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Captain John Crane, 1800 - 1815

<h2 id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</h2> PRISON LIFE AT DARTMOOR.—REMINISCENCES OF PRIVATEERING.—ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE ROSSIE, HIGHFLIER, GOVERNOR TOMPKINS, AND OTHERS.—I AM SUMMONED TO THE CAPTAIN'S OFFICE. Hardly were the birds out of their nests or down from their roosts in the morning, before we were roused and served with a scanty breakfast of tea, mush, and bread, with a piece of meat that was anything but tender or savory. Then we were drawn up in line, the officers I mean, and offered the choice of giving our paroles not to escape and marching under a light guard, or being placed under a strong guard and handcuffed if we declined the paroles. "I'll take my chances of getting away," said Haines, "and won't give the beggars any promise." I had the same impulse; but a brief reflection showed me that in irons and strongly guarded, there would be practically no chance at all of escaping. So I decided to give my parole; and before the time was up for a decision Haines followed my example, as did the other officers. [281] No such choice was given to the men. They were handcuffed together two and two, and the soldiers in charge of them carried loaded muskets with fixed bayonets; and to make the men understand that the powder and ball were ready for service, the guns were loaded in the presence of the column of prisoners as it stood on parade. There were about twenty officers and two hundred men comprising the prison convoy, and the guards were certainly not fewer than sixty. The guards marched with the prisoners, and there was a wagon following the convoy to pick up those who gave out from illness or any other cause. The squad of officers got away half an hour in advance of the others, and as each man was under parole very little attention was paid to us by the guards. A dozen times during the day's walk I could have got away with the greatest ease; but, of course, I was hindered by the fact that I had given my word of honor not to escape; and had I violated it, and been re-captured, the punishment would have been—death. It is a good day's walk from Plymouth to Princetown. The distance is certainly not less than fifteen miles, and it may be twenty, and the road is up-hill a good part of the way. Princetown is at the gates of Dartmoor prison; in fact, it has grown up since the prison was established, and is occupied almost entirely by people connected with the place in some[282] way. The families of officers and guards live there, and so do the various contractors who supply food to the unfortunate inmates of the walled inclosure. We were tired and foot-sore when we got to the prison and entered the fortress-like walls through a massive gateway. We were carefully searched to make sure that we had no weapons concealed about us, and any money found upon our persons was taken to the prison authorities and placed to our credit on the keeper's books. It was deemed unwise to allow money to remain in the hands of the prisoners, lest it might be used in bribing the guards. The precaution was a good one, as I know that if I had been in possession of money I should have tried to bribe my way out of Dartmoor before I had been there twenty-four hours. Dartmoor Prison was built specially for the confinement of prisoners of war, of whom England had great numbers during her troubles with France, growing out of the French Revolution and the career of Napoleon Bonaparte. It was finished in 1806, and at one time contained no fewer than eleven thousand French prisoners. It is about one thousand five hundred feet above the level of the sea at Plymouth, and that is why the road from Plymouth to Princetown is so much up-hill. An average of one hundred feet to the mile or thereabouts is a pretty steep ascent. [283] The prison covers about thirty acres of ground, inclosed between double walls. In the inclosure are quarters for the guards and officers, and there are seven large prison houses for the captives. It was located in the midst of a desolate moor, and at this distance from the sea-coast in order to increase the difficulties of escape. It is safe to say that every man who is brought here has a plan in his mind by which he hopes to escape; and some men have perhaps a dozen schemes they will try in succession as fast as one fails. It was so in my case; but I soon made up my mind that the construction of the prison, combined with the vigilance of the guards, would be likely to baffle any attempts I should make. So I resigned myself to my fate, and also to something else that I expected daily. I had not forgotten the message left me by Captain Graham when he sailed from New York. Before coming ashore from the Reindeer I wrote a letter to the captain, telling him that Haines and I were prisoners of war, briefly detailing the circumstances of our capture, and adding that I knew nothing of our destination save that we were to be landed at Plymouth. This letter I left with Captain Woods, who promised to post it as soon as he went ashore. Day after day passed and I received no reply to[284] my letter, nor did I hear from it in any way. A week, two weeks, three weeks, and the situation was the same. I began to despair, not that I doubted the fidelity of Captain Graham to his promise, but because I feared my letter had gone astray and failed to reach its destination. I asked for the privilege of writing another letter, but was told that such indulgence was not permitted to the prisoners, except by permission of some high official in London, whom it was impossible for me to reach. It was against the rules for me to write a letter without the consent of some one outside the prison, and I was not permitted to send to him for that consent. Time hung heavy on my hands. During the day we had the privileges of the prison yard; at night we were locked up in our quarters, and sentries, with loaded muskets, were at the doors to prevent our going outside the building. We had only the floor to sleep upon, unless we were ill enough to be sent to the hospital, where the beds consisted of the rudest kind