The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn

by Robert P. Watson

  Back on the Jersey, the tragedy of July 4 had another effect.

  14

  Escape

  These all in freedom’s sacred cause ally’d,

  For freedom ventur’d and for freedom died;

  To base subjection they were never broke,

  They could not bend beneath a tyrant’s yoke.

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

  Many prisoners owed their lives to Elizabeth Burgin. Unfortunately, very little is known about her except that she must have been a remarkable and courageous woman. Burgin, a mother of three and most probably a war widow living near the prison ships of Wallabout Bay, risked disease by delivering food to the prisoners aboard the floating dungeons. As she was returning home from the prison ships one evening in early July 1779, an American officer secretly approached her with a plan to help prisoners escape. The details of the operation remain obscure, but it appears a group of officers had infiltrated British-occupied New York, followed Burgin’s moves, and decided to recruit her to help them.

  The British sometimes permitted women to board prison ships in order to sell or distribute food and provisions, or at least conduct the exchanges at the accommodation platform or ramp. Burgin had been one of those women and had gained the trust of both the prisoners and guards aboard the ships. Despite the grave risks, Burgin agreed to help.

  While providing food and wares to the prisoners, Burgin slipped the prisoners a note apparently drafted by the officer who recruited her. The note contained the details of the plan, which appears to have involved the prisoners hiding on the small boat she used to travel to and from the prison ships. Over the next few weeks, she repeatedly risked her life by going back to the prison ship to help more prisoners escape. In total, Burgin smuggled perhaps two hundred men to freedom, a handful at a time, and may even have sheltered some of them at her home.

  The ruse continued until the officer who had recruited Burgin was captured by the British, which not only jeopardized further escapes but put her life in danger. Whether by coercion or in an effort to secure her husband’s freedom, the officer’s wife informed the British that Burgin was an accomplice. On July 17, 1779, the British ordered Burgin arrested on grounds that she was “suspected for helping the American prisoners to make their escape.” A £200 reward was offered for her capture, a considerable sum of money at the time.

  The details are unclear, but what is known is that Burgin was nearly caught. Knowing she was being hunted and that her home was being watched, the fugitive hid for two weeks before getting friends to help her escape to Long Island. She hid there for five weeks and then boarded a whaling boat that took her to Connecticut. A letter written by Burgin while she was still on the run in November survives. In it, she asked a minister named James Calville for help, writing, “I am now sire, very desolate, without money, without Cloaths or friends to go to. I aim to go to Philadelphia, where God knows how I shall live, a cold winter coming on.” She went on to explain her ordeal, saying, “Helping our poor prisoners brought me to want, which I don’t repent.”

  It appears the reverend helped, possibly by contacting General George Washington. What is known is that Burgin wrote to the general asking for his help and informing him that the British had confiscated all her possessions. She also offered the names of American officers and former prisoners who could vouch for her good character and deeds. Men whose lives had been saved by Burgin came forward with their stories. Moved by her heroic sacrifice, Washington wrote to the Continental Congress requesting assistance. “Regarding Elizabeth Burgin, recently an inhabitant of New York,” said Washington, “from the testimony of our own Officers who have returned from captivity, it would appear that she has been indefatigable for the relief of the prisoners, and for facilitating their escape. For this conduct she incurred the suspicion of the British, and was forced to make her escape under disturbing circumstances.”

  Burgin later traveled to Philadelphia and then resettled in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Although history did not record how, she managed to be reunited with her three children. One of the grateful former prisoners she had aided offered her a home, others came forward with money, and Washington’s intervention resulted in a pension for Burgin that began in 1781. The full story will likely never be known, but Burgin wrote back to Washington, the man she called “Kind General,” thanking him for championing her cause. Elizabeth Burgin remains one of the little-known heroines of the war.

  The conditions aboard the Jersey were so abysmal that many prisoners attempted to escape even if the chances were slim. Prisoners on other ships, as was mentioned earlier, were at times so desperate that they set the ships on fire. One such account was reported in the newspaper Rivington’s Gazette in 1780. “Last Saturday afternoon the Good Hope prison ship lying in the Wallebocht Bay,” read the story, “was entirely consumed after having been wilfully set on fire by a Connecticut man named Woodbury, who confessed the fact. He with others of the incendiaries are removed to the Provost.” Not all the prisoners were sent to the notorious prison. Presumably many died in the fire, while others were sent to the Jersey. But a few escaped during the inferno. As reported in the paper, “The prisoners let each other down from the port holes and decks into the water.”

  One weakness in the Jersey’s security was the size of the crew and guards. Ebenezer Fox, the former prisoner who, late in life, recorded an account of his ordeal for his children and grandchildren, described the old warship as having a crew that was at minimal strength. The British needed every available soldier—including mercenaries—for the war. Therefore, Fox remembered, guards on board the old warship numbered only about thirty and were uninspired to be stuck aboard a noxious, diseased hulk. While such a force could mount some defense of the ship, there was upward of a thousand prisoners on board, which presented for the prisoners the possibility of mutiny.

