The prison ship Jersey. (NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY)
Diagram of a typical three-decker ship, based on the HMS Rose.
Interior of the prison ship Jersey. Note, however, that the guards were rarely belowdecks. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
A sketch of the prisoners aboard the Jersey. (THE HISTORY PROJECT, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS; FROM THE COLLECTION OF ALAN TAYLOR; FORDHAM UNIVERSITY LIBRARY/CHARLES ALLEN MUNN COLLECTION)
American hero Ethan Allen in the notorious Provost prison. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
Joshua Loring, selected by the British command to oversee American prisoners of war; painted by the noted artist John Singleton Copley.
David Sproat, the infamous prison commissary who oversaw the prison ship Jersey; painted by the famous artist John Trumbull. (NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY)
Ebenezer Fox, one of the few prisoners aboard the Jersey who lived to tell his story.
Philip Freneau, the “Poet of the American Revolution,” who was held prisoner aboard a British prison ship.
APPENDIX I
“The Poet of the American Revolution”
Known as “The Poet of the American Revolution,” Philip Freneau was a prolific and prominent writer and newspaper editor who happened to be imprisoned on the British prison ship Scorpion during the Revolutionary War. Freneau spent roughly six weeks suffering aboard the disease-infested ship, and his story was not unlike those of his fellow patriots on the nearby Jersey.
After his release on July 12, 1780, Freneau traveled to New Jersey and then to his home in Philadelphia, recalling, “I was afflicted with such pains in my joints, I could scarcely walk, and besides, was weakened with a raging fever.” Freneau was in such dire straits that he worried his “ghastly looks” would terrify his family and neighbors. Yet as soon as he arrived home Freneau began work on his book-length, first-person account of his experiences on the prison ship. It was published in 1781 as “The British Prison-Ship,” the work from which the poetic lines at the beginning of each chapter in this book were taken.
Born on January 2, 1752, in New York to Pierre Freneau, a French Huguenot who sought refuge in America from the persecution of King Louis XIV, and Agnes Watson, a “most cultivated and beautiful woman” from Scotland, young Philip attended Princeton, where he was James Madison’s roommate and friend.* The young man intended to become a preacher. However, he developed a passion for politics and travel while in college. Torn between an interest in the studious and sedentary life of a writer and poet and a passion for adventure, Freneau satisfied both yearnings by traveling to the West Indies in 1776, joining the New Jersey militia in 1778, and then writing about his experiences. All the while, he wrote travel essays and anti-British satire that rebelled against the work of established writers and poets, which Freneau deemed to be too culturally conservative and “holdovers of old Tory attitudes.” His work soon gained fame as being written for the masses.
In addition to his political essays against the British, Freneau published commentary on the issues of the day such as the essay “The Virtue of Tobacco,” which opined on slavery and the South. He also penned lighthearted works such as “The Jug of Rum,” which discussed the popular West Indies drink, and even dabbled in comedic poetry, as is evident in “On a Honeybee.” But his most ambitious writing centered on the British prison ships, including the memoir Some Account of the Capture of the Ship Aurora in 1780, which chronicles his time at sea and as a prisoner.
Freneau was not a sailor; rather, he was a passenger on the Aurora, which was sailing from Philadelphia to the West Indies. Unfortunately for Freneau, the Aurora doubled as a privateer and had captured a “small sloop” on May 25 before heading to the West Indies, seizing the stores of corn and sending their prize to Cape May. But the next day at three o’clock in the afternoon, the British brig HMS Active and larger frigate HMS Iris spotted the Aurora and gave chase.
The poet begged the Aurora’s captain, a man named Laboyteaux, to sail to Egg Harbor on the Jersey coast and run the ship aground, but Laboyteaux refused and tried to outrun the British warships. Soon the warships closed the distance and opened fire. The Aurora was hit “several times” by cannon fire and was leaking badly. Her small 4-pounders were but “trifles” against the powerful guns of the brig and frigate. A final blast struck on the main deck, blowing apart a row boat, and tearing through Captain Laboyteaux, who died of his wounds later that night. Freneau survived, but the deck of the Aurora was strewn with debris and bleeding sailors. As the Iris pulled alongside, a half dozen men on the sinking privateer lowered the remaining skiff and raced for the coast. The rest, including Freneau, remained on board and were captured.
