The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn

by Robert P. Watson

  The new vault sat nearby. The bones of the martyrs were interred for the fourth time, carried to the new crypt in twenty coffins. A tablet marked the entrance to the crypt, inscribed as follows:

  In the name of the spirits of the departed free

  Sacred to the memory of that portion of American seamen, soldiers

  On board the prison ships of the British during the Revolutionary

  War at the Wall About…

  While the ghosts of Wallabout Bay can still be found at Fort Greene Park and along Wallabout Bay, history has largely forgotten the incident. Yet this was not always so. During the Revolutionary War, the Hell Ship’s reputation was widely known. As she haunted the waters off Brooklyn, so too did she haunt households throughout the colonies. Stories of the old prison ship were once whispered around countless dinner tables and from pub stools. As Christopher Hawkins remembered years after his own harrowing ordeal aboard the Jersey, “Her fame spread far and wide, and her very name was an object of terror, for she was looked upon as nothing less than a charnel-house.”*

  The words of several prisoners who survived the Hell Ship bear witness to both the horrors of British prison policy and the lives lost. As one account cried out, “God grant that the record of such crimes may be opened up in heaven against our enemies, and not against us!” Late in life, Thomas Andros was still wrestling with the demons of his imprisonment aboard the Jersey. In his memoir, he summed up the tragedy as a “blot which a thousand ages cannot eradicate.” He prayed for his British tormentors that “the pious and humane among them” would repent and see the “error in all they had done” so that the Almighty would spare humanity from such evil ever “happen[ing] again between two countries.”

  Postscript

  So much I suffer’d from the race I hate,

  So near they show’d me to the brink of fate;

  When seven long weeks in these damn’d hulks I lay,

  Barr’d down by night and fainting through the day…

  Not unreveng’d shall all the woes we bore,

  Be swallow’d up inglorious as before:

  The dreadful secrets of these prison caves,

  Half sunk, half floating on my Hudson’s waves.

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

  The prisoners and crew of the HMS Jersey met a variety of fates. Captain David Laird, commander of the prison ship, returned to Scotland after the war and worked on a merchant ship. His position required him to periodically sail to New York harbor, but on such occasions Laird chose to remain on his ship, never again stepping foot on American soil. Joshua Loring, who oversaw British prisons and prisoners, fled to England in November 1782 to reunite with his family. He never returned to America, passing in 1789 at the age of forty-five.

  The vile marshal of the Provost prison, William Cunningham, remained unrepentant and malicious to the bitter end of the war. Not surprisingly, newspapers delighted in sharing an amusing story from the waning weeks of the war. It seems that a couple who operated a tavern on Murray Street in New York City had begun their celebration early by flying the new American flag atop their establishment, something that was prohibited in British-occupied territory. Outraged by the display of patriotism and bitter about losing the war, Cunningham went to the tavern and demanded they take down the flag. With a crowd of curious onlookers watching, the woman who owned the tavern hit the hated warden over the head, presumably with a broom or stick. The blow made “the powder fly from his hair, and caused him to beat a hasty retreat, amid the jeers and laughter of some few spectators.” Other similar incidents occurred as the British were abandoning the city, including one on Chapel Street: on his way out of New York, Cunningham again tried to get residents there to take down their American flags. The warden cursed and shouted threats, but was greeted by disdain and defiance. Nor were the soldiers under his command willing to try to enforce his orders. The war was over.

  Cunningham evacuated the city in November 1783, sailing on a British man-of-war back to England. It is uncertain as to what became of the cruel man. An American newspaper suggested he was arrested for forgery in August 1791, sentenced to prison, and later hanged at Newgate Prison. Sources claimed he offered a dying confession, admitting that he killed and starved hundreds of Americans and even that he placed arsenic in the prisoners’ food. One source recorded his final words as “I shudder to think of the murders I have been accessary to, both with and without orders from the government, especially while in New York, during which time there were more than 2000 prisoners starved in the different churches, by stopping their rations, which I sold.” Yet no reliable record exists to validate the stories, and historians have questioned their veracity.

