The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn

by Robert P. Watson

  After just five days at sail with Captain Christopher Whipple, two British cruisers caught the Providence privateer. Rather than getting rich, Hawkins again faced the “prospect of a long and gloomy imprisonment.” Worse yet, he and his crewmates learned they were being taken to the most notorious ship in the Royal Navy, a hulk so “far-famed” that the prospect before them “struck terror into every heart.” The teenager described his mood upon hearing the news as “dark, gloomy and desponding.”

  Hawkins described the Jersey exactly as did Dring and Andros. The ship, according to Hawkins, was “old and much decayed” and “entirely dismantled,” save for a naked flagstaff at the stern and the bowsprit—the long wooden spar that extended from the front of the ship. When taken belowdecks into what he described as a “miserable dungeon,” Hawkins discovered that the ship’s “port holes were all closed and strongly fastened.” The other alarming realization was the prevalence of so many sick and dying prisoners in the bowels of the ship. Seeing the diseased prisoners, he “saw the reflection of his own unhappy condition, and his own probable fate.” One can only imagine the fear that gripped the boy as he prepared to spend the final days of his brief life aboard the “floating Hell.”

  After a brief detainment, the guards escorted Thomas Dring and his crewmates into the hold. Even though he had been aboard the prison ship Good Hope three years earlier, the master’s mate was not prepared for the sight before him. Men barely had room to sit, much less lie down, most wore tattered clothing and resembled walking skeletons, and many were in the grip of disease. Said Dring, “I found myself among the wretched and disgusting multitude.” And then the hatch was shut above them and fastened down for the night.

  Dring’s immediate priority was finding a place to sit down and to hold tightly on to his bag, as he was worried someone would steal it. The stench and heat belowdecks were stifling, and the air felt thick and heavy in the trapped holds. On the side of the ship he spotted a faint “glimmering of light through the iron gratings of one of the air-ports.” Clutching his bag, Dring worked his way toward the porthole, hoping to be able to sit down near the small opening and possibly bunk there. On the way, however, he repeatedly tripped over sleeping prisoners, who cursed him or moaned. Finally arriving at the small porthole, he discovered the area was crowded with prisoners who refused to allow him any space. Nor did they want to talk, other than inquiring about the state of the war. Most prisoners were too weak, had abandoned all hope, or simply kept to themselves. Not finding any of his mates from the privateer Chance or a decent place to bunk, Dring felt anxiety begin to wash over him.

  But a pressing matter confronted him. When he finally found a place to sit, the Rhode Islander realized he was surrounded by men dying of smallpox. He had never had the disease and knew he would be vulnerable, but there were no inoculations on the prison ship. The officer remembered what happened next: “On looking about me, I soon found a man in the proper stage of the disease, and desired him to favor me with some of the matter for the purpose.… The only instrument which I could procure, for the purpose of inoculation, was a common pin. With this, having scarified the skin of my hand, between the thumb and forefinger, I applied the matter and bound up my hand.” Dring had inoculated himself.

  Dring’s former shipmates finally found him and he informed them of his self-inoculation. He spent that first day helping his fellow officers inoculate themselves. He also took care to see that young Palmer, the frightened cabin boy from the Chance, received a small dose of the disease.

  The other order of business was to form a “mess” in order to eat. Prisoners were served in these small groups at set times during the day, so it was vital that all new inmates either be assigned to a mess or find an available space in an established mess. If a prisoner was not assigned to a mess, he did not eat. It was that simple. There were no exceptions. But because Dring and other prisoners brought aboard from the British warship Belisarius were, for some reason, not formally registered onto the ship, they were not assigned a mess. Therefore, Dring and his mates did not eat that first day. Nor were they allotted a ration of water.

  For a full day and night the men from the Chance remained painfully hungry and desperately thirsty, and began to worry how and when they would manage to eat. Fortunately, Dring had planned ahead. When captured, he had taken the precaution of putting a few biscuits into his bag. He had not eaten them while chained in the hold of the Belisarius, so now he quietly shared the meager morsels of food with the other officers and young Palmer. It was not much, but it momentarily propped up their spirits.