Freneau remembered arguing with the British captain: “[I said to him] I was a passenger, going on my private business to the islands, and insisted that such usage was cruel, inhuman, and unjust. He asked me if I was not a colonist: I told him I was an American. Then, said he, you have no right to expect favors more than others.” Freneau’s fate was sealed when the British discovered Captain Laboyteaux’s manifest, which listed the poet as a “gunner.”
Freneau was “cruelly seized and driven down” belowdecks on the Iris without being allowed to get his chest with his clothing and possessions. There, the Americans were shackled along with roughly a hundred other prisoners in the fore hold. Two hundred others were crowded elsewhere on the ship. The poet remembered the ghastly experience: “so many melancholy sights, and dismal countenances… the stench of whom was almost intolerable.” It was also so hot and crowded that Freneau believed he would suffocate. He again raised objections with his captors, but was ridiculed by the crew.
The Iris sailed to New York, and on June 1, 1780, Freneau was put aboard the prison ship Scorpion. The poet recorded the experience: “At sundown we were ordered down between the decks to the number of nearly three hundred of us. The best lodging I could procure this night was on a chest, almost suffocated with the heat and stench. I expected to die before morning, but human nature can bear more than one would at first suppose. The want of bedding and the loss of all my clothes rendered me wretched indeed… for who would assure me that I should not lie six or eight months in this horrid prison?”
Two nights after being imprisoned on the Scorpion, the “weather was very stormy and the river uncommonly rough.” The old ship rolled badly, causing water to gush into the lower decks and over the prisoners lying about. In the dark, the prisoners began screaming, “The ship is sinking!” A panicked mob of prisoners raced up to the main hatch, where the guards, with swords drawn, slashed at the prisoners and beat them back into the hold.
In the days after the incident, the prisoners became increasingly desperate. A group of about thirty-five men attempted to escape. The opportunity presented itself when a schooner pulled alongside the Scorpion. The men on the upper deck attacked the guards, who were momentarily distracted by the arriving schooner. There were only a handful of Hessians standing sentry and the prisoners managed to overpower them. One guard was tied to the railing; the others were forced into the guardhouse and the door was sealed. The malnourished prisoners then rushed the schooner. The sailors onboard used hand-spikes and other weapons to repel what to them must have resembled ghosts and demons from Hell. It was futile. The prisoners poured over the deck and attacked the few sailors crewing the schooner. They succeeded in commandeering the ship.
As the prisoners were sailing away on the schooner, other guards on the Scorpion who had heard the commotion appeared on the upper deck. They quickly freed their trapped colleagues and launched a counterattack to retake the ship. In the fighting that ensued, the guards managed to beat the prisoners back down into the holds of the Scorpion, then fired indiscriminately into the lower deck, killing a few prisoners. The guards managed to take back the Scorpion, but several of the prisoners escaped.
The next morning, the deputy commissary of prisons boarded the ship to investigate the uprising. The prisoners—whether they had taken part in the coup or n
ot—were placed in irons and forced to spend the day facedown on the deck in the hot sun without any food or water. One of the wounded prisoners died from the exposure. From that moment on, food and water rations were cut and guards became increasingly violent and cruel. Indeed, the guards on the Scorpion appear to have been nearly as cruel as those on the Jersey. Freneau remembered the daily routine of being driven belowdecks with threats of violence and screams of “Down, Yankees!” and “Damn’d dogs, descend, or by our broadswords die!” The routine mirrored that on the Jersey.
Freneau soon contracted one of the diseases that plagued the prison ships: “When finding myself taken with a fever, I procured myself to be put on the sick list, and the same day was sent with a number of others to the Hunter hospital ship, lying in the East River.”
Of the hospital ship, he wrote, “She was miserably dirty and cluttered. Her decks leaked to such a degree that the sick were deluged with every shower of rain. Between decks they lay along struggling in the agonies of death, dying with putrid and bilious fevers, lamenting their hard fate to die at such a fatal distance from their friends; others totally insensible, and yielding their last breath in all the horrors of light-headed frenzy.”
