The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn Read online

  We may have forgotten the story of Brooklyn’s Wallabout Bay today, but prison ships were not always a mystery. Charles Dickens, for instance, in his classic book Great Expectations, features a ghostly prison ship. Dickens introduces the scene with a properly haunted location—a foggy churchyard next to a shrouded marsh during a dark night. Nearby, a search party is hunting an escaped prisoner still wearing irons on his legs. Dickens’s character Pip has a frightening brush with the prisoner, a scene made all the more unnerving when the flickering light of the search party’s torches reveals a “black hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the shore, like a wicked Noah’s ark, cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty chains.” Dickens, a social critic and reformer, was likely inspired to include a prison ship in his novel because of their widespread and controversial use by the British. He most probably observed them, as prison ships were anchored off the towns of Portsmouth and Woolwich on the outskirts of London as well as at ports in the West Indies during Dickens’s lifetime.

  Yet most people have never heard of the Old Sugar House in New York City, Wallabout Bay, or the British prison ships of the Revolution. Nevertheless, these places were the scenes of some of the most gruesome events in the nation’s history and constitute the ugly secret of the Revolutionary War. Ironically, few aspects of the Revolutionary War were as thoroughly documented yet as quickly forgotten as the prison ships. Captured ships were listed, prisoners’ names were registered, and deaths recorded.

  In 1832 the U.S. Congress finally passed a measure allowing veterans of the Revolutionary War to petition for pensions. Sadly, most of those who fought were by then long gone. For those still alive, the legislation offered a much-needed yearly stipend to anyone who could prove at least six months of wartime service. Unfortunately, most of the elderly petitioners had little to no proof of their service—maybe an old uniform, a scar from a gunshot or bayonet wound, an enlistment certificate, or discharge papers. What all of them had, however, were memories. The petitioners who came forward shared stories with court clerks who documented them and encouraged veterans to record their experiences in order to prove their status as veterans. We can be thankful that many put quill to paper.

  Others were motivated by their families to write memoirs. In particular, five men and boys—Christopher Hawkins, Thomas Dring, Thomas Andros, Ebenezer Fox, and Andrew Sherburne—somehow survived the most cursed of all the prison ships and wrote detailed narratives of the experience. Together, these remarkable and gripping accounts of battles, captures, imprisonment, and escapes or releases offer a firsthand telling of perhaps the most dreadful event of the Revolutionary period.

  In the words of Thomas Dring, an officer from Rhode Island, “Among the varied events of the war of the American Revolution, there are few circumstances which have left a deeper impression on the public mind, than those connected with the cruel and vindictive treatment which was experienced by those of our unfortunate countrymen whom the fortune of war had placed on board the Prison-Ships of the enemy.” Christopher Hawkins echoed Dring’s account of the ships. A young boy captured by the British and imprisoned aboard the worst of the ships, he described the ordeal in the opening lines of his journal, saying, “Among the various modes adopted by the British, during the Revolution, for taming the American people into submission to the English yoke, none were more barbarous and more revolting to humanities than the cruelties inflicted by means of the prison ships.”

  The macabre and grisly chapter in American history they described occurred in the waters just off the coast of Brooklyn. From 1776 to the very end of the war in 1783, the British occupied New York City and Long Island and made them the staging ground for their military operations in America. The waterways throughout the city soon filled with supply vessels, transport craft, and warships, prompting the British command to use older ships to incarcerate American soldiers and sailors captured in battle. Civilians suspected of supporting the colonial cause or refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown were arrested. They joined countless thousands of soldiers from the Continental Army and sailors from warships, merchant craft, and privateers who were imprisoned belowdecks in the cramped, diseased holds of these floating dungeons. As thousands perished, the prison ships moored in a shallow and otherwise forgettable body of water known as Wallabout Bay quickly became massive, ghostly coffins.

