CHAPTER XXII.
THE PRISON SHIP.
A thirty-six gun frigate, the Alceste, crowded with French prisoners, had for some reason, I know not what, come into the old harbour of Rye, which was then becoming rapidly choked up with sand, and unfortunately she became, as the sailors term it, neaped, which means being left so far aground by the neap-tide, which there rises to the height of seventeen feet, that there was no chance of her floating even at high-water, until the spring-tide flowed again.
In this state she lay imbedded in the sand, and careened over to port, much to the discomfort of those on board.
Several brawls having ensued among the prisoners, as the marine guard had been withdrawn (to partake in a third, and, as it proved in the sequel, most disastrous expedition to the coast of France), the officer in command applied for a guard of dismounted dragoons, the Greys being the nearest troops at hand; and thus with twenty men of the light troop I found myself doing marine duty on board H.M. ship Alceste.
In her commander I recognised one of the junior officers of Lord Howe's ship, a young lieutenant, for the frigate had all her guns out save two, and was simply degraded to the rank of a floating prison. He welcomed me all the more warmly that he was a countryman of mine, and one who spoke his native dialect in all its Doric breadth and native purity. He was afterwards that Captain I—— who commanded the Belliqueux, 64, at Camperdown, and who in the beginning of the action, on failing to make out Lord Duncan's signals amid the smoke, after various attempts flung the signal book on deck, and shouted from the poop—
"Up wi' yer helm, damme, and gang doon into the middle o't!" Then running in between two of the enemy's ships he shortened sail, and engaged his guns on both sides at once.
Now lest the reader may never have seen a hulk crowded with French prisoners, I shall sketch briefly a little of what we saw on board of the Alceste.
A few seamen and petty officers composed her crew, and she had on board, and under their care, four hundred desperadoes, as she was the condemned ship of the larger hulks which lay moored in Portsmouth harbour and elsewhere, being the receptacle for those prisoners whose misconduct, desperate character, or violent disposition rendered them obnoxious to rule and to the rest of their comrades.
Each of these prisoners when brought on board was provided with a suit of yellow uniform, this colour being deemed sufficiently remarkable to ensure notice and recapture in case of escape being effected. Each had also a hammock and bedding. To cook their rations certain men were elected by themselves, and the sole duty imposed upon the general body was the simple task of keeping themselves clean, the space they occupied between decks neat and tidy, and of bringing up their hammocks daily to air in the nettings.
Soldiers or seamen with loaded muskets were posted at various parts of the vessel, and in the poop cabins were two twenty-four pounders kept loaded; and these, in case of revolt or disturbance could be run through ports in the bulkhead, to sweep the decks with grape and canister shot.
On the main deck was a railed space named the pound, wherein the prisoners were allowed to walk and amuse themselves during the day; and there they were at liberty to expose for sale those boxes of dominoes, toy ships, buttons, bodkins, and other trifles, which, with the native ingenuity of their country, French prisoners were wont to manufacture from their ration bones and pieces of wood given to them by the ship carpenter.
But from the character of our prisoners—the refuse of the other prison hulks—I found few such traces of industry on board the Alceste.
In consequence of the absence of the marines, the discomfort of the ship while lying careened to port, and her vicinity to the land, Lieutenant I—— soon found the prisoners in a furious state of discontent, and beginning to encourage hopes of breaking loose by cutting a hole in the ship's side with a knife.
The ringleaders he had punished according to his printed regulations; but ten days in the black hole, among rats and bilge-water, extra deck-cleaning duty, and short allowance of hard biscuits and stale "swipes," utterly failed to repress their turbulence and insubordination.
There were sailors, soldiers, privateersmen, merchant-seamen, civilians, and even officers who had broken their parole, crammed together in wretchedness and filth, some of them being almost in a state of nudity, with nothing more than a piece of old sail tied round them, notwithstanding all the excellent regulations of the Transport Board, and the exertions of the officers and slender crew of the Alceste, for most of these Frenchmen were now so desperate and degraded that they cared less for death than life. Thus, never shall I forget the impression made upon me when I looked along the far vista of the lower deck, when the flakes of yellow sunlight were streaming across it through the barred gratings of the triced-up ports, and saw the tattered figures, the scrubby beards, the scarred forms—scarred less in battle than by prison brawls (for some who were obnoxious to the rest were horribly mutilated)—the shock heads of black, uncombed hair, the unwashed visages and bloodshot eyes of those prisoners—the dull apathy of some, the ferocious hate exhibited by others; and when I heard the yells, screams, obscenity and mockery with which they greeted us as new comers, and chiefly when my guard, as a hint, deliberately loaded their carbines with ball-cartridge before them.