of cots, with bags of straw for mattresses. Our food was barely enough to support life, and of the most common description. For those in the hospital it was a little better; but even there it was not such as would tempt the appetite. Some of the prisoners had been there for several years, having been sent to Dartmoor long before the[285] breaking out of the war in 1812. They were Americans who had been impressed into the British service, and refused to serve against their country. They had undergone severe punishment, some having been flogged repeatedly in the hope of subduing them, and as a last resort they had been sent to Dartmoor for incarceration. Altogether, there were more than two thousand of this class of prisoners, and some had been ten years in captivity; then there were about four thousand who had been captured on naval vessels, privateers, and merchantmen, during the war; so that the total of the American population of the prison was little, if any, short of six thousand. We had the melancholy satisfaction of knowing that there was a considerable number of British subjects confined in American prisons; but, after all, there was very little comfort to be derived from this knowledge. We would have gladly consented to the liberation of every Briton then in American hands, provided, of course, we could have gained our freedom at the same time. We whiled away the time by various games, by reading the few books that were allowed to us, and by telling each other of our experiences. Some of the stories were exciting in the extreme, and served to enlighten many hours that otherwise would have been very dull. Let me give some of them by way of samples. [286] One of my prison mates was Captain Percival, who had served with Commodore Lewis in the gunboat Flotilla at New York during the year 1813. "One day," said he, "the commodore ordered me to go out and capture the sloop Eagle, which was serving as tender to the British man-of-war Poictiers, seventy-four guns, that was cruising in those waters, and trying to blockade the port. "I told the commodore that I would want a seventy-four gun ship at least to do it with, unless I could get the Eagle away from her big consort. "He said that I could only have a little fishing-smack; and then I saw what he was driving at. He explained his scheme, and I proceeded to carry it out. "I took the fishing-smack, and had thirty-five armed men concealed in her hold; then I had a calf, a sheep, and four or five geese on deck, and three men who were in fishermen's clothes. We stood out past Sandy Hook as though we were going to the fishing-banks. The Eagle gave chase, and we tried to escape; but she overhauled us easily, as we knew she would. When we got alongside of the Eagle the captain saw the live-stock we had on board, and ordered us to go to the Poictiers, which was then several miles away to the eastward. I parleyed with the captain till the smack touched the sides of the Eagle, and then one of my men on deck gave the watchword, 'Lawrence!' [287] "Instantly the hatches were thrown off, and the men swarmed up from below! As they came up they fired at every man they saw on the Eagle, killing the captain and two others, and astonishing the rest of the crew so that they ran below. Then I ordered the firing to cease; and as soon as I had done so, one of the Eagle's crew came up and lowered her colors. At the same time my men swarmed into the sloop; and in five minutes we had her headed to New York, where we arrived with our prisoners, and were received with great enthusiasm. "This happened on the Fourth of July, so that our performance was celebrated along with the Declaration of Independence. So sudden was our onslaught upon the Eagle that she did not fire her heavy brass howitzer, which had a double charge of canister-shot, all ready to repel an attack of this sort. We drew the charge of shot, and fired the howitzer after we got to New York, as a part of the celebration." Another of my prison companions was Mr. Johnson, who was second mate of the clipper-built schooner Rossie, that sailed from Baltimore about the middle of July, in the first year of the war. She carried fourteen guns and a hundred and twenty men, and was commanded by Commodore Barney. He cruised along the eastern coast of the United States for forty-five days without entering a port; and John[288]son said there was hardly a day without an adventure of some sort. The Rossie was either chasing or being chased, capturing English ships, and informing all American ships that she met of the outbreak of the war. "One day," said Johnson, "we were chased by a British frigate that got within range of us, so that she hurled twenty-five or thirty shot in our direction. All of them fell short, but some only just a little. We outsailed the frigate and got away. A few days afterward we were chased by another frigate, and we outsailed her just as we did the first one. "The next day we captured and burned the ship Princess Royal; and the day following we captured the ship Kitty, put a prize-crew on board, and sent her into port. On the second of August we captured and burned two brigs and a schooner, and also captured a brig on which we put sixty of our prisoners, and sent her as a cartel to St. John, New Brunswick, to make exchange for American prisoners. Four vessels in one day was pretty good work, wasn't it?" We all agreed that it was. "Well," continued Johnson, "we did just as well the day after that when we captured and sunk the brig Henry, and the schooners Race-horse and Hali[289]fax; captured and manned the brig William, and added forty prisoners to the sixty we'd already put on board the cartel. Those two were our best days. Altogether, during our cruise of forty-five days, we seized and captured fourteen vessels. We destroyed nine, and sent five into port; and the estimated value of our prizes was over a million and a quarter dollars!" <div class="figcenter2em" id="illo9"><ANTIMG src="images/illo9.jpg" width-obs="600" height="356" alt="" title="" /> <div class="caption"> Are you John Crane, captain of the late privateer, Marguerite?" Page 294.