I heard this. One of the new regulations was to the effect
that every captive trying to get away should suffer instant death, and
should not even be taken on board alive."
It appears that David Laird commanded the Old Jersey from 1778 until
early in the year 1781. He was then relieved of the command, and this
office was given to a man named John Sporne, or Spohn, until the 9th
of April, 1783, when all the prisoners remaining in her were released,
and she was abandoned. The dread of contagion kept visitors aloof. She
was still moored in the mud of the Wallabout by chain cables, and
gradually sank lower and lower. There is a beam of her preserved as a
curiosity at the Naval Museum at Brooklyn.
David Laird, the Scotchman who commanded her until the early part of
1781, returned to New York after the peace of 1783 as captain of a
merchant ship, and moored his vessel at or near Peck's Slip. A number
of persons who had been prisoners on board the Jersey, and had
suffered by his cruelty, assembled on the wharf to receive him, but he
deemed it prudent to remain on ship-board during the short time his
vessel was there.
It is in the recollections of Ebenezer Fox that we have the only
mention ever made of a woman on board that dreadful place, the Old
Jersey, and although she may have been and probably was an abandoned
character, yet she seems to have been merciful, and unwilling to see
the prisoners who were attempting to escape, butchered before her
eyes.
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