356 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

accommodation of the sick from between docks. The horrors of the old hulk were now increased a hundred-fold. Foul air, confinement, darkness, hunger, thirst, the slow poison of the malarious locality in which the ship was anchored, the torments of vermin, the suffocating heat alternating with cold, and, above all, the almost total absence of hope, performed their deadly work unchecked. “The whole ship, from her keel to the taffrail, was equally affected, and contained pestilence sufficient to desolate a world-disease and death were wrought into her very timbers.”

Notwithstanding the increasing mortality on board the Jersey, new arrivals more than supplied the vacancies occasioned by death, and the ship became unbearably crowded. In their despair, the prisoners, early in June, 1782, bethought themselves of petitioning General Clinton, then in command at New York, for permission to transmit a memorial to General Washington, describing their pitiable condition, and soliciting his influence in their behalf. The favor was unexpectedly granted by the British general, and three messengers, chosen by the crew from among their own number, were authorized to leave the ship on this embassy. In addition to the written memorial which they bore, they were directed to state, in a manner more explicit than they dared to commit to paper, the peculiar horror of their situation; the miserable food and water on which they were obliged to subsist; and to promise him that if their release could be procured, they would gladly enter the American army, and serve during the remainder of the war as soldiers.

In a few days after, the prisoners were summoned to the spardeck to listen to the reading of General Washington’s reply; in which he expressed his deepest sympathy with their condition, and his determination to mitigate its severities by every means within his power. To the messengers personally, he had fully explained that their long detention in captivity was owing to a combination of circumstances against which it was very difficult, if not impossible, to provide. “That, in the first place, but little exertion was made on the part of our countrymen to secure and detain their British prisonera, for the purpose of exchange; many of the British seamen being captured by privateers, on board which, he understood, it was a common practice for them to enter as seamen; and that, when this