</div> </div> "We didn't go back to Baltimore," said Johnson, "but put into Newport when the forty-five days were up. We stayed there about ten days, refitting and recruiting our crew, and then started out again. Two days out from Newport we were chased by three British men-of-war all at once; but our sailing qualities came into play and we got away from all of them. A day or two later we were chased by an English frigate for six hours, but left her behind us at last. We captured a British armed packet, the Princess Amelia, and had a very savage fight with her for almost an hour at pistol-shot distance all the time. Mr. Long, our first lieutenant, was severely wounded, and six of the crew were injured, but not very badly. The Princess Amelia lost her captain, sailing-master, and one sailor, killed, and the master's mate and six seamen were wounded. "Commodore Barney had just secured this prize and started her for port, when we fell in, on the[290] same day, with three ships and an armed brig. The brig was convoying the ships; and we had a little brush with her, in which she gave us an eighteen-pound shot through our quarter. We stuck to those vessels for four days, in hopes of their separating so that we could jump on one of them and capture it; but they hung together, and we gave up the game. The next day we fell in with the privateer Globe, and the two of us started off together to hunt for the three ships, but couldn't find them. Then we separated, and within a week after we did so the Rossie captured two fine prizes, sent them into port, and followed them. Altogether, on those two cruises, we captured thirty-seven hundred tons of shipping, valued at a million and a half of dollars, and two hundred and seventeen prisoners. "Another very successful privateer that went from Baltimore," continued Johnson, "was the Highflyer, commanded by Captain Gavit. She was armed with eight guns and carried about one hundred men. Her first prize was a British schooner in ballast, but with eight thousand dollars in specie. "The Highflyer's next encounter was with a fleet of Jamaica merchantmen convoyed by a British frigate. The frigate chased the Highflyer, but was outsailed. The chase caused the convoy to be somewhat scattered. Captain Gavit watched his chance,[291] and cut out the Diana, one of the fleet, which had a valuable cargo of rum, sugar, and coffee. Gavit took out her crew and sent her as a prize to the United States. "The next day the Highflyer fell in with and engaged two British vessels at half gun-shot distance, one of them the Jamaica, seven guns and twenty-one men, and the other the Mary Ann, twelve guns and eighteen men. There was too much wind blowing to make it safe to attempt boarding, and so the Highflyer hauled off and waited till the wind moderated. The next day she jumped at them again, and, after a sharp fight with cannon and musket, boarded the Jamaica and captured her, and then went for the Mary Ann, which lowered her flag without any further fighting. Both of them had rich cargoes, and were first-class prizes. They were sent into port, where they arrived safely." When Johnson paused in his story of the performance of the Highflyer, Captain Percival said that one of the most successful privateers in the early part of the war was the John, of Salem, which captured eleven vessels in a cruise of three weeks; and another was the Paul Jones, which captured in a month's time near the island of Porto Rico fourteen vessels, some of them of considerable value. The best of all of them was the British ship[292] Hassan, fourteen guns and twenty men, sailing from Gibraltar to Havana, with wines and dry goods, valued at two hundred thousand pounds. Mr. Johnson asked if any of us had ever known Captain Shaler, of the schooner Governor Tompkins, of New York. Two or three of us had met him, but none could claim acquaintance. I remembered having been introduced to him one day, and he impressed me as one of the most dashing, brave fellows that ever trod a ship's deck. "The Tompkins was built especially for the business," said Johnson; "she had fourteen carronades and one Long Tom, and carried a crew of about one hundred and fifty men. One of Captain Shaler's first experiences in the Tompkins was to find three British vessels together, all looking like merchantmen. One was larger than the rest, and Shaler supposed she was a transport until he got within a quarter of a mile of her; then he found that she was a frigate that had been got up so as to deceive the closest observer. He opened fire on her, and then her ports flew open, and he received a response that nearly took his breath away. His only hope was to get away, and he left the spot as rapidly as he could. His schooner was a splendid sailer, and so he managed to get out of his trouble. He got out[293] all his sweeps, threw overboard all the lumber on his decks and about two thousand pounds of shot, and in this way managed to escape. "The Tompkins lost two men killed and six wounded," continued the narrator. "One of those killed was a black man, named Johnson. Captain Shaler said, in his report to his owners, 'Johnson ought to be registered on the book of fame, and remembered with reverence as long as bravery is considered a virtue. A twenty-four pound shot struck him in the hip, and took away all the lower part of his body. In this state the poor, brave fellow lay on the deck, and several times exclaimed to his shipmates, 'Fire away, boys; neber haul de color down!' Several times he requested to be thrown overboard, saying he was only in the way of the others. While America has such sailors she has little to fear from the tyrants of the ocean.'" One day, while I was listening to an account of the exploits of the privateer Chasseur, which captured eighty vessels altogether, of which thirty-two were of equal force to herself and eighteen superior, an orderly came along and called out in a loud voice,—"John Crane is wanted at Captain Shortland's office!" Captain Shortland was the commandant of the prison. I made my toilet by running my fingers through my hair, and then followed the orderly. <hr class="chap" /> [294] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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