The prisoners were
tempted to enlist to free themselves from confinement, hopeless of
exchange. * * * The prisoners had a pint of water per day:--the sick
were not sent to the hospitals until they were so weak and ill that
they often expired before they got out of the Jersey. The commanding
officer said his orders were that if the ship took fire we should all
be turned below, and left to perish in the flames. By accident the
ship took fire in the steward's room, when the Hessian guards were
ordered to drive the prisoners below, and fire among them if they
resisted or got in the water."
Talbot in his Memoirs stated that: "When the weather became cool and
dry in the fall and the nights frosty the number of deaths on board
the Jersey was _reduced_ to an average of ten per day! which was
_small_ compared with the mortality for three months before. The
human bones and skulls yet bleaching on the shore of Long Island, and
exposed by the falling down of the high bank, on which the prisoners
were buried, is a shocking sight." (Talbot, page 106.)
In May, 1808, one William Burke of New York testified that "He was a
prisoner in the Jersey 14 months, has known many American prisoners
put to death by the bayonet. It was the custom for but one prisoner at
a time to go on deck. One night while many prisoners were assembled at
the grate, at the hatchway to obtain fresh air, and waiting their turn
to go on deck, a sentinel thrust his bayonet down among them, and 25
next morning were found to be dead.
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