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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Very bitter were the complaints of the Americans about the supine and indifferent attitude towards them of Beasley, their agent, who was supposed to keep constant watch and ward over the interests of his unfortunate countrymen. He lived in London, thirty-two miles away, paid no attention to complaints forwarded to him, and was heartily hated and despised. Once he paid a visit to the hulks in Gillingham Creek, but seemed anxious to avoid all interviews and questionings, and left amidst a storm of hisses and jeers.

Waterhouse dwells severely on the fact that the majority of the Americans on the Crown Prince and the other hulks were not men who had been fairly taken in open combat on the high seas, but men who had been impressed into the British Navy from American merchant ships previous to the war between the two countries and who, upon the Declaration of War, had given themselves up as prisoners of war, being naturally unwilling to fight against their own country, but who had been kept prisoners instead of being exchanged. This had been the British practice since 1755, but after the War of Independence it had ceased. All the same the British authorities had insisted upon the right of search for British subjects on American ships, and to the arbitrary and forcible exercise of this ‘right’ was very largely owing the War of 1812.