33 Maiden Lane, where they will receive an order how to
dispose of them.
"(Signed) David Sproat."
The Jersey and some of the other prison ships often had landsmen among
their prisoners, at least until the last years of the war, when they
were so overcrowded with sailors, that there must have been scant room
for any one else.
The next prisoner whose recollections we will consider is Captain
Silas Talbot, who was confined on board the Jersey in the fall of
1780. He says: "All her port holes were closed. * * * There were about
1,100 prisoners on board. There were no berths or seats, to lie down
on, not a bench to sit on. Many were almost without cloaths. The
dysentery, fever, phrenzy and despair prevailed among them, and filled
the place with filth, disgust and horror. The scantiness of the
allowance, the bad quality of the provisions, the brutality of the
guards, and the sick, pining for comforts they could not obtain,
altogether furnished continually one of the greatest scenes of human
distress and misery ever beheld. It was now the middle of October, the
weather was cool and clear, with frosty nights, so that the number of
deaths per day was _reduced to an average of ten_, and this
number was considered by the survivors a small one, when compared with
the terrible mortality that had prevailed for three months before. The
human bones and skulls, yet bleaching on the shore of Long Island, and
daily exposed, by the falling down of the high bank on which the
prisoners were buried, is a shocking sight, and manifestly
demonstrates that the Jersey prison ship had been as destructive as a
field of battle.
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