  The most notorious of these ships was the HMS Jersey. More than a thousand prisoners at a time were held aboard the ship. The deplorable conditions belowdecks resulted in a half dozen to one dozen men, on average, dying every day from smallpox, dysentery, typhoid, or yellow fever as well as from the effects of malnutrition, polluted water, and torture. This single ship accounted for the lion’s share of the misery and deaths of American prisoners during the war, an amount described as “obscenely high” by one source. In fact, more Americans died on board the ghost ship of Brooklyn than died in combat during the entirety of the Revolutionary War—by a factor of two!

  The tragedy of the Jersey and other horrid prison ships was irrefutably “the darkest in the history of our Revolutionary struggle.” An attorney from Brooklyn tasked with preparing a report on the floating dungeons after the war concluded that although there are always “occasional acts of inhumanity and cowardly brutality, committed in the heat of battle,” this particular catastrophe could never be “excused.” On the contrary, he argued that the ordeal was a chilling example of the “temporary triumph of passion and vengeance over reason and humanity.”

  To be sure, the British command intended the Jersey to be a weapon of terror. The threat of imprisonment in her deadly bowels, they reasoned, would deter even the most ardent of patriots from fighting. And so they crammed thousands into the dark, dank hull and moored the ship far enough from shore to prevent the disease that soon permeated her rotting timbers from inflicting the city, yet close enough to be seen and smelled by all who passed by. However, the plan backfired. As prisoners aboard the dreaded ship escaped and as colonial pamphlets and newspapers such as the Connecticut Courant, New York Journal, Pennsylvania Journal, and others told their gruesome stories, the “Old Jersey” quickly emerged as a powerful symbol of British oppression and cruelty. Like the Boston Massacre, an event that crystalized support for the cause of liberty a decade earlier, the horrors that occurred on the Jersey turned loyalists into patriots and ended up inspiring the struggle for independence.

  This is the story of an old warship that, because of the obscenely high death toll and inhumane conditions below her decks, was nicknamed “Hell Afloat” or simply “Hell.” She earned the reputation.

  1

  Warship

  Ungenerous Britons, you

  Conspire to murder whom you can’t subdue.

  —Philip Freneau, “The British Prison-Ship” (1781)

  The rivalry between Britain and Spain for supremacy of the seas had a long and bloody history. The two naval powers squared off time and again from the beginning of the Age of Exploration through the colonial period, including a bitter struggle during what was essentially the first modern world war—the War of Spanish Succession, fought in the early eighteenth century. The centrality of the seas to the rivalry was such that even the terms of the peace treaty, signed in the Dutch city of Utrecht, emphasized maritime trade and naval relations. In it, Spain agreed to a thirty-year trade deal that permitted Britain to ship a specified annual tonnage of goods to Spain’s colonies along with a limited number of slaves.

  But the history between the two naval powers proved too onerous for the treaty to hold. Neither nation trusted the other. The Spanish suspected the British of smuggling additional goods and slaves in violation of the treaty, while British captains did not take kindly to having limits placed by the Spanish monarch on what they could carry. Tensions increased and ultimately resulted in yet another conflict—the Anglo-Spanish War, fought from 1727 to 1729.

  The negotiations leading to the Treaty of Seville, which ended that war, again affirmed
British maritime trade, but in return gave the Spanish the right to stop and inspect British ships. In the ensuing years, both sides navigated the arrangement with great difficulty and distrust. Ultimately, this agreement, like the others before it, was destined to fail.

  It happened on April 9, 1731, when the Spanish patrol boat La Isabela seized the British merchant craft Rebecca in waters off Havana. Spanish authorities suspected Captain Robert Jenkins and his crew of smuggling goods in violation of the treaty. During the argument that ensued between Jenkins and the commander of the Spanish ship, Julio León Fandiño, the British officer’s left ear was cut off. Back in England, the incident was met with outrage and became an emotional and memorable symbol of Spanish interference with British shipping. Relations between the two powers eroded.