  There are also conflicting accounts of what became of the infamous David Sproat, the commissary who oversaw the Jersey. A handful of scholars, such as Philip Ranlet and David Lenox Banks, the latter a descendant of Sproat’s, have attempted to defend him, going so far as to suggest that he acted “humanely.”* Ranlet points to comments made by Sproat that indicated he tried to help fellow Pennsylvanians in prison who were not being represented by the state, commissaries, or cartels. He also cites letters Sproat wrote defending his tenure as the prison ship commissary, such as one to John Dickinson, a Founding Father who served during the Revolution as both president of Delaware and president of Pennsylvania.† In it Sproat claimed, “Since my appointment, I have at all times contributed as much as it has been in my power to relieve their distress and make confinement as comfortable to them as possible.” Ranlet dismisses the allegations of countless American prisoners as unreliable but accepts Sproat’s defense of his own unforgivable record as credible. However, the preponderance of letters and evidence offer a far different assessment of Sproat.

  Sproat was fired by Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot in September 1780, but after the admiral was replaced, Sproat was given his old job back by Lord George Rodney when he assumed control over British forces. Later, when Loring sailed for England in 1782, Sproat assumed his responsibilities as well. His cruel treatment of prisoners ran from his appointment in October 1779 to the very end of the war.

  A few sources suggest Sproat moved to Philadelphia after the war, but most reliable accounts say the commissary moved back to Scotland. Shockingly, one year after the war ended, Sproat requested to be reimbursed for more than £2,000 that he claimed he spent from his own funds to care for the prisoners. Sproat claimed that he had been promised the reimbursement. Robert Morris, the Revolutionary treasurer, submitted the request along with numerous other similar petitions to the Congress, advocating payment as a gesture of goodwill to the British, who still held some Americans captive. It is not certain if he was ever paid, although it appears that Congress initially rejected the petition but later reversed its position and paid the hated commissary just over £100. The rationale given was the need to ensure that prisoner exchanges continued after the war. Congress reimbursed Joshua Loring approximately £830 of his total claim of £1,050 and also repaid Abraham Skinner and other American commissaries for the funds they used to purchase food and clothing for the prisoners.

  Sproat never returned to America, dying in Kirkcudbright, Scotland, in 1799.

  The five former prisoners profiled in this book all lived to tell their tales. Christopher Hawkins, the young boy from Rhode Island who went to sea against the British at age thirteen, ended up moving to Fairfield, Connecticut, after the war. In 1791 he moved again, becoming one of the first settlers in the village of Newport, New York. When the village was formally incorporated in 1807, he was chosen to be the first town supervisor. Hawkins would later pen his account of his time on the Jersey, which opened with these words: “In the following narrative is given the adventures of one of these lucky few.” Hawkins only spent a few days as a prisoner on the Jersey, the shortest incarceration of the five prisoners whose stories are told here. But he experienced a number of adventures, battles, captures, and a daring escape during his teenage years. Like t
he other four prisoners, Hawkins lived far beyond the average life expectancy for the time, dying in 1838 at age seventy. His memoir was published posthumously.

  Andrew Sherburne nearly died on his way home after being released, but eventually made it back to Portsmouth and to a family that had long thought him dead. Sherburne dedicated himself to two tasks—informing families of the fate of their loved ones, and becoming an itinerant Baptist preacher. One surviving account places him in Maine as a schoolteacher; another one notes that he traveled west to the frontier. Sherburne’s account of the Jersey is refreshingly personal and introspective, as he often confesses that he was afraid, shares with the reader his struggle with depression, and admits to breaking down in tears. It is also an important resource on British prisons, as Sherburne was caught and incarcerated three times!

