Up Tree Extra: How bad were prison ships

I mentioned in the last post that Sharon's ancestor had attached himself to a doctor as a servant to gain parole and escape the horrors of a prison ship. I did not go into detail about those horrors because I try to keep the length of these posts down.

But as our exploration of the conditions and dangers aboard the ships that brought colonists to America, we need to understand what being a prisoner during the Revolutionary War entailed. We are used to movies and television, which rarely show us the brutalities of any particular era.

No Geneva Convention covered the treatment of prisoners. The ships weren't the sleek, metallic vessels capable of handling hundreds or thousands of individuals we see in our modern harbors. If you've ever been aboard a wooden sailing vessel -- preserved or re-created -- you've had a chance to see how cramped and utilitarian they are. And the hardtack and water shown in some cinematic portrayals of ship life from the era would have been manna from heaven compared with the reality.

A fella named Ebenezer Fox wrote a memoir in 1847 exploring his service in the war. You can find it on Google Books -- The Adventures of Ebenezer Fox in The Revolutionary War -- if you're interested.

The British had stationed a number of ships in the harbors along the American coast, and they had a reputation even in their day. So bad were the conditions on board that the British often offered clemency if prisoners would sign up to fight against the burgeoning republic. Despite what they had heard about prisoner treatment less than 10 percent took the offer.

Here are some observations on the conditions from those who endured them, taken from History.com.

“I now found myself in a loathsome prison, among a collection of the most wretched and disgusting looking objects that I ever beheld in human form. Here was a motley crew, covered with rags and filth; visages pallid with disease, emaciated with hunger and anxiety, and retaining hardly a trace of their original appearance.” -- Ebenezer Fox

Once aboard a prison ship, recruitment continued. Fox wrote, "Many were actually starved to death in hope of making them enroll themselves in the British Army."

"I soon found that every spark of humanity had fled the breasts of the British officers who had charge of that floating receptacle of human misery; and that nothing but abuse and insult was to be expected. But to cap the climax of infamy we were fed (if fed it might be called) with provisions not fit for any human being to make use of—putrid beef and pork, and worm-eaten bread ..." -- Alexander Coffin, sailor

“There were continual noises during the night. The groans of the sick and the dying; the curses poured out by the weary and exhausted upon our inhuman keepers; the restlessness caused by the suffocating heat and the confined and poisoned air; mingled with the wild and incoherent ravings of delirium.” -- Thomas Dring, sailor

Diseases such as smallpox, dysentery, yellow fever, among others, killed several passengers each day. And the dead were often taken ashore and given shallow burials on the beach. Their bodies would become uncovered, a gruesome sight to prisoners on the nearby ship, should they gain a view through a gun port or perhaps while on deck while the below decks were being mucked out. 

So much for the romance of war.

Image: HMS Jersey, one of the most notorious of the British prison ships.