  Then, in March 1738, Captain Jenkins was called before the House of Commons to testify about his ordeal and, in general, Spanish harassment of British shipping. Jenkins, still fuming over his lost ear, was only too happy to stir up anti-Spanish sentiment. Some accounts suggest that, to the horror of some members of Parliament (but to the delight of the war hawks), he held forth the severed ear, which he had preserved by having it pickled.* British politicians were already in the clutches of war fever, and Jenkins’s passionate description of the humiliation he had endured produced cries in Parliament for retribution.

  And so it happened. The following year Robert Walpole, the British prime minister, was pressured into declaring war on Spain. Yet he offered a portent of things to come. Speaking of the warmongers in his country, the prime minister warned, “They may ring their bells now; they will be wringing their hands before long.” The conflict that resulted was a senseless and tragic affair, which many years later the British essayist Thomas Carlyle dubbed “The War of Jenkins’ Ear.”

  Britain immediately developed plans to attack Spanish colonies in North and South America, and the two powers were at war once again. To lead the assault, the British chose Admiral Edward Vernon, who had been a staunch defender of Captain Jenkins and an advocate of a muscular response to perceived Spanish abuses. Vernon was elevated to the position of vice admiral on July 9, 1739, and given six powerful ships of the line to attack Spanish commerce and forts on the other side of the Atlantic. Admiral Vernon launched his invasion by successfully sacking Porto Bello and other Spanish settlements in Panama. News spread of the victories, and Vernon was celebrated as a hero back in England.

  In 1741 Britain’s naval hero was ordered to destroy the remaining Spanish colonies in the New World and given a massive force to accomplish the mission. It included 29 ships of the line, 22 frigates, and 135 transport and supply vessels as well as more than 15,000 sailors and some 12,000 marines and soldiers. The fighting force also included roughly 3,600 colonial troops from America under Colonel William Gooch of Virginia. The admiral’s main target was the Spanish stronghold at Cartagena, in present-day Colombia.

  Despite the impressive size of his fleet, nearly everything that could have gone wrong ultimately did go wrong. In March, Vernon began the blockade and bombardment of Cartagena. However, poor planning and bickering among the British leadership resulted in the armada being inadequately provisioned. The admiral also suspected that his top general, Thomas Wentworth, was inept. Wentworth would soon prove Vernon right. At the same time, yellow fever, dysentery, and typhus struck the ships. Roughly five hundred British soldiers and sailors were already dead by the time the siege began, with another fifteen hundred too sick to fight.

  A garrison of just three thousand men and six warships defended Cartagena. However, the celebrated warrior Vice Admiral Blas de Lezo, who had lost an arm, leg, and eye in previous wars, led them. The wily de Lezo had designed a creative but risky plan for defending the city. Allowing the British to take smaller fortifications, the admiral ordered his men to fall back and inspired them to make a determined defense of the colonial city. For sixty-seven days, the British repeatedly attempted to take the city. A great number of cannonballs poured down on Cartagena while land forces attacked throughout the region. But the walled fortress held long enough for de Lezo’s secret weapon to arrive.

  When the rainy season came, it brought heavy tropical storms that drenched the British fleet and marine assault force. Jungle paths became impassable, and swarms of mosquitos ravaged the invaders, as did the resulting fevers. As the British attack ground to a stop because of the weather, the Spanish concentrated their fire on the main British warships with devastating accuracy.

  Even though the Spanish lost all six of their ships and five small forts, the battle was calamitous for the British. It is estimated that Vernon suffered between 9,500 and 18,000 dead, with another 7,500 wounded and sick. The Royal Navy lost six ships, more than two dozen transports and supply craft, and fifteen hundred guns. Another seventeen warships were badly damaged. Admiral Vernon was forced to withdraw. Determined to achieve victory elsewhere and salvage the invasion, Vernon sailed to Cuba. But disease, jungle terrain, tactical miscalculations, and a determined guerrilla resistance once again decimated the British.