  Like the other survivors, Sherburne wrote his memoir late in life, when “there are yet surviving a few, and but a few, who lived, acted and suffered” on the Jersey. Sherburne was prompted to pen his account because “the number [of prisoners] is very fast diminishing.” It was printed in 1831, in New York. Sadly, as is also the case for most of the other prisoners, there is no surviving likeness of Sherburne and, other than his memoir, no artifacts from his life remain.

  Hawkins and Sherburne were barely into their teenage years when they entered the war, but Ebenezer Fox was only twelve. The native of Providence, Rhode Island, was sent away as a child by his family to work for a farmer. Unhappy and looking for “excitement,” Fox and a friend ran away and joined the crew of a privateer. The young boy got more than he ever imagined. In addition to his capture and imprisonment on the Jersey, Fox was pressed into service with the Royal Navy and sent to Jamaica and France. Remarkably, the teenager made it home in 1783 with fantastical tales. Later in life, Fox was encouraged to write a memoir by his seven grandchildren, who begged, “Do tell us your revolutionary adventures, Grandfather.” At age seventy-five he did. Fox lived to the age of eighty, passing on December 14, 1843.

  Like his fellow prisoners, Thomas Andros carried the physical and emotional scars of his time on the Jersey for the remainder of his life. He spent those years thinking at length about his imprisonment and the nature of war, concluding late in life that “war in all its causes and forms” was only justifiable in “absolute self-defense” and when pursued with the Christian principles of trying to avoid as many casualties as possible and treating prisoners humanely. After a long and difficult convalescence at home at the end of the war, Andros fulfilled his promise to God to become a preacher. He was ordained in March 1788 and served as the pastor of the Congregationalist Church of Berkley in Massachusetts. Believing it was divine providence that saved him, Andros, like Sherburne, devoted the remainder of his life to religion.

  The former prisoner found some closure to his experience on the Jersey by writing his memoirs, saying of the task, “Perhaps the recollection of these things will hereafter be delightful.”* Andros felt that, for prisoners to cope with their harsh imprisonment, they must realize it was God’s will. The prisoners, wrote Andros, needed to understand that their suffering on the Jersey was “good and just,” and the cause “by which we were sustained and our deliverance effected, was the bestowment of a gracious and compassionate Creator.” Andros closed his memoir with a prayer: “Thy thoughts of love to me surmount, the power of numbers to recount.”

  After fifty-seven years in the pulpit, Andros died in Berkley in December 1845 at the advanced age of eighty-six. An organization of ministers said of Andros on his passing, “He was an eminent example of self-taught men, a warm patron of education and a deeply-interested friend of the rising generation. As a preacher he held high rank; as a pastor he was affectionate, laborious and untiring in interest, both for the spiritual and temporal welfare of his people.”

  Thomas Dring was finally released after his five-month-long ordeal aboard the Jersey. He recalled of that first night on the sloop headed back home for freedom that he had nightmares of guards shouting, “Down, Rebels, down!” He and his former crewmates sat up at night enjoying, for the first time in a long time, candlelight, clean water, fruit and vegetables, fresh air, and a view of the stars overhead. The next day they ate a satisfying breakfast and sat on deck experiencing the sun as free men.

  Dring later learned that his former captain of the privateer Chance had made it back to Providence and that it was he who arranged with the owners of the Chance and John Creed, a deputy commissary of prisoners from Providence, the prisoner exchange.

  The journey home was temporarily placed in jeopardy when the sloop was detained by two British warships. However, with the war ending, the Americans were let go. But their troubles were far from over. A number of the former prisoners were severely malnourished and suffering from diseases contracted on the Jersey. Dring worried that they might not live to see Rhode Island.

