You must remember a
thousand unutterable calamities; a thousand instances of domestic as
well as national anxiety and distress; which mock description. You
ought to remember them; you ought to hand them down in tradition to
your posterity, that they may know the awful price their fathers paid
for freedom."
CHAPTER XXV
A DESCRIPTION OF THE JERSEY
SONNET
SUGGESTED BY A VISION OF THE JERSEY PRISON SHIP
BY W P P
O Sea! in whose unfathomable gloom
A world forlorn of wreck and ruin lies,
In thy avenging majesty arise,
And with a sound as of the trump of doom
Whelm from all eyes for aye yon living tomb,
Wherein the martyr patriots groaned for years,
A prey to hunger and the bitter jeers
Of foes in whose relentless breasts no room
Was ever found for pity or remorse;
But haunting anger and a savage hate,
That spared not e'en their victim's very corse,
But left it, outcast, to its carrion fate
Wherefore, arise, O Sea! and sternly sweep
This floating dungeon to thy lowest deep
It was stated in the portion of the eloquent oration given in our last
chapter that more than 11,000 prisoners perished on board the Jersey
alone, during the space of three years and a half that she was moored
in the waters of Wallabout Bay. This statement has never been
contradicted, as far as we know, by British authority.
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