  Other factors, however, deterred mutiny. Most of the prisoners aboard the Jersey were so weak and sick that they lacked the ability to revolt. Furthermore, as Fox observed, “the physical force of the prisoners was sufficient at any time to take possession of the ship, but the difficulty was to dispose of themselves after a successful attempt.” Because the Jersey had been completely hulked, it could not sail and stayed afloat only if water was continually pumped from its bilge. The putrid marshlands and mudflats surrounding the ship made swimming and walking exceedingly difficult.

  Those lucky enough to escape then had to navigate their way through what was at the time the main British stronghold in America and a countryside filled with loyalists who would report escapees to the military. Reduced to skeletons and wearing rags, the prisoners stood out no matter where they went. As Fox noted, prisoners were “occasionally… brought back who had been found in the woods upon Long Island and taken up by the Tories.”* Moreover, unsuccessful attempts at escape were met with severe punishment. Fox and a few other prisoners tried to escape in 1780 but were caught and punished “by having our miserable allowance reduced one third in quantity for a month.” He and his crewmates were starving before the punishment, but the reduction in rations was now “hardly sufficient to sustain life.”

  Whenever such attempts were successful, the prisoners still on the ship would cheer loudly, which further angered the guards. The result was that the prisoners suffered when their escape attempts failed, but also after their crewmates succeeded. Nevertheless, even though escape was difficult and those caught attempting to do so were severely punished, efforts to escape continued. This was especially true as the war dragged on and on. After the failure of so many attempts to negotiate prisoner exchanges and after brutal incidents such as the July 4 massacre, they had no choice but to try and escape.

  Some prisoners did escape. The simple fact of knowing they were about to be taken to the notorious Jersey was an incentive for many prisoners to make an attempt. So vile and widespread was the Hell Ship’s reputation that a group of prisoners including Thomas Hitchcock, Lieutenant Eliakim
Palmer, and John Searles from Connecticut, when they discovered they were headed to the Jersey, pulled off a simple but daring escape.

  There are accounts of the escape in newspapers from May 1780. They reported that a few prisoners were being transferred from the Scorpion and the Falmouth. As the prisoners lined up to disembark for the Jersey, “one having, as by accident, thrown his hat overboard, begged leave to go after it in a small boat, which lay alongside.” Surprisingly, the guards agreed that he could fetch the hat before being transferred to the Jersey. The hatless prisoner and two others were put in the rowboat along with a guard to supervise them. The prisoners rowed the vessel to retrieve the hat and purposely acted as if they did not know how to steer the boat. Watching from the prison ship, the other prisoners and guards roared in delight at the hapless landlubbers. All the while, the three men from Stonington took the launch further and further from both their ship and the Jersey. Finally, the officers and guards back on the prison ships realized the boat was too far away and hollered for them to return. It was too late. At that moment, the prisoners overpowered the unsuspecting guard. Experienced sailors, the three men rowed quickly away. “Though several armed boats pursued, and shot was fired from the shipping,” according to the newspapers, it was in vain. The prisoners were gone, headed to New Jersey and to freedom.

  Another dramatic escape occurred in December of that year when four officers from Connecticut seized an opportunity. A small launch was fastened to the gangway on a cold, stormy afternoon. Earlier the men had gotten hold of a crowbar, which they used to pry open a hatch. With no guards in sight and the wind howling, the four prisoners raced across the deck, down the accommodation ladder, and to the launch. The guards were too slow, sounding the alarm only after the prisoners had put some distance between their launch and the prison ship. A second boat was sent out in pursuit of the escapees, but the prisoners made it back to Connecticut.

  Ebenezer Fox recorded in his memoir that there were successful escapes from the Jersey during his incarceration, although they were few and far between. One of them occurred amid the stifling June heat in 1780 when thirty sailors and five officers jumped overboard and swam for shore. The guards scrambled to action and began firing their muskets into the water, but according to both Fox and the New Jersey Gazette, most if not all of the prisoners made it to land.

  Another escape occurred around the same time when the guard stationed by the accommodation ladder leading to the water was talking to a visitor to the ship. A prisoner seized the opportunity and, with the guard distracted, came upon the sentry, knocked him hard to the ground, and jumped overboard. Hearing the commotion on deck, other prisoners attempted to rush to the upper deck and revolt, but the guards “overpowered” them and violently beat them back belowdecks. Nothing is known about the fate of the escapee.

  American newspapers were filled with stories of successful escapes, which gave families hope. But such escapes accomplished much more. With the revolutionary cause desperate for victories, the stories of escaped prisoners were welcome news. At the same time, the accounts in newspapers exposed the public to the wretched and violent conditions on the ships, which helped rally support for the war. The same was true when stories emerged of prisoners’ dying while trying to escape. One such instance occurred in January 1780 when fifteen prisoners escaped from a prison ship in the East River. The men crossed the frozen river, but one man died on the ice. Several others, “frost bitten and unable to endure the cold,” returned to the ship rather than freeze to death. One man, however, managed to reach New London to tell the story.

  Each successive attempt to escape became more difficult, as the officers and guards on the Jersey increased security every time a prisoner tried to escape. But some prisoners still tried, including the brave boys profiled in this book.

  15

  Run!