  Vernon was forced to abandon Cuba. The proud Royal Navy was again embarrassed. Compounding the defeat was the fact that, with so many warships engaged in the grand invasion, British merchant craft were left unescorted. While the Royal Navy was otherwise preoccupied, Spanish privateers wreaked havoc on British shipping and trade in the Atlantic and West Indies. Back home, shame quickly turned to outrage, and in 1742 both Vernon and Wentworth were recalled to London. By the end of hostilities in May 1742, the majority of British sailors and soldiers in the expeditionary force had died from disease in the disastrous campaign. The government of Robert Walpole soon collapsed.

  The War of Jenkins’ Ear was not without other consequences for history. The captain of the marines serving on Admiral Vernon’s flagship, HMS Princess Caroline, was Lawrence Washington, who would later name his home overlooking the Potomac River back in Virginia for his admiral. A few years later, the tuberculosis Captain Washington likely contracted during his service in Vernon’s disastrous campaign worsened. After numerous failed efforts to treat the ailment, Lawrence was urged to seek relief in the warm environs of Barbados. Joining him on the trip in November and December 1751 was his teenage half brother, George. Sad to say, not even the tropical paradise could save Lawrence Washington; he succumbed to the disease in 1752. Ownership of Mount Vernon eventually passed to the younger Washington, who grew up wanting to emulate his older sibling by serving in uniform.

  It was also during the Washington brothers’ trip to Barbados that George contracted smallpox, but survived. As it turned out, his experience with the disease proved fortuitous when the scourge swept through the colonies during the Revolutionary War. The incident in Barbados had prompted the commander of the colonial army to have his men inoculated against the disease, thus avoiding a potentially devastating loss of colonial troops. These inoculations would also help save the lives of many of those suffering aboard the British prison ships when the disease tore through their holds.

  There is another historical footnote from the conflict. One of the vessels involved in the War of Jenkins’ Ear was the HMS Jersey. The powerful, sixty-gun warship was a key part of Admiral Vernon’s fleet that attacked Cartagena. The campaign marked the new ship’s first naval battle and the first of several doomed missions. The captain’s log reveals that the ship suffered a second defeat after the disaster in the waters off Colombia. In June 1745 the Jersey was badly damaged, as described by her senior officer: “The braces, bowlines shot away several times, also the staysail halyards. The running rigging very much shattered. The main topsail yard shot… the foremast shot through about the collar of the mainstay, and another wound in the after part of the mast… the mainmast shot about two thirds up from the deck and divided [to] the starboard.” The warship was nearly lost at sea. As the captain wrote of the desperate situation, “Ship making 11 inches of water an hour occasioned by two shots in the counter, under the water line.”
/>
  These disastrous missions proved to be an ominous start for what would become one of history’s most ill-fated ships. Like her namesakes before her—other British warships that ended up being captured, burned, or destroyed—the Jersey seemed to many to be cursed. Little did anyone know that the ship was headed for infamy during the American Revolution.

  The British armada that fought in several campaigns included a series of warships commissioned by the Royal Navy in the early eighteenth century. The vessels were classified by, among other characteristics, the number of cannons they carried. “First rate” designations were for ships with one hundred guns, “second rate” ships carried roughly ninety guns, and “third rate” warships were fitted with seventy to eighty cannons. The Jersey was built for sixty guns, marking her as a “fourth rate” ship of the line. Though smaller than His Majesty’s largest warships, the Jersey was nonetheless one of the most powerful and technologically advanced ships afloat when she was built. She was one of several ships of roughly the same size constructed in England that decade from an official regulation and rating scheme for warships developed in 1733.*

  The Jersey’s armaments included twenty-four massive, 24-pound cannons on the gun deck, which functioned as the main firing platform of the ship. The warship also boasted twenty-six 9-pound cannons on the upper deck, eight small 6-pounders on the quarterdeck—near the stern of the ship—and two small guns on the forecastle by the ship’s bow. During times of war the ship often mounted anywhere from four to fourteen additional guns and was crewed by fully 450 officers, sailors, and marines.