HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 343

the poisonous effects of meat boiled in the “great copper,” prepared their own food, by permission, separate from the general mesa in that receptacle. For this purpose, a great number of spikes and hooks had been driven into the brick-work by which the boiler was enclosed, on which to suspend their tin kettles. As soon as we were permitted to go on deck in the morning, some one took the tin-kettle belonging to the mess, with as much water and such splinters of wood as we had been able to procure during the previous day,1 and carried them to the galley; and there, having suspended

top; the copper was then filled up with water, and the cover put on. Our fuel was green chestnut. The cook would commence his fire by seven or eight in the morning, and frequently he would not get his copper to boil until twelve o’clock; and sometimes, when it was stormy weather, it would be two or three o’clock. I have known it to be the case that he could not get it to boil in the course of the day. Those circumstances might sometimes be owing to a want of judgment in the cooks, who were frequently exchanged. These misfortunes in the cooks, would occasion many bitter complaints and heavy curses from the half-starved, emaciated, and imperious prisoners. Each mew would take its meat, thus half-cooked and divide it among themselves as it was. A murmur is heard, probably in every mew, and from almost every tongue. The cook is denounced, or perhaps declines any further service; another volunteers his services, and, probably, in a few. days, shares the fate of his predecessors.” John Van Dyck, a prisoner on board the Jersey in May, 1780, says he went one day to draw the pork for his mess, “and each one of us eat our day’s allowance in one mouthful of this salt pork, and nothing else.” One day, called “pea-day,” he went to the galley, with the drawer of a sea-chest for a soup-dish, and “received the allowance of my mess; and, behold! brown water and fifteen floating peas—no peas on the bottom of my drawer and this for six men's allowance for twenty—four hours. The peas were all on the bottom of the kettle; those left would be taken to New York, and, I suppose, sold. One day in the week, called ‘pudding-day,’ three pounds of damaged flour; in it would be green lumps, such as the men could not eat; and one pound of very bad raisins, one third sticks. We would pick out the sticks, mash the lumps of flour, put all, with some water, in our drawer, mix our pudding and put it into a bag, with a tally tied to it, with the number of our mess. This was a day’s allowance.” He also relates an instance of cruelty on the part of Captain Laird, commander of the Jersey, who one day ordered two half-hogshead tubs, in which the daily allowance of rum for the prisoners had been mixed into grog, to be upset on the main docks, in full view of the famished wretches, whose feelings of disappointment, as they saw it run through the ship’s scuppers into the water, may be better imagined than described.” Coffin also says that, “on the upper deck of the Jersey, hogs were kept in pens, by those officers who had charge of her, for their own use. They were sometimes fed with bran. The prisoners, whenever they could get an opportunity, undiscovered by the sentries, would, with their tin pots, scoop the bran from the troughs, and eat it (after boiling, when there was fire in the galley, which was not always the case) with seemingly as good an appetite as the hogs themselves.”

1 Dring (p. 98) mentions that this was an article which could not be purchased from the sutler and the procuring of a sufficient quantity was Òa continual source of trouble and anxiety.Ó Sometimes the cooks would steal small quantities, which they sold to