" His original manuscript was
first published in 1829.
Dring describes the prison ships as leaky old hulks, condemned as
unfit for hospitals or store ships, but considered good enough for
prisoners doomed to speedy annihilation. He says:
"There is little doubt that the superior officers of the Royal Navy
under whose exclusive jurisdiction were these ships, intended to
insure, as far as possible, the good health of those who were confined
on board of them; there is just as little doubt, however, that the
inferior officers, under whose control those prisoners were more
immediately placed, * * * too often frustrated the purposes of their
superior officers, and too often disgraced humanity, by their wilful
disregard of the policy of their Government, and of the orders of
their superiors, by the uncalled-for severity of their treatment of
those who were placed in their custody, and by their shameless
malappropriation of the means of support which were placed in their
hands for the sustenance of the prisoners."
However that may be, the superior officers must have known that the
prison ships were unfit for human habitation; that they were fearfully
overcrowded; and that the mortality on board of them was unprecedented
in the annals of prison life.
The introduction to Captain Drings's recollections declares, what is
well known, that General Washington possessed but limited authority;
he was the Commander-in-Chief of the army, but had nothing to do with
the American Navy, and still less with the crews of privateers, who
made up a very large portion of the men on board the Jersey.
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