  One of them was a young boy from Barrington, Rhode Island, named Bicknell, who was in the grip of a severe fever and looked as if he would die. Bicknell reminded Dring of Palmer, the twelve-year-old cabin boy from the Chance, who died after Dring’s experimental inoculation the first day on the Jersey. As an officer, Dring felt responsible for both lads from his ship. As the ship neared Narragansett, Bicknell asked Dring to carry him ashore so that he might “look once more upon” his home. The boy remained remarkably stoic, bolstered by the knowledge that he would at least be buried back in Rhode Island by his family. His “sensible” courage overwhelmed Dring and affected all the men.

  As the sloop anchored in the harbor, Dring agreed to take Bicknell in a rowboat to land and then by carriage to his home, which was but a short distance from the wharf. Bicknell was so weak from yellow fever that he could not sit up, collapsing on Dring’s shoulder. Hearing the boy’s breathing getting fainter and fainter, the officer called out to two boys in town to run to Bicknell’s home and quickly fetch his family. Dring remained in the small launch near the dock, comforting Bicknell. As the two sat by the dock, Dring wrote that “God heard his prayers to be buried with his family.” Only moments later, Bicknell’s family arrived at the dock. But it was too late. The officer handed them their “yet warm, but lifeless” son.

  After staying briefly at the boy’s home, Dring returned to the sloop, which again set sail. The sloop reached Providence at eight o’clock that night. Fortunately, there were no quarantines in place to detain the former prisoners. However, because several of the men on board the sloop had the fever, the captain anchored in the middle of the river as a precaution. Word quickly spread through the town that the prisoners had arrived, and soon people were lined up waving to the sloop and hollering to them with news of loved ones. One of the officers called back that the ship had yellow fever aboard. The dock emptied immediately and the town was gripped by fear.

  The former prisoners were eventually put ashore. Dring remembered the look of alarm when the people of Providence saw the ghostly figures shuffling through town. Many residents refused the men access to their homes or businesses, but a few charitable families opened up their hearts and brought the sailors food, water, and clothing. Clark and Nightingale, the owners of the Chance, who had helped arrange their former crewmembers’ exchange, also supplied the prisoners with necessities.

  Thomas Dring finally made it home. Once he fully recovered from his ordeal on the Jersey, he joined the crew of a merchant fleet and soon after became the commander of a ship sailing out of Providence. Captain Dring spent the rest of his life in Providence, but most of it at sea, gaining a reputation as an “able and experienced officer.” Like his fellow prisoners, he often thought of the Jersey. He still carried a scar on his hand from his self-administered inoculation that saved his life on the ship. The sight of it, he stated, always brought back vivid memories, such as of the massacre on July 4. Yet Dring never regretted his “captivity nor my sufferings; for the recollection of them has ever taught me how to enjoy my after life, with a greater degree of contentment than I should perhaps have oth
erwise ever experienced.”

  Forty-two years later he wrote his memoir, believing he had a responsibility “to record the history of their former sufferings.” At the time he was only one of three members of the crew of sixty-five still alive and the only officer. The sixty-page book was completed in 1824, less than a year before his death on August 8, 1825. In the beginning of the memoir, Dring wrote, “Hence, so little that is authentic, has ever been published upon the subject, and so scanty are the materials for information respecting it, which have as yet been given to the rising generations of our country, that it has already become a matter of doubt, even among many of the intelligent and well-informed of our young citizens, whether the tales of the Prison-Ships, such as they have been told, have not been exaggerated beyond the reality.” He promised to correct the record with an accurate accounting of the struggles aboard the Jersey and tell the story so that those who perished would not be forgotten.

  Dring noted of his feeble effort to tell the stories of the ghost ship of Brooklyn, “They have not been exaggerated… but not one half the detail of its horrors has ever been portrayed.”

  General Sir William Howe. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

  General George Washington’s forces retreating from Long Island in 1776. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

  Sketch of the Old Sugar House and Middle Dutch Church used as temporary prisons in New York City until the prison ships were hulked. (NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY)

  The prison ship Jersey. This illustration mistakenly contains a mast and it omits the ladder and landing platform beside the ship. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)