HISTORY OF BROOKLYN 333

Great, however, as were the sufferings of those incarcerated within the prisons of the city, they were exceeded, if possible, by those of the unfortunate naval prisoners who languished in the “prisonships” of the ‘Walleboght.” These were originally the transportvessels in which the cattle and other supplies of the British army had been brought to America, in 1776, and which had been anchored in Gravesend Bay, and occupied by the prisoners taken in the Battle of Brooklyn. Upon the occupation of the city by the British forces, these soldiers were transferred to the prisons on shore, and the transports, anchored in the Hudson and East rivers, were devoted more especially to the marine prisoners, whose numbers were rapidly increasing, owing to the frequent capture of American privateers by the king’s cruisers.

“A large transport, named the Whitby,” says General JEREMIAH JOHNSON,1 “was the first prison-ship anchored in Wallabout.” She was moored near ‘Remsen’s mill,’ about the twentieth of October, 1776, and was then crowded with prisoners. Many landsmen were prisoners on board this vessel; she was said to be the most sickly of all the prison-ships. Bad provisions, bad water, and

held as authentic, he made the following statements in regard to his treatment of the American prisoners:” I shudder to think of the murders I have been accessary to, both with and without orders from Government, especially while in New York; during which time there were more than two thousand prisoners starved in the different churches, by stopping their rations, which I sold. There were also two hundred and seventy-five American prisoners and obnoxious persons executed, out of all which number there were only about one dozen public executions, which chiefly consisted of British and Hessian deserters. The mode for private executions was thus conducted: a guard was dispatched from the Provost, about half-past twelve at night, to the Barrack street, and the neighborhood of the upper barracks, to order the people to shut their window-shutters, and put out their lights, forbidding them at the same time to presume to look out of their windows and doors on pain of death, after which the unfortunate prisoners were conducted, gagged, just behind the upper barracks, and hung without ceremony, and there buried by the black pioneer of the Provost.” Watson, in his Annals of New York, states that Cunningham hung five or six of a night, until the women of the neighborhood, distressed by the cries and pleadings of the prisoners for mercy, petitioned Howe to have the practice discontinued. Common fame charged Cunningham with selling, and even poisoning, the prisoners’ food, exchanging good for bad provisions, and continuing to draw their rations after their death, or, as they worded it, “he fed the dead, and starved the living.” It was not till the spring of 1788, towards the close of the war, that a monthly list of prisoners was printed in Rivington’s Gazette.

1 Naval Magazine, 467, 469