Freneau nearly died in early July, but survived his captivity and was released on July 12, 1780.
After the publication of his book-length poem about the prison ships and the end of the war, Freneau published additional collections of poetry. In 1790, at the urging of his friends Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, he established the National Gazette in Philadelphia, a newspaper that espoused Anti-Federalist views and was critical of George Washington’s presidency and such politicians as John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, prompting the president to label Freneau as a “rascal.” Jefferson, however, praised his friend, claiming Freneau “saved our Constitution which was galloping fast into monarchy.”
Late in life, Freneau returned to sea from time to time, but retired to a farm where he wrote about a number of topics including travel, nature, Indians, warfare, and politics. He ended up revising his poetic masterpiece six times over the remaining years of his life. Freneau’s poetry remains as an important contribution to early American romanticism and lyricism. It also offers a valuable glimpse into life aboard a British prison ship during the American Revolution.
APPENDIX II
List of Prison Ships
PRISON SHIPS IN WALLABOUT BAY
Year Ship Note
1776 Whitby Held 250 prisoners
1777 Kitty
Unknown ship I Held 250 prisoners (burned in 1777)
Held 250 prisoners (burned in 1778)
1778 Unknown ship II Held 500 prisoners (burned in 1778)
1779 Good Hope
Unknown ship III Held 250 prisoners (burned in 1780)
Held 500 prisoners
1780 Falmouth
Hope
Hunter
Jersey
Prince of Wales
Scorpion
Strombolo Held 200 prisoners (hospital ship)
Held 200 men (hospital ship)
Held 200 prisoners (hospital ship)
Held 400 prisoners
Relocated from the North River
Held 300 prisoners
Held 200 prisoners
1781 Jersey Held 850–1,000 prisoners
1782 Jersey Held 1,000–1,200 prisoners
1783 Bristol
Frederick
Jersey
John
Perseverance No records (hospital ship)
Unknown numbers (hospital ship)
Held 1,000–1,200 prisoners
Held 200–300 prisoners
Unknown numbers (hospital ship)
Note: A few ships were also moored in the North River and East River.
Bibliography
HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS
Note: Numerous newspapers and letters from the Revolutionary War period were used. They are cited in the notes section of the book.
Adams, John. The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustrations, by His Grandson Charles Francis Adams. 10 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1850–1856.
Allen, Ethan. Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen’s Captivity; Containing His Voyages and Travels. Philadelphia: Robert Bell, 1779. Reprint: New York: Georgian Press/Fort Ticonderoga Museum, 1930.
Allen, Paul. A History of the American Revolution: Comprehending All the Principal Events Both in the Field and in the Cabinet. First published 1819. Baltimore: William Wooddy, 1822.
American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society. The Old Martyrs’ Prison, New York: An Historical Sketch of the Oldest Municipal Building in New York City. [Pamphlet.] N.p.: n.p., n.d.
Andros, Thomas. The Old Jersey Captive; or a Narrative of the Captivity of Thomas Andros, on Board the Old Jersey Prison Ship at New York, 1781. Boston: William Peirce, 1833.
Association for Erecting a Monument to the 11,500 Martyrs of the British Prison Ships: Bylaws and Minutes, 1852–1855. Lot 1977.048, box A0030. Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn, NY.
Boudinot, Elias. “Letters of Elias Boudinot.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 43 (1919): 283–287.
Brooklyn Bicentennial Commission Medals, 1976. Lot 2011.024, Box A0135. Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn, NY.
Brown, Henry Collins, ed. Valentine’s Manual of Old New York for 1916–1917. New York: Valentine, 1916.
Bruce, Oliver Bell. The Romance of the Revolution: A History of Personal Adventures, Romantic Incidents, and Exploits. New York: H. Dayton, 1853.
Bushnell, Charles. The Prison Ship “Jersey.” [Pamphlet.] Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Historical Society, n.d.
Butterfield, L. H., ed. Adams Family Correspondence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963.