  It was a nerve-racking and sleepless night. In the poorly lit and crowded ship Dring found no other shipmates beyond the few officers and Palmer, the cabin boy. Sleep eluded him. He recalled sitting in pitch blackness, being forced to “reflect on the horrors of the scene, and to consider the prospect before me.” All around were the images of ghosts and the “dismal” sounds of dying prisoners. He remembered, “From every direction; a nauseous and putrid atmosphere filling my lungs at every breath; and a stifled and suffocating heat, which almost deprived me of sense, and even of life.” Dring was overcome with the weight of despair.

  Dawn brought a ghastly sight. Faces and bodies became visible in the dimly lit, dank holds of the ship, and Dring saw that he was surrounded by a pale throng of dying men with the look of famine and death upon their faces. He described it as “scenes of wretchedness, disease, and woe.” He again looked around for other shipmates but could not find any. At last, at eight o’clock, the guards allowed the prisoners to climb the ladder to the top deck, where the master’s mate finally found his friends. To his horror, he noticed, “How different did they appear… shrunken and decayed after only one day!”

  The prisoners were given a few moments to enjoy the morning sun before being forced back into the dungeon-like holds. Rather than rekindle his energy, however, the daylight simply revealed the “motley crew of wretches with tattered garments and pallid visages… to be even more disgusting and loathsome” than he realized when first brought aboard the ship the day before.

  Despite the situation, a sense of hope slowly returned. Dring “found that the wound had begun to fester; a sure symptom that the application had taken effect.” The inoculation had worked—he contracted smallpox, but only lightly. Thankfully, he recorded, with “the blessing of Divine Providence, I soon recovered.” Also, on the second day, the master’s mate was able to get the officers and Palmer registered as a mess. Only a small “pittance of food” was offered to them, but at least they ate. Along with other famished prisoners, they now had to line up each morning and wait for their number to be called. A large boiling pot was available to “cook” their rations and soften the shoe-like consistency of the food so that it could be chewed without losing a tooth. Boiling their rations, Dring observed dryly, also cut the “putrid” smell of the rotting food and removed the insects that inhabited much of what was served.

  The brief moment of hopefulness was fleeting, however. Later that day Palmer took ill. The symptoms of smallpox came on strong and fast. By night Palmer was delirious. In the pitch-black holds, Dring tried to comfort the boy, but there was nothing anyone could do. His constant appeals to the guards for a doctor went unheeded. Palmer’s “convulsions” through the night tore at Dring, who felt guilty for inoculating the boy. He spent another sleepless night suffering through Palmer’s desperate “calling and imploring, in his delirium, for the assistance of his mother and other persons of his family.” He remained by Palmer’s side through the long, difficult night. But as the morning approached, the boy’s cries became weaker.

  Dring placed his hand over the cabin boy’s mouth and did not feel any breathing. When the dawn’s light struggled through the old iron grates that covered the portholes, the few officers from the Chance could finally see the “pallid and lifeless corpse” of their cabin boy, who was only twelve. In the morning, the prisoners were instructed to sew a blanket around the body and carry it
and the corpses of others who had died overnight to the upper deck. Dring learned that the bodies were to be taken ashore for a quick and unceremonious burial. He requested to go ashore to bury Palmer, but was turned away because he had signs of smallpox.

  After young Palmer, the next of Dring’s crewmates to die were James Mitchell and his son-in-law, Thomas Sturmey, both of Providence. Both died at the same time. Dring had seen them only hours earlier but, because everyone now looked sick, he did not even know they were dying. The bodies were taken to the upper deck for burial. Dring raced up the ladder and saw the two corpses lying on the deck. He obtained blankets and wrapped them up for interment. Dring then asked permission to go ashore to bury the two sailors, as they had been his friends. The request was again denied, and he was forced to stand on the upper deck and watch for a second time as the “dead boat” was rowed ashore filled with bodies.

