A DARTMOOR MEMORIAL

Evening Star, Issue 19919, 16 July 1928, Page 13

A DARTMOOR MEMORIAL

| AMERICAN PRISONERS OF 1813-15 $ A STRANGE CHAPTER OF HISTORY A memorial gateway in memory of 218 American prisoners of war who died there between 1813 and 1815 has just been unveiled at Dartmoor by- Mrs Samuel Williams Earle, chairman of the National Society of United States Daughters of 1812. The memorial has been built by convict labour for the society, an American body. The gateway will be a memorial not only to these American prisoners, but to an almost incredible period in prison history, which provided B£r Eden Phillpotts with the subject of his Dartmoor story, ‘ The American Prisoner,’ and is vividly described by Sir Basil Thomson in ‘The Story of Dartmoor Prison.’ In those days the prison boundary enclosed fifteen acres teeming with every kind of social life and social iniquity. “ Within the dotible ring of masonry,” says Sir Basil, “ wore met men who had been gathered from nearly every nation under heaven to fight against England under tho Tri-colour and Stars and Stripes. . . . The War Prison was an overcrowded city without women; with its own laws, its own schools, manufactures, and arts, its workshops where coin could bo counterfeited and Bank of 'England notes forged.” The prisoners represented every social rank, from officer of tho Grande Arnieo and negro general from Hayti to tho sansculotte from the Fau boiirg St. Antoine. When the first draft of 250 American prisoners was transferred there from the old line of battleships, Meteor and La Brave, in April, 1813, the prison was garrisoned by a detachment of artillery as well as a battalion of militia, changed every two months for politic reasons. Sentries were always in danger of assault by stabbing (with knives forged secretly in tho workshops! and stone-throwing. The week s food ration, admitted] v insufficient, comprised • Mondav and Tuesday; Jib beef, Jib cabbage and turnips. Thursday, Saturday, Sunday: loz Scots barley, £oz onions Wednesday: Ulb wholemeal bread, 11b herrings, lib potatoes. Friday: 11b dry codfish, 11b potatoes. Ulb bread. And the contractors, of course, cheated when they could. FRENCH MAKE THEMSELVES AT HOME Tho bleak moor was under snow when tho Americans arrived to occupy buildings already overcrowded with French, who resented them. These French had evolved for themselves in the piison something approaching the ordinary life of a French town, with social grades, manufactures, dancing and social deportment classes, and theatre, while the more prosperous, on money drafts from Franco, engaged boys to wait on them—many American boys of thirteen or so served in this way later—and swaggered about in finery made by prison tailors from materials puichased m the prisoners’ daily market! They practised swordsmanship, fought duels, gambled. The Americans, on tho other hand, were too poor to afford even soap and tobacco —until the American Agent m London some time lutoi proem cd them an allowance of lid a day lor the purpose. They became so disgruntled that the agent-governor of tho prison, a Capfain Cotgrave. fearing revolt, bundled them into tho “ slum ’ part of the prison, No. 4, occupied by some hundreds of ‘‘ unspeakable Romans,” a uiinio given to the lowest riff-raff among tho French, who, by their vice and crimes, had rendered themselves unfit to associate with other prisoners. All the Americans could do was to threaten to enlist in the British Navy if their agent in London could not obtain redress—and many subsequently did. THE FOURTH OF JULY. On the Fourth of July a celebration of Independence Day with smuggled Stars and Stripes led to a scuffle with guards; a week later there was_ tho inevitable “scrap” with the bellicose Romans, in which forty, mostlv Americans, were wounded after a charge by tho guard. Smallpox _ followed. Tho winter in 1813 was bitterly cold; in January rations could not get over the snowed-up Dartmoor roads, drifts reached the tops of the walls; many of the needy Americans had sold their bedding to tho French, and had to sleep on stone floors in an ice-house temperature. There was an abortive escape by eight' of the more adventurous. But the Americans, too, began to organise—drew up a penal code among themselves, appointed committees and leaders, even opened a coffee stall bearing this most Yankee inscription : At hap’urth a point hot teay sold heaer, Hot kofy at dubblo tho furst, If les, in a week, byr hoka we fear, We shud falo, so dam’me—no trust. Tno negroes and "bad whites’’were segregated under a 6ft 7in bully negro. Big Dick, who became judge and executioner, with no appeal against his tyranny, and won for himself the right to roam Priucetown village and tho moor at will. "It is curious to note,” writes Sir Basil, “that at this period there was no race feeling against the negroes; the American prisoners did not ask for separation until the continual thefts of tho blacks became unbearable.” A VAST TUNNELLING. SCHEME. The Americans settled down. They traded with the French, imitated them in carving ships, dominoes, and chessmen out of beef hones, and so forth. Tho second Fourth of July was a swagger affair, with hogsheads of porter and gallons of rum, as well as abundant Stars and Stripes, and a banner inscribed: “ Canada or DartI moor Prison for life!” One Charles Andrews mounted a tub, and delivered himself of a bellicose oration • against the British, with British officers sardonically looking on. The Americans’ final your or so at Dartmoor was one of sensations; first a vast tunnelling scheme, with every man sworn on his Bible to secrecy, and plans to seize all the fishing craft in Torbay and get across to France, no one to bo taken alive; then, in April, 1815. hell let loose over a mainly-mis-understood demonstration at the main gate, followed by panic and massacre. What a tumultuous, astonishing chapter in prison annals! And when the benighted 5,000 and more began to trail off to ship and home in 181.6, what a G!nd-be-thankccl release! Tho 218 who “stayed on” arc worthily remembered by this gateway erected at the behest of American women. As gateways go in such places, it is, alas! something over a century too late.— ‘ Observer.’