Caulkins, Frances Manwaring. History of New London, Connecticut, from the First Survey of the Coast in 1612 to 1860. New London, CT: Frances M. Caulkins, 1852.
“A City of Prisons.” Harper’s Weekly, July 17, 1880, pp. 461–462.
Clark, William Bell, and William James Morgan, eds. Naval Documents of the American Revolution. Washington, DC: GPO, 1964.
Continental Army Enlistment Form. Printed by Benjamin Edes, Watertown, Massachusetts, June 1776. Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division—Broadsides and Printed Ephemera Collection.
Cresswell, Nicholas. The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 1774–1777. New York: Dial Press, 1924.
Dandridge, Danske. American Prisoners of the Revolution. Charlottesville, VA: Michie, 1911. Reprint: New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998.
Diman, J. Lewis. The Capture of General Richard Prescott by Lt. Col. William Barton: An Address Delivered at the Centennial Celebration of the Exploit at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, July 10, 1877. Providence: S. S. Rider, 1877.
Dring, Thomas. Recollections of the Jersey Prison Ship; Taken and Prepared for Publication from the Original Manuscript of the Late Captain Thomas Dring of Providence, R.I., One of the Prisoners. Edited by Albert Greene. Providence: H. H. Brown, 1829.
Field, Thomas W. Historic and Antiquarian Scenes in Brooklyn and Its Vicinity. Brooklyn, 1868.
Force, Peter, ed. American Archives. 1st–5th Series. Washington, DC: Clarke and Force, 1837–1853.
Ford, Worthington Chauncy, comp. and ed. Prisoners of War (British and American), 1778. Philadelphia, 1893.
Founders Online. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. http://founders.archives.gov/documents.
Fox, Ebenezer. The Adventures of Ebenezer Fox in the Revolutionary War. Boston: Charles Fox, 1833.
Freneau, Philip. “The British Prison-Ship: A Poem in Four Cantoes.” Philadelphia: F. Bailey, 1781. Reprint: Washington, DC: America in Class/National Humanities Center, 2010.
. Some Account of the Capture of the Ship Aurora. New York: M. F. Mansfield & A. Wessels, 1899.
Geismar, Joan H. Monument Lot Archaeological Dig Report. 2003. Lot 2007.036, Box
2007.036. Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn, NY.
Graydon, Alexander. Memoirs of His Time, with Reminiscences of the Men and Events of the Revolution. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1846.
Hawkins, Christopher. The Life and Adventure of Christopher Hawkins, a Prisoner on Board the “Old Jersey” Prison Ship During the War of the Revolution. New York: Holland Club, 1858. Reprint: London: Forgotten Books, 2015.
Hazard, Samuel, ed. Pennsylvania Archives, 1st Series. 12 vols. Philadelphia: J. Severns, 1852–1856.
Heath, William. Heath’s Memoirs of the American War. Edited by Rufus Rockwell Wilson. New York: A. Wessels, 1904.
Hopkinson, Francis. The Miscellaneous Essays and Occasional Writings of Francis Hopkinson, Esq. Philadelphia: T. Dobson, 1792.
Jefferson, Thomas. Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Thomas Jefferson Randolph. London: Colburn and Bentley, 1829.
. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. 42 vols. Edited by Julian P. Boyd et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950–2014.
Johnston, Henry P. The Battle of Harlem Heights: September 16, 1776. London: Macmillan, 1897.
. The Campaign of 1776 Around New York and Brooklyn. London: Macmillan, 1878.
Jones, Thomas. History of New York During the Revolutionary War. New York: New York Historical Society, 1879. Reprint: New York: Arno Press, 1968.
Lossing, Benson J. Pictoral Field-Book of the Revolution, supp. IV, vol. II, British Prisons and Prison Ships. New York: Harper Brothers, 1859–1860.
McKinney, Gertrude, ed. Pennsylvania Archives, 9th Series. 10 vols. Pennsylvania: Department of Property and Supplies, 1931–1935.
Morris, Robert. The Papers of Robert Morris, 1781–1784. Edited by E. James Ferguson et al. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973–1975.
The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn Page 25