to gather their belongings. The bylaws on the Jersey stipulated that freed prisoners must leave their chests behind, which Dring did. He gave away his remaining possessions, which included a few items of clothing, a small bag, a tin cup, and some pieces of firewood. He then raced to the upper deck to be released.
The prisoners were ordered to attention while Lieutenant Tillinghast read the names of the parolees aloud. Commissary Sproat stood menacingly beside him on the quarterdeck. Dring felt his stomach tighten as he listened with anxiety, “well knowing that I should hear no second call, and that no delay would be allowed.” When a prisoner heard his name he stepped forward and hollered “Here!” Others were called on to verify that the person was indeed the man whose name was called. One by one, the prisoners descended the accommodation ladder to the sloop. Finally Dring heard his name called. He remembered, “I never moved with a lighter step, for that moment was the happiest of my life.” As he passed Sproat, the commissary simply pointed to the sloop. “In the excess and overflowing of my joy,” Dring admitted, “I forgot, for a while, the detestable character of the Commissary himself; and even, Heaven forgive me, bestowed a bow upon him as I passed.”
The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn Page 21