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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In October 1814 two hundred Americans were sent to Plymouth, where they were at once boarded by an army of loose women.

With Waterhouse’s experiences at Dartmoor I deal in the chapter devoted to that prison.

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Under this heading are included various reminiscences of, and particulars about, the prison ships which could not be conveniently dealt with in the foregoing chapters.

In April 1759 five French prisoners from the Royal Oak hulk at Plymouth were executed at Exeter for the murder of Jean Maneaux, who had informed the agent that his comrades had forged passports in order to facilitate their escape to France. Finding this out, they got Maneaux into an obscure corner of the ship, tied him to a ringbolt, and gave him sixty lashes with a rope to the end of which was fastened an iron thimble as thick as a man’s wrist. He got loose, and fell back; they jumped on him till they broke his neck, then cut his body into small pieces, and conveyed them through a waste pipe overboard. The next day twenty-seven prisoners were arrested, and one of them pointed out the actual murderers.