Imagine being forced to row on what your captors call your last voyage.
You slowly approach a towering black hulk of a ship.
As you approach, a thousand horrible stenches, and the moans and groans of the dying assault
your senses.
With every instinct to get away, you’re forced at gunpoint on board, and down below
decks with over a thousand other prisoners.
Welcome to what those on board described as Hell.
This is the story of the HMS Jersey, the most infamous prison ship of the American Revolution.
Rebellion rocked the British Empire in the late 18th century.
Ireland and Scotland revolted.
The rebels captured in these revolts flooded the already crowded prisons of the British
empire.
The British could send them to the gallows, but there were so many prisoners they couldn’t
even execute them fast enough, or they needed them for exchanges.
They attempted all sorts of makeshift prisons, stuffing people in mines, deserting them on
islands, or the worst fate of all, sending them to Australia.
One solution was to unleash the power of the Hulk.
Ok..
Not that Hulk.
A hulk is actually a ship that’s run its course, and is too old for regular service.
There were a lot of these by the way.
They would strip all the stuff out of the ship, the cannons, ropes, pulleys, flags,
everything, and it would just be a floating...
hulk.
These empty ships were then great places to stuff all your overflowing prisoners.
This new innovation in incarceration would be tested when the next group of subjects
revolted, the Americans.
The first major battle of the American revolution took place around New York City, often referred
to as the Battle of Brooklyn.
In this battle, the british defeated George Washington’s army decisively, and took New
York City.
For the rest of the War, New York acted as the staging ground for the British presence
in America.
After the British took control of New York City, loyalist refugees began to pour into
the city.
They occupied whatever livable space could be found, squatting in warehouses, stables,
anywhere.
On top of this, the British captured tons of prisoners during and after the battle,
and had no idea where to put them.
The British tried to cram them in some horrific places such as harborfront buildings, but
the solution they came to would be to squeeze them onto those hulks.
On Brooklyn’s Wallabout Bay they brought in several ships for use as prisons for the
rebels.
The most ominous of all was the HMS Jersey.
Let’s break down who the prisoners were on this damned ship.
The Jersey’s prison population was made up of some French, Spanish, and Dutch sailors,
American seamen, Continental army soldiers, and civilians arrested for “disloyalty”
which usually meant refusing to swear allegiance to the King.
However, almost half of the population in these ships were American privateers.
The American government, if you can call it one at this point, had basically no money.
They couldn’t hope to put together a navy big enough to compete against the British.
As a way to cause chaos on the high seas they would give people contracts that gave them
permission to act as pirates against British merchant ships, causing a bit of disruption
in the British supply lines.
Now, back to the ship.
Life on the Jersey really lived up to the ship’s nickname hell afloat.
Let me paint you a picture.
Typically, a prisoner of war received about 2/3rds of a soldier's daily ration, but supply
lines were often interrupted, and the British decided that the Americans were rebels, not
soldiers.
This resulted in far less food.
The commissaries were also notorious for selling prisoner rations for personal gain.
What they did receive was a mix of oatmeal, butter, salted beef, biscuits, pork, peas,
flour and suet.
These foods were often mouldy or infested with insects and worms.
The meat needed to be eaten raw, and was apparently multicoloured.
The butter was a sweet oil so rancid they just used it for their lanterns.
The buckets made for collecting…
uh… yeah overflowed and people were often forced to sleep next to their own waste.
With these conditions, it’s no surprise that disease ran rampant.
Of the over a thousand prisoners on the Jersey, 6 to 12 a day died of deadly diseases like
smallpox, dysentery, typhoid, and yellow fever, if they didn’t just die from malnutrition.
The British shipped the bodies to the mainland for an unceremonious burial, and when the
graveyards filled up they’d simply tie a cannonball to the body and throw it overboard.
The men suffering on board had a few strategies to survive.
The officers on the ship helped organize a makeshift government amongst the prisoners,
with rules to keep the sabbath, observe hygiene, and respect each other’s private property.
Some of the prisoners accepted offers from the British, who were desperate for sailors,
for impressment, or non-voluntary enlistment in the navy to far-off regions like Jamaica.
Some turned to religion, while many lost their faith on the dark decks.
Those that had money would buy small objects from a woman that visited every few days,
but when she died of a disease she caught on board, her services were replaced with
gouging salesmen that follow armies called Sutlers.
One small piece of hope came from a woman named Elizabeth Burgin, who helped hundreds
of prisoners escape.
She delivered food to the ship, but in 1779, a patriot officer undercover in New York approached
her with a plan to smuggle prisoners off the Jersey to freedom.
She agreed, and as many as 200 prisoners found salvation aboard her boat.
When the officer that approached her was captured, his wife informed on Elizabeth and she had
to escape.
The british put a 200 pound bounty, that’s quite a lot at this time, for her arrest,
and she was nearly caught on several occasions.
She had to hide for two weeks before escaping to Long island.
After 5 weeks hiding there, she eventually got on a ship to Connecticut.
Safe to say she never returned, and morale was not high on the Jersey.
On July 4th 1782, the prisoners planned a day of resistance.
They sang patriotic songs and planted American flags on the ship.
The guards responded by killing several prisoners with swords and denying the rest food, water,
and access to the top deck for several days.
Some other acts of rebellion were not as hopeful.
On several prison boats, the prisoners set their own hulks ablaze rather than endure
their torment.
People also attempted desperate escapes despite how hopeless they were.
It was not until 1783, years into its “voyage” that the prisoners were liberated.
By the end, over 10,000 people had died on these prison ships, nearly three times the
amount of Americans who died on the battlefield.
When the survivors made it to shore, crowds gathered, hearing stories about the ghosts
who haunted the black hulks in Wallabout Bay.
The British thought that this prison ship would act as a symbol of fear, keeping anyone
on the fence from joining the rebellion against the king.
This wound up being quite far from the truth.
Dark stories of the ghost ship of Brooklyn spread around the 13 colonies, and instead
of intimidating the Americans, it galvanized them.
The Jersey became a symbol of British cruelty, and tyranny; everything that made them revolt
in the first place.
It brought more people into the revolution rather than scare them out of it.
There were a few stabs at memorializing the men who died on these ships.
Walt Whitman even wrote a poem about them.
The bones of these prisoners stopped washing up on the beach, and people forgot about the
Jersey.
The ship itself sank shortly after liberation, and many people simply moved on.
I think though that this is indicative of many of the stories of prisoners of war.
The treatment they endure is often not a big part of the story.
They get lost between marked up maps and paintings of generals on their horses.
However, these people typically suffer horrible fates and are then forgotten.
We often overlook these horrific corners when telling the story of wars, and… well…
we shouldn’t.
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This particular video was inspired by the new book The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn by Robert
P Watson.
If you look down in the description, there’s a link to Amazon where you can buy the book.
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