HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 337

won a terrible pre-eminence in the sad history of the prison-ships, of which, indeed, her name has become the synonym. She was originally a fourth-rate sixty-gun ship of the British navy, was built in 1736, and achieved a long and honorable career;1 but, in 1776, being unfit for further active service, was ordered to New York, as a hospital-ship. In this capacity she remained, in the East River, nearly opposite ÒFly Market,Ó until the winter of 1779-80, when she was converted into a prison-ship. For this purpose she was stripped of all her spars, except the bowsprit, a derrick for taking in supplies, and the flagstaff at her stern; her rudder was unhung, and her figurehead removed to decorate some other vessel. Her portholes were closed and securely fastened, and their places supplied by two tiers of small holes, each about twenty inches square, and guarded by two strong bars of iron, crossing at right angles, cut through her sides, for the admission of air. These, however, while they Òadmitted the light by day, and served as breathing-holes at night,Õ by no means furnished that free circulation of air between the decks, which was so imperatively necessary to the health and comfort of the prisoners.

Thus stripped of every thing which constitutes the pride and beauty of a ship, this old hulk, whose unsightly exterior seemed almost to foreshadow the scenes of misery, despair, and death which reigned within, was removed to the solitary and unfrequented Wallabout, where she was moored with chain-cables, nearly opposite the mouth of RemsenÕs mill-race, and about twenty rods from the shore.

The appearance of the Old Jersey, as she lay in the Wallabocht, is thus graphically described by Captain Dring.2 Leaving New York, together with one hundred and thirty prisoners, brought in

time they amounted to twelve hundred.” This was in 1781. Dring says (p. 69): “During my confinement, in the summer of 1782, the average number of prisoners on board the Jersey was about one thousand.” Alexander Coffin (Hist. of Martyrs, p. 29, 82) states that during his first captivity on the Jersey, in 1782, he found about one thousand one hundred American prisoners; and on his second imprisonment, in February, 1783, he found ”more prisoners than he left, though but very few of my former fellow-prisoners. Some of them had got away, but the greater part had paid the debt of nature.”

1 The complete history of the Jersey has been given by H. B. Dawson, in his edition of Dring’s Prison-ship Recollections, pp. 196-198; and by Charles I. Bushnell, in his notes to Adventures of Christopher Hawkins, pp. 202-214.

2 Dring’s Narrative, p. 26.