Читать книгу Prisoners of War in Britain 1756 to 1815. A record of their lives, their romance and their sufferings онлайн

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After a miserable voyage the prisoners reached Portsmouth, and, starved, vermin-eaten, and in rags, were shipped off to the Crown Prince, Captain Hutchison, at Chatham, where were thirteen other prison ships and some 1,200 Americans. On this hulk, Waterhouse says, they fared ‘as well as could be expected ... not that we fared so well as British prisoners fare in America’, the daily allowance being half a pound of beef, one gill of barley, one and a half pounds of bread, on five days of the week, and on the others one pound cod fish, and one pound potatoes, or one pound smoked herring, porter and beer being purchasable. He dilates bitterly on the extraordinary lack of humanity in John Bull, as evidenced by the hard fare of soldiers and sailors, the scoundrelism of some officers, especially those of the provisioning departments, and, above all, the shockingly cruel punishments in the Army and Navy. During the daytime, he says, life on a prison ship was not so unpleasant, but at night the conditions were very bad—especially as American prisoners were more closely watched and guarded than were men of other nationalities. ‘The French were always busy in some little mechanical employ, or in gaming, or in playing the fool, but the Americans seemed to be on the rack of invention to escape.’