Our prison ship was moored in what they called Gillingham reach. We would here remark, that the river, and Thames, and Medway make, like all other rivers near to their outlets, many turnings or bendings; some forming a more obtuse, and some a more acute angle with their banks. This course of the river compels a vessel to stretch along in one direction, and then to stretch along in a very different direction. What the English call reaching, we in America call stretching. Each of these different courses of the river they call "reaches." They have their long reach and their short reach, and a number of reaches, under local, or less obvious names. Some are named after some of their own pirates, which is here and there designated by a gibbet; a singular object, be sure, to greet the eye of a stranger on entering the grand watery avenue of the capital of the British empire. But there is no room for disputing concerning our tastes. The reach where our prison was moored was about three miles below Chatham; and is named from the village of Gillingham. Now whether reach or stretch be the most proper term for an effort to sail against the wind, is left to be settled by those reverend monopolizers of all the arts and sciences, the London Reviewers; who, by the way, and we mention it pro bono publico, would very much increase their stock of knowledge and usefulness, if they would depute a few missionaries, for their own reverend body, to pass and repass the Atlantic in a British transport, containing in its black hole an hundred or two of Yankee prisoners of war: We do wish that the London Quarterly Reviewers particularly would take a trip in the Malabar; it would, if they should be so fortunate as to survive the voyage, make them better judges of the character of the English nation, and of the American nation, and of that nearly lost tribe, the Caledonian nation.
There were thirteen prison ships beside our own, all ships of the line, and one hospital ship, moored near each other. They were filled, principally, with Frenchmen, Danes and Italians. We found on our arrival twelve hundred Americans, chiefly men who had been impressed on board British men of war, and who had given themselves up, with a declaration that they would not fight against their own countrymen, and they were sent here and confined, without any distinction made between them and those who had been taken in arms. The injustice of the thing is glaring. During the night the prisoners were confined on the lower deck and on the main deck; but in the day time they were allowed the privilege of the "pound," so called, and the forecastle;—which was a comfortable arrangement compared with the black holes of the Regulus and Malabar. There were three officers on board our ship, a lieutenant, a sailing master, and a surgeon, together with sixty marines and a few invalids, or superannuated seamen to go in the boats. The whole were under the command of a commodore, while captain Hutchinson, agent for the prisoners of war, exercised a sort of control over the whole; but the butts and bounds of their jurisdiction I never knew. The commodore visited each of the prison ships every month, to hear and redress complaints, and to correct abuses, and to enforce wholesome regulations. All written communications, and all intercourse by letter passed through the hands of captain Hutchinson. If the letters contained nothing of evil tendency, they were suffered to pass; but if they contained any thing which the agent deemed improper, they were detained.
We found our situation materially altered for the better. Our allowance of food was more consonant to humanity than at Halifax, much more to the villanous scheme of starvation on board the Regulus, and the still more execrable Malabar. Our allowance of food here was half a pound of beef and a gill of barley, one pound and a half of bread, for five days in the week, and one pound of cod fish, and one pound of potatoes, or one pound of smoked herring, the other two days; and porter and small beer were allowed to be sold to us.—Boats with garden vegetables visited the ship daily; so that we now lived in clover compared with our former hard fare and cruel treatment. Upon the whole, I believe that we fared as well as could be expected, all things considered; and had such fare as we could do very well with; not that we fared so well as the British prisoners fare in America. Rich as the English nation is, it cannot well afford to feed us as we feed the British prisoners; such is the difference in the two countries in point of cheap food. On thanksgiving days, and on Christmas days, and such like holy days, we, in America, used to treat these European prisoners with geese, turkies, and plumb pudding. Many of these fellows declared that they never in their lives sat down to a table to a roasted turkey, or even a roasted goose. It is a fact, that when the time approached for drafting the British prisoners in Boston harbor, to send to Halifax to exchange them for our own men, several of the patriotic Englishmen, and many Irishmen, ran away; and when taken showed as much chagrin as our men would have felt, had they attempted to desert and run home from Halifax prison, and had been seized and brought back! This is a curious fact, and worthy the attention of the British politician. An American, in England, pines to get home; while an Englishman and an Irishman longs to become an American citizen! Ye wise men of England! the far famed England! the proud island whence we originally sprang, ponder well this fact; and confess that it will finally operate a great change in our respective countries; and that your thousand ships, your vast commerce, and your immense (factitious) riches cannot alter it. This inclination, or disposition, growing up in the hearts of that class of your subjects who are more disposed to follow the bent of their natural appetites than to cultivate patriotic opinions, will one day hoist our "bits of striped bunting" over those of your now predominating flag, and you long sighted politicians, see it as well as I do. The hard fare of your sailors and soldiers, the scoundrelism of some of your officers, especially those concerned in your provision departments; but above all, your shocking cruel punishments in your navy and in your army, have lessened their attachment to their native country. England has, from the beginning, blundered most wretchedly, for want of consulting the human heart, in preference to musty parchments; and the equally useless books on the law of nations. Believe me, ye great men of England, Scotland, Ireland and Berwick upon Tweed! that one chapter from the Law of Human Nature, is worth more than all your libraries on the law of nations. Beside, gentlemen, your situation is a new one. No nation was ever so situated and circumstanced as you are, with regard to us, your descendants. The history of nations does not record its parallel. Why then have recourse to books, or maritime laws, or written precedents?—In the code of the law of nations, you stand in need of an entirely New Chapter. We Americans, we despised Americans, are accumulating, as fast as we well can, the materials for that chapter. Your government began to write this chapter in blood; and for two years past we co-operated with you in the same way. Nothing stands still within the great frame of nature. On every sublunary thing mutability is written. Nothing can arrest the destined course of republics and kingdoms.
It is singular that while the Englishman and Irishman are disposed to abandon their native countries to dwell with us in this new world, the Scotchman has rarely shown that inclination. No—Sawney is loyal, and talks as big of his king and his country, as would an English country squire, surrounded by his tenants, his horses, and his dogs. It is singular that the Laplander, and the inhabitant of Iceland, are as much attached to their frightful countries, as the inhabitant of Italy, France or England; and when avarice, and the thirst for a domineering command leads the Scotchman out of his native rocks and barren hills, and treeless country, he talks of it as a second paradise, and as the ancient Egyptians longed after their onions and garlics, so these half-dressed, raw-boned-mountaineers, talk in raptures of their country, of their bag-pipes, their singed sheep's head, and their "haggiss." The only way that I can think