His uncle, however, received him as an
assistant in the Commissary Department, and when the brig Pilgrim, of
Stonington, was commissioned to make war on the public enemy, the
rejected volunteer was warmly welcomed on board by his kinsman,
Captain Humphrey Crary.
The first night after putting to sea, the Pilgrim encountered a
British fleet just entering the Vineyard Sound. A chase and running
fight of several hours ensued, but at length the vessel was crippled
and compelled to surrender. The prize was taken into Holmes' Hole, and
the crew subsequently brought to New York. Mr. Henry Palmer thus
describes the Jersey, which was his father's destination.
"The Jersey never left her anchorage at the Wallabout, whether from
decrepitude, or the intolerable burden of woes and wrongs accumulated
in her wretched hulk,--but sank slowly down at last into the subjacent
ooze, as if to hide her shame from human sight, and more than forty
years after my father pointed out to me at low tide huge remnants of
her unburied skeleton.
"On board of this dread Bastile were crowded year after year, some
1,400 prisoners, mostly Americans. The discipline was very strict,
while the smallest possible attention was paid by their warders to the
sufferings of the captives. Cleanliness was simply an impossibility,
where the quarters were so narrow, the occupants so numerous, and
little opportunity afforded for washing the person or the tatters that
sought to hide its nakedness.
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