"From what do all these miseries and disorders arise?" I asked, as we retired and entered the great cabin, the windows of which faced to the coast of Kent.
"You may well inquire," replied Lieutenant I——; "they have their origin in an inordinate passion for gambling."
"Gambling?"
"Yes; you would be astonished," continued the lieutenant, whose dialect I render in English, "if you knew how these incorrigible wretches persevere in a vice that ends in the death of many and the misery of all. Their clothes, their beds, their rations, the hair of their heads, and their very teeth, they convert into objects on which to hazard the turn of a card or a cast of the dice. For months in advance many of them have lost all their food to more fortunate or more knavish gamblers; and so hard of heart have some of these become, that they will see their victims perish of hunger before their eyes without bestowing a morsel to alleviate their sufferings. Many have died on the lower deck, naked, of cold in the winter, and others of sheer starvation. In the stomachs of two, who were thus found dead in the cable-tier yesterday, our surgeon found only a little water. I have had small-arm men posted over the mess-tables with loaded pistols, to force each man to eat his own rations, whether gambled away or not; and all night long we have to watch every portion of the ship, as they are for ever cutting holes in her sheathing with knives they have secreted—holes for the purpose of escaping or of scuttling her with all on board. So, sir," he added, with an oath, "you are likely to find yourself in pleasant company."
It would seem that on finding the ship stranded in Rye Harbour, and so near the shore, a privateersman, notorious as a ringleader in every disorder, cut, with the help of a knife—the edge of which he had serrated as a saw—one of those holes to which my friend referred, on the starboard side and just amidships.
This had been discovered in time, and in accordance with standing orders every prisoner in that part of the ship had been put upon half-rations to defray the expense of the repair, which the carpenter stated at twenty-five pounds sterling.
A dreadful uproar ensued when this information was communicated to the Frenchmen. Wet swabs, holystones, belaying-pins, pieces of wood torn from the hatch way-combings and deck-gratings, mops, brooms, and everything available as a weapon, were in immediate requisition; and the prisoners broke into open revolt on the third day after we were on board.
The drum beat to arms, the crew drove below all who were in the pound, battened down the hatches, and promptly ran the two twenty-four pounders through the bulkhead aft to sweep the deck forward if necessary; but so much was the vessel careened over in the sand that the guns failed to work well. Thus my twenty dismounted Greys, with their carbines loaded, were formed in line across the deck, ready for whatever might ensue; Lieutenant I—— having of course command of the whole.
As the disorder was at its height, and several missiles had been flung at us, I gave the orders—
"Ready—present!" but on finding that the din was instantly hushed, I added, "Advance arms!"
Stepping forward a few paces, and taking advantage of the lull, I was proceeding to address the prisoners in the most conciliatory terms, when the privateersman—a tall, strong, and swarthy fellow from Martinique—with silver rings in his ears, and naked to the waist, rushed upon me with a knife, in eluding which I stumbled and fell.
On seeing this, believing me to be stabbed, Tom Kirkton cried—
"Let us shoot them down—fire!"
Then a volley of carbines was poured in. This shot the privateersman and another dead, and severely wounded ten more. A terrible scene then took place at the hatchways, as the fugitives scrambled, tumbled, and rolled over each other—falling through in heaps in their haste to escape to the lower hold, cockpit, cable-tier, or anywhere; all save those who lay on the deck, and one, a many in tattered uniform, who stood calmly with arms folded, and with his back to the mainmast, eyeing us with steady disdain, as if waiting for the next platoon.
With my sword drawn, I stepped forward to question this rash man, and then judge my emotion on recognising in him the—Chevalier de Boisguiller!