Hyperfocus: Prison Ships

On a Happier Note, it was also Soup Week at 4H

This week I have spent a lot of time sitting in my office listening to the rain pelting my metal roof and deep diving into the history of Revolutionary war prison ships. 

When the British began taking prisoners during the Revolutionary War, they quickly ran out of places to house them. In England, where many of the captured sailors were brought, the answer became stuffing them in hulks moored in the Thames. This worked well enough that when British held New York became overrun with prisoners, and there was no room in the makeshift jails, a fleet of ships were gathered in Wallabout Bay, in which an estimated 11,500 would eventually die of disease, malnutrition, or violence. 

Conditions on the ships were deplorable, much to everyone’s agreement except General Clinton who shrugged his shoulders when General Washington complained via a series of what at the time were scathing letters. There were talks of exchange over the years but the Continental Congress kept getting in the way of things by trying to pork up the negotiations with personal requests and the like. (Seriously, this was as early as 1779.)

Washington also turned down requests from General Clinton after the Battle of Yorktown to exchange his soldiers for American sailors and privateers from the hulks. Because the seamen didn’t directly profit his land armies, and the British captives would offer reinforcements for Clinton, he left the Americans languishing in squalor until the close of the war in 1783. 

Yellow fever, small pox, and all the oral-fecal pathway diseases ran rampant on the ships and in New York harbor there were daily burial details. Bodies were tossed in shallow graves in the tidelands and the shore became a nightmarish tableau of carnage. Eventually the corpses were dug up and reinterred, then again with a memorial designed by Olmsted and a friend. It can be found in Fort Greene Park. 

After the fall of Charleston, SC, the Colonial militias was dismissed and sent away on promise of no more fighting, but the regular army ended up on another fleet of prison ships. After the battle of Camden which decimated the army of the south, 2000 more prisoners joined them.  In this case, a Lord Montegu was tasked with convincing the convicts to join up with the British and fight in the West Indies. Eventually he cajoled or forced 500 to enlist and sailed off for Jamaica. 

Another ship in Charleston harbor was overrun and the prisoners sailed to North Carolina  and escaped into the piney woods. 

There are plenty of documents and letters written by survivors, guards, and politicians which can be read online, yet I struggled to find primary source documentation about women on the ships. Articles and books on the subject seem to agree that women were housed on prison ships, but I couldn’t find any names or specifics. They would have faced similar conditions, and likely no segregation from the general population. 

The named women I did come across in conjunction with the topic were Elizabeth Bergin, who helped over 200 prisoners escape before being discovered and going on the lam. She was part of the Culper spy ring, or associated with them at least. That said, there are as many claims that Elizabeth Bergin is a myth as there are calling her a hero. Again, I haven’t seen primary source documents one way or the other. 

The other woman was called Dame Grey; she had boys steer her bumboat close to the ships and sell goods to the men. She died in 1780. 

By the end of the war, far more Americans had died on the prison ships than in all the battles of the Revolution combined. Some who lived were shipped to England, to Canada, to the West Indies, and 16 to Africa. Those who had chosen to enlist in the British Army were denied pensions in later years even for their initial service in the Continental Army, and many ended up living in Canada or staying in the West Indies on the small acreage given them in return for service by the British. 

The British would go on to use prison hulks for domestic purposes until 1857, and longer in their colonies. 

Rarely do I read about moments in history that don’t have some moments of charity, grace, or goodness. Perhaps with more research I could find a benevolent guard or an instance of prisoners coming together to make things bearable for one another? Thus far it has been a research journey filled with tales of dehumanization, cruelty, and horrors. 

As the holidays approach, I’ll be turning my focus a bit to cheerier topics, but prison ships will be playing an important plot role in some of my future work, so I’m keeping the tabs bookmarked.