  Those first few nights in Hell were also difficult for Thomas Andros, the veteran from Connecticut. He and his shipmates were “driven down” violently into the “darkness” of the crowded gun deck. His initial description echoed that of others: it was filled with men who looked like living skeletons. Although Andros had seen combat and men die, he said of the suffering on the ship that it “baffles all description.… On every side wretched, despondent shapes of men could be seen.” In the dim traces of light from the hatch above, the young man also observed that there was no chance of escape. The area was “secured by iron gratings and an armed soldiery.”

  On board the warship sailing to Wallabout Bay, many of Andros’s shipmates had become sick. They brought their maladies onto the Jersey. Thus, the fore of the gun deck where they were housed became a haven for disease. Not only was he frightened, but the sick and thirsty continually cried out for water through the night. Their requests were ignored by the guards, who, Andros recalled, seemed to take delight in torturing and tormenting the prisoners. Because prison ships had been burned earlier in the war, the guards on the Jersey did not permit the prisoners to have candles. Like Thomas Dring and Christopher Hawkins, Andros was forced to sit in the darkness listening to prisoners crying with grief and moaning in pain. Andros also spent a sleepless night contemplating his fate.

  Unlike Dring, who vowed to fight and attempt to escape, Andros came to accept his judgment, believing he was being punished for a reason. During his night of soul-searching, Andros admitted to God that his motive for going to war was his own selfish “enterprise,” rather than to “inflict a wound” against Britain by “striking at their commerce.” He had also failed to heed the advice of “honorable men” who condemned privateering and told him not to enlist. Confessing that it was not “love of country or a desire to please my Maker, that prompted me to engage in this service,” Andros resigned himself to the inevitable. God had condemned him.

  “I was so overwhelmed with a sense of guilt,” wrote Andros, “that I do not recollect that I even asked for pardon or deliverance at this time.” The experience brought him to his knees. Andros spent his first night on the Jersey in prayer: “O Lord God thou art good but I am wicked. Thou hast done right in sending me to this doleful prison; it is just what I deserve.” The Jersey was, in Andros’s words, the “complete image and anticipation of Hell.” Accordingly, amid the “horror” he was reminded of Milton’s description of hell, which seemed to have been written with the prison ship in mind: “Sights of woe, regions of sorrow, doleful; Shades, where peace and rest can never dwell.”* But his prayers were interrupted when one of the guards yelled down to the other newly arrived inmates, “Take heed to yourselves. There is a madman stalking through the ship with a knife in his hand.” And then the hatches and doors were shut. It was pitch black in the hold.

  10

  The Final Voyage

  But, such a train of endless woes abound,

  So many mischiefs in these hulks are found,

  That, of them all, the memory to prolong,

  Would swell too high the horrors of our song.

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

  Prisoners who boarded the Jersey were told by David Sproat, the cruel commissary of naval prisons, that this would be their final voyage. He was right. Most of them would not make it off the old hulk alive. Part of the reason was the food.

  British soldiers during the Revolution were provided oatmeal, rice, peas, and a few ounces of butter or cheese each day. Meat was included whenever it was available. The rations, in terms of both quality and quantity, varied greatly during the war. Understandably, it was far worse for prisoners. It was a somewhat common practice among armies in the eighteenth century to provide prisoners with two-thirds of the normal ration of food allotted to their own soldiers. Yet this was not the case for privateers or on the prison ships. Three problems presented themselves. One was that there were severe food shortages during the war, to the extent that the British had trouble feeding their own soldiers, much less prisoners. The second was that they were not interested in providing fair rations to individuals whom they considered to be rebels not worthy of humane treatment. The third problem was the prison commissaries, men such as Joshua Loring, William Cunningham, and David Sproat who lined their own pockets at the expense of the prisoners and took cruel delight in torturing their charges.

  Thomas Dring stated that he and his fellow prisoners could have lived on two-thirds of the normal ration, but the British rarely provided that much food and what was provided was “rancid.” It was a problem of both quantity and quality, and Dring’s health deteriorated precipitously as a result.