  Hunger and thirst, to work our woe, combine,

  And mouldy bread, and flesh of rotten swine,

  The mangled carcass, and the battered brain,

  The doctor’s poison, and the captain’s cane,

  The soldier’s musket, and the steward’s debt,

  The evening shackle, and the noon-day threat.

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

  In late September 1781, Christopher Hawkins, the cabin boy from Rhode Island imprisoned on the Jersey, met a friend who likely ended up saving his life. William Waterman was roughly the same age as Hawkins, and in early October the two began the “hazardous project of making their escape from the prison ship.” The plan, according to Hawkins, was a simple one: jumping overboard and “swimming to Long Island, a distance… of two and a-half to three miles.” There were hazards, Hawkins admitted, including “the sentinels posted along the shore.”

  The main challenge, the boys reasoned, was not the long swim but getting off the ship. It was, they knew, almost “impossible to leave the upper deck, without being discovered.” They ruled out a nighttime escape because all prisoners were confined to the lower deck after dark and the gun ports were “secured by iron bars, strongly fastened to the timbers of the ship.”

  Their break came when the boys managed to “secure an old axe and crow-bar” apparently left behind by a work crew. At night they “went to work during a heavy thunder storm,” and successfully “removed the bars from one of the port-holes of the lower deck.” They worked night after night but each day before sunrise “replac[ed] them temporarily to prevent detection.” The two boys managed to cut a small opening in the side of the rotting ship through which their emaciated bodies could squeeze.

  The night of the escape, Hawkins and Waterman “stowed the little money they had, with some other articles, into their knapsacks, which they fastened to their backs by passing the lashings under their arms and across the breast.” They then enlisted a few trusted prisoners to help lower them down into the water by an “old service-rope which they had obtained.” Once in the cold, dark waters of Wallabout Bay, the two boys swam along the side of the old hulk and back to the stern. There they used the “beacon light on the shore” of Long Island as a compass and began swimming for freedom.

  Three problems faced the boys. The first was arriving at a spot not swarming with British soldiers. The second was something they had not anticipated: the waterlogged rucksacks on their backs became very heavy and “greatly impeded” their swimming. Third, in the dark night Hawkins and Waterman became separated but could not call out to each other for fear of alerting the guards on the ship. The two would never see each other again, and Hawkins never found out what happened to his friend.

  After looking frantically but to no avail for Waterman, Hawkins spotted a light some ways off, roughly a “gun-shot distance” from the coast, and swam toward it. However, the weight of his rucksack became too much. Exhausted, Hawkins tried to adjust it, but the lashings became “unraveled” and the pack started to sink below the surface. “Unwilling to part with it,” the boy quickly dove down and managed to grab it. Treading water and gasping for breath, Hawkins tried to hold the heavy sack above the waves. It was hopeless, but he tried again and again “to retain it by taking it first under one arm and then under the other.” Eventually the sack, like his tired arms, became too heavy and he let it sink below the waves with all his earthly belongings.

  Later that night Hawkins neared the shore of Long Island. He was so close that he heard British sentries calling out “all’s well.” After three hours in the cold water Hawkins was freezing and his body began shutting down. Despite the guards, he could stay in the water no longer. Miraculously, he managed to make it ashore undetected and, wearing only “an old hat,” hid in the bushes. He hoped the spot was free from soldiers because he was too “cold, stiffened, and nearly exhausted” to run. But at least he was alive and free from the ship.

  After resting a few moments, Hawkins struggled to walk along the shore, creeping quietly through the dark looking for his friend, but Waterman was nowhere to be found. Eventua
lly he abandoned the search and snuck through the countryside looking for a barn. He needed a place where he could rest undetected. But while searching for a barn in the dark night, Hawkins tripped over a stone and fell hard to the ground. He was cold, afraid, tired, and alone, with no barn in sight, and now he was injured. But he willed himself forward. Twigs and thistles cut at his naked body as he stumbled blindly onward in the dark.

  Early in the morning, the teenager finally came upon a barn. There was no food to be found, but after climbing a ladder to a loft Hawkins spotted an old, torn blanket. He longed to sleep and a pile of hay tempted him, but he continued on, taking the blanket to warm his naked body and knowing he needed to move under cover of darkness. Before sunrise “a hard storm of rain” poured down from the dark clouds. “Naked and hungry,” wet and cold, Hawkins sought shelter as the sun was beginning to peek above the horizon. When he found another barn, he curled up in the corner in an inviting pile of hay and slept.

  Hawkins awoke around noon. Peeking out from a window in the barn, he realized he was in trouble. The entire area was “infested with Tories, and straggling bands of Hessians were prowling about the country.” The young boy decided to head east and put some distance between himself and the British stronghold, but he had to be very careful.

  While sneaking through the farm fields he felt the sharp pangs of hunger. It had been a full day since he last ate. Finally, in one field he found a few potatoes still in the ground. Hawkins quickly gathered them but resisted the urge to eat them. Instead, he thought it wise to get out of the open field and ran toward the cover of some nearby trees. Dashing through the field, he almost ran straight into a young woman holding a basket with fruit and vegetables.