HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 335

as prison-ships. The latter vessel being destroyed by fire in March, 1780, her place in the Wallabout was supplied, shortly after, by the “Stromboli,”1 “Scorpion,”2 and ‘Hunter,” all nominally hospital

the “Good Hope,” and , it must (for once) be acknowledged, are all very well and healthy—only one hundred and fifty left.” About this time, also, she was dismantled, and her sells, spars, etc., advertised to be sold. In September, ’79, there were many sick on board. The New Hampshire Gazette, of November 2d, ’79, says that, at one o’clock on the previous morning, nine captains, and two privates, effected their escape from this vessel, then lying in the North River. They confined the mate, disarmed the sentinels, and hoisted out the boat, which was on deck, and took with them nine stand of arms and ammunition. They had scarce got clear before an alarm was given, which brought upon them a fire from these vessels, which, however, did not harm them. The escaped men spoke in the highest terms of the commander of the prison-ship, Captain Nelson, who used the prisoners with a great deal of humanity. Rivington’s Gazette, of March 8, ’80, thus chronicles the destruction of this vessel: “Last Sunday afternoon, the ‘Good Hope’ prison-ship, lying in the Wallebocht Bay, was entirely consumed, after having been wilfully set on fire by a Connecticut man, named Woodbury, who confessed the fact. He, with others of the incendiaries, are removed to the Provost. The prisoners let each other down from the port-holes and decks into the water.” The English Commissary, Sproat, writing to the American Commissary, Skinner, in February, 1781, says of this vessel: “Carpenters ran a bulkhead across the prison-ship Good Hope; the officers berthed abaft and the men before this partition. Two excellent large stoves were erected, one for the officers, another for the men. The hospital-ship was equipped in the same manner, and every sick or wounded person had a cradle, bedding, surgeons. In this comfortable situation did the prisoners remain till March 5, 1780, when they wilfully burned the best prison-ships in the world (!) The perpetrators were not hanged, but ordered to the Provost. The ship lay in the Wallabocht, near a number of transports, whose people were so alert In snatching the prisoners from the flames, that but two out of some hundreds were missing. They were put in the nearest ship, the Woodlands, where they remained a short time, till the ships Stromboli and Scorpion were got ready.”

1 The STROMBOLI was originally a fire-ship, and, like the Scorpion, was present at the siege of Quebec, in 1759. She came out here at the commencement of the Revolution, in company with the Jersey, in Commodore Hotham’s fleet. She was commanded, when a prison-ship, from August 21st to December 10th, 1780, by Jeremiah Downer, and never had less than one hundred and fifty prisoners, and oftener over two hundred, on board. She was advertised for sale, December 6th, 1780 (in which advertisement she was still mentioned as a fire-ship), but no purchaser appeared.

2 The SCORPION was originally a sloop-of-war of four guns, and appears in the list of the navy as early as 1756. She was in the fleet, under Admiral Saunders, at the reduction of Quebec, in 1759; came out here again at the commencement of the Revolutionary War, and formed one of Sir George Collier’s fleet, which destroyed the towns of Fairfield, Norwalk, and Greenwich, Conn., in 1779. In 1780, she became a prisonhulk, and was anchored in the North River. Philip Freneau, who, with some three hundred others, was confined in her, has preserved, in poetry, an interesting and vivid picture of the sufferings of himself and fellow-prisoners:

“Thou, Scorpion, fatal to thy crowded throng,
Dire theme of horror and Plutonian song,