  As mentioned earlier, the first order of business for prisoners boarding the Jersey was to organize in a mess. Regulations on the prison ship stated that food was distributed only by mess and that there be six men per mess. Therefore, Dring and his fellow officers organized as a mess. In the morning, they had to gather outside the steward’s room at nine o’clock and wait for a bell to be rung. Each mess was then called by number, and one member of the mess had to line up to receive the ration, which was served by the steward and his assistants out of a small window in the bulkhead of the steward’s room. If the men of the mess missed their number, they went hungry. There were no requests, no exceptions, and no differences among the messes in the food they received. Dring estimated that their mess of six men rarely received enough food for four.

  Although rations were limited by and dependent on a fickle transatlantic supply chain, Britain’s practice of purchasing or stealing food from American farmers, and chronic food shortages, there was a weekly schedule that the cook and steward of the Jersey followed.

  Sunday: 1 pound of biscuits, 1 pound of pork, half pint of peas

  Monday: 1 pound of biscuits, 1 pint of oatmeal, 2 ounces of butter

  Tuesday: 1 pound of biscuits, 2 pounds of beef

  Wednesday: 1½ pounds of flour, 2 ounces of suet*

  Thursday: Same as Sunday

  Friday: Same as Monday

  Saturday: Same as Tuesday

  Lest one think that such a “menu” was bearable, at times the British simply ran out of food and prisoners went hungry. The diaries of prisoners contain constant complaints of being forced to fast for a full day and night, or longer, a problem compounded by the fact that they were already severely malnourished and there were rarely any vegetables or fruit, much less fresh produce. As a result, scurvy and other dietary disorders ran rampant on the ship.

  One of the few staples served on the Jersey was a ration the prisoners called “burgoo,” which was a moldy oatmeal. Meat was available only sporadically. If the delivery of pork or beef to the Jersey arrived late, it was served in a hasty manner that did not offer prisoners time to cook it. They had to consume it raw. There were hogs living in a pen on the upper deck of the ship, but they were only for the British officers and, occasionally, the guards. Even the hogs ate better than the prisoners, prompting the men to try to steal the bran and slop fed to the pigs.

  In his memoir, Ebenezer Fox described
the routine, saying, “The prisoners received their mess at nine in the morning. All our food appeared to be damaged. The bread was mostly moldy and filled with worms. It required considerable rapping upon the deck, before these worms could be dislodged from their lurking places in a biscuit. As for the pork, we were cheated out of it more than half the time, and when it was obtained one would have judged from its motley hues, exhibiting the consistency and appearance of variegated soap.… The flavor was so unsavory that it would have been rejected.”

  Indeed, the poor condition of the food was as problematic as the lack of food. Dring noted that the butter was not real; rather, it was a kind of sweet oil that “was so rancid, and even putrid, that the smell of it, accustomed as we were to every thing foul and nauseous, was more than we could endure.” Instead, Dring and his fellow officers used their sweet oil as fuel for their lamps. However, the guards on the Jersey did not permit fires belowdecks after nine in the evening, and some days they had no access to fire to light their lamps. From time to time Dring gave the remainder of his ration of the “oil butter” to the Frenchmen in the lowest holds of the ship because they grumbled constantly of not having butter for their food.

  Thomas Andros complained that insects infected the bread, observing, “I do not recollect seeing any which was not full of living vermin; but eat it, worms and all, we must, or starve.” They had no choice. Other prisoners offered similar descriptions, saying the bread was “bad in the superlative degree” and the “moldy biscuits filled with worms.” Andrew Sherburne was one of them, noting, “The bread had been so eaten by weevils, that one might easily crush it in the hand and blow it away. The beef was exceedingly salty, and scarcely a particle of fat could be seen upon it.” Christopher Hawkins echoed his fellow teenagers and remembered always being hungry because the food was “of the worst description, and utterly unfit for a human being.” This included biscuits “eaten by weevils, through and through,” old bread that was “often covered with mould,” and meat that was “discolored and putrefied by age, and through which myriads of maggots leaped about in play.”