Mercy Leroux

Warning for frank discussion of prisoner abuse and mistreatment.

Even today, you only have to look at headlines to see that soldiers who get captured by the enemy are often… not treated well. To a degree, there’s an aspect of human nature at play (few people are inclined to be kind to someone who has likely killed or tried to kill your friends), but that’s by no means an excuse. At least the Geneva Convention provides a modicum of accountability nowadays, but that really didn’t exist in the 18th century.

Today we’ll be talking about the American captives of the British, and in particular the notorious prison ships. To be fair, we will say that the Americans weren’t much better than the British when it came to how their captives were treated (especially the Loyalist captives)… but we’ll talk about that when we come to Volume 6.

How one was treated very much depended on certain factors, including who you were captured by (some officers were kinder than others), the place you were captured, and rank: officers got much more respect and better treatment than rank-and-file soldiers (this was true for both sides of the war).

Ethan Allen was an officer in the Continental Army who captured Fort Ticonderoga in 1775. He was then captured in 1776 during the Americans’ failure in Quebec, and put on a ship bound for Ireland and then back to New York. He noted that his experience on the first ship involved being confined to a:

filthy dungeon with the other prisoners, where we were denied fresh water, except a small allowance, which was very inadequate to our wants ; and in consequence of the stench of the place, each of us was soon followed with a diarrhoea and lever, which occasioned an intolerable thirst. When we asked for water, we were, most commonly, instead of obtaining it insulted and derided; and to add to all the horrors of the place, it was so dark that we could not see each other, and were overspread with body lice… Our clothing was not taken away, but the privates were forced to do duty on board. 

If you were a former British soldier, you might be hung if you had deserted. Even if you had honorably left, you were likely to face worse treatment. Allen mentions:

A Capt. Francis Proctor… had formerly belonged to the English service. The Capt. and… all the gentlemen of the ship, were very much incensed against him, and put him in irons without the least provocation, and he was continued in this miserable situation about three months. In this passage the prisoners were infected with the scurvy.

After the British captured New York, the city remained under British control until their eventual evacuation in 1783 (two years after Yorktown). Many prisoners were kept in churches, and even more in a minimum of 16 “prisons” floating just offshore. These prisons were damaged ships without sails. POWs were crammed into the hulls there, frequently in the pitch dark. They were also restricted from going above deck (imagine the stench) and occasionally abused by guards.

One survivor, Robert Sheffield, wrote the following to describe the conditions aboard:

The heat was so intense that (the hot sun shining all day on deck) they were all naked, which also served the well to get rid of vermin, but the sick were eaten up alive. Their sickly countenances, and ghastly looks were truly horrible; some swearing and blaspheming; others crying, praying, and wringing their hands; and stalking about like ghosts; others delirious, raving and storming,—all panting for breath; some dead, and corrupting. The air was so foul that at times a lamp could not be kept burning, by reason of which the bodies were not missed until they had been dead ten days.

The most well-known of these ships was the Jersey, which held about 1,100 prisoners at a time… in a ship made for 400. Given the overcrowding, the lack of even basic sanitation, the prevalence of lice, and the lack of decent food, disease was rampant. Medical treatment, too, was hard to come by. Allen describes how someone “forbade his surgeon to administer any help to the sick” and notes that they were starved:  

The prisoners were not permitted any sort of medicine…here we were cruelly pinched with hunger; it seemed to me that we had not more than one third of the common allowance. 

One particular story of Allen’s stands out because of the sheer desperation you can read through his words: a moment where he tried to flag help from a doctor only to be denied.

The chief physician came by in a boat, so close that the oars touched the sloop that we were in, and I uttered my complaint in the genteelest manner to him, but he never so much as turned his head, or made me any answer,
though I continued speaking till he got out of hearing. Our cause then became very deplorable.

Most who died did so of disease. These soldiers’ bodies were often thrown overboard and frequently washed up on shore for years even after the war had ended. Others were buried in shallow graves along the beaches.

Alas, being on land didn’t guarantee much better of a chance. Notably, many of the churches in New York were turned into temporary prisons for POWs. Allen notes:

I have gone into the churches, and seen sundry of the prisoners in the agonies of death, in consequence of very hunger, and others speechless, and near death, biting pieces of chips; others pleading for God’s sake, for something to eat, and at the same time, shivering with the cold. Hollow groans saluted my ears, and despair seemed to be imprinted on every of their countenances. The filth in these churches, in consequence of the fluxes, was almost beyond description. The floors were covered with excrements.

By the time the war ended, about 12,000 Americans had died in captivity. In New York, there remains a memorial to the victims of the Jersey and other prison ships to this day. The Jersey was burned during the evacuation (without people inside, for the record), and the wreck was actually discovered in 1902.