Last updated: June 22, 2026
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The Prison Ship Martyrs
R.G. Skerrett 1908. Courtesy of Mr. James Russell, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, 1972.
During the American Revolutionary War, the British used abandoned and decommissioned warships as floating prisons to hold captured American soldiers, sailors, privateers, and civilians who supported independence or refused to swear loyalty to the Crown. Beginning shortly after the Declaration of Independence in 1776, prison ships were stationed in several locations, but the largest and most notorious concentration operated in the waters around New York City and Brooklyn, especially in Wallabout Bay near present-day Brooklyn Navy Yard.
As British-controlled jails on land became overcrowded, thousands of prisoners were confined aboard these ships under horrific conditions. Squalor, deprivation, and overcrowding made survival unlikely. Over the years, smallpox, malnutrition, and neglect killed thousands of prisoners. The HMS Jersey became especially infamous for its brutal conditions and earned the moniker “a little Epitome of Hell” from one of her survivors.
Nearly every man and boy of the more than 11,500 who died on the prison ships remained there of their own free will. Captives were generally offered their freedom should they take up arms for the British side. However, exceedingly few chose to abandon the Patriot cause. Despite their sufferings and exhaustion, prisoners aboard the Jersey recount celebrating the sixth anniversary of American Independence with homemade flags and songs, an act of defiance which earned some of the prisoners fatal wounds at the hands of their captors.
The prison ships were a singularly tragic and gruesome chapter in the struggle for American independence. The Prison Ship Martyrs are remembered today for their loyalty, patriotism, and sacrifice for an imperiled nation.
Jazz Guy, CC BY 2.0
Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument
The monument at Freedom Plaza honors the memory of the prison ship martyrs, American Patriots who endured unimaginable suffering and death.
The eight bronze tableaus that constitute this monument illustrate scenes typical for prisoners placed inside the 16 floating hellholes, especially the HMS Jersey. Records from 1783 indicate that a majority of the 11,500 deaths occurred on this single ship.
Bookhout, Edward, engraver Darley, Felix Octavius Carr
Conditions on the Jersey
After shipping onto a privateer at the age of 15, John Blatchford was captured and sent around the world in British captivity: to prison in Halifax, Nova Scotia; a trial in Britain; hard labor in Sumatra; and eventually, to the prison ship Jersey in New York—twice.
“On my arrival on board the old Jersey, I found there about eleven hundred prisoners; many of them had been there from three to six months, but few lived over that time if they did not get away by some means or other. They were generally in the most deplorable situation, mere walking skeletons, without money, and scarcely clothes to cover their nakedness, and overrun with lice from head to foot.”
“When I reflect how many hundreds of my brave and intrepid brother-seamen and countrymen I have seen in all the bloom of health, brought on board that ship, and in a few days numbered with the dead, in consequence of the savage treatment they there received; I can but adore my Creator that he suffered me to escape; but I did not escape, Sir, without being brought to the very verge of the grave.”
“I was just three months from my leaving the old Jersey, and my being again a prisoner on board of her; and on my return I found but very few of those whom I had left three months before; some had made their escape; some had been exchanged; but the greater part had taken up their abode under the surface of that hill which you can see from your windows, where there bones are mouldering to dust, and mingling with mother earth; a lesson to Americans, written in capitals, on British cruelty and injustice.”
“There were two or three hospital ships near the prison ships; and so soon as any of the prisoners complained of being sick, they were sent on board of one of them; and I verily believe that not one out of a hundred ever returned or recovered. I am sure I never knew but one to recover. Almost (and in fact I believe I may safely say) every morning a large boat from each of the hospital ships went loaded with dead bodies, which were all tumbled together into a hole dug for the purpose, on the hill where the national navy-yard now is.”
“To the everlasting honour of those unfortunate Americans who were on board the Jersey prison-ship, that notwithstanding the savage treatment they received, and death staring them in the face, every attempt (which was very frequent) that the British made to persuade them to enter on board their ships of war or in their army, was treated with the utmost contempt.”
The patriotism in preferring such treatment, and even death in its most frightful shapes, to the serving the British, and fighting against their own country, has seldom been equalled, certainly never excelled.
Constant Efforts to Survive
The deadliest of the floating British prisons was the infamous HMS Jersey. A 240-gun warship built in 1736, it had become unseaworthy as a warship and was reworked into a transport vessel carrying cattle, food, and other supplies for the British army. Upon arriving in America in 1776, it was converted first into a hospital and then a prison ship.It had an upper deck, two lower decks, and a fourth level, the bottom hold, which prisoners called the “lower dungeon.” The Jersey was built for 400 sailors, but 1,200 Americans were kept there, crammed into it. As prisoners died daily, others were sent to replace them.
Dring, Thomas, 1758-1825.
Captain Thomas Dring provided one of the most detailed first-person accounts of the Jersey. He described how space on the ship was allocated, how food was divided, cooked, and served, how men were gathered into “work parties” for maintenance, and how prisoners of different stations (officers, American sailors, foreigners) experienced different physical spaces and conditions.
Dring detailed the prisoners’ constant efforts to survive—securing scraps of food, keeping their space tolerably clean, supporting one another, and enduring the indifference or harshness of the guards. Storms, extreme temperatures, and the ship’s decaying structure added further danger. He recounted escape attempts and a prisoner celebration of the 4th of July that the guards met with violence. Eventually, Dring was removed from the ship during a prisoner exchange. He recalled in his later years how he was the last survivor of his ship.
One unique aspect of his narrative is that it includes many examples of collaboration and mutual support to help manage daily survival amidst the terrible conditions, for example:
“Soon after the Jersey was first used as a place of confinement a code of by-laws had been established by the prisoners, for their own regulation and government; to which a willing submission was paid, so far as circumstances would permit...It is an astonishing fact that any rules, thus made, should have so long existed and been enforced among a multitude of men situated as we were, so numerous and composed of that class of human beings who are not easily controlled, and usually not the most ardent supporters of good order.”
“His drink was brackish water taken from the sides of the ship, where all the filth and refuse were thrown. Biscuits, eaten by weavels, through and through; bread sour, and often covered with mould; meat, discolored and putrified by age, and through which myriads of maggots leaped about in play; these constituted his daily fare."
New England Historical Society
Escape from the Jersey
A young man from Rhode Island, Christopher Hawkins signed on to privateer service twice during the Revolutionary War, and twice he was captured by the British. The first time, he was held on the prison ship Asia for three weeks and then pressed into service as a waiter on a British naval ship for 18 months. He escaped and returned to Rhode Island, but after a few years a “fit of roaming again came over him.” His next privateer brig was captured after only five days at sea and sent to the prison ship Jersey.
The following excerpts describe Hawkins' escape from the Jersey with a shipmate, William Waterman. Hawkins and Waterman conceived the hazardous project of making their escape from the prison ship by swimming to Long Island, a distance, as they calculated, of two and a-half to three miles outside of the sentinels posted along the shore.
“The prisoners were confined during the night to the lower deck where there were no guards, the gun ports of which were secured by iron bars, strongly fastened to the timbers of the ship. Having secured an old axe and crow-bar, they went to work during a heavy thunder storm and removed the bars from one of the port-holes of the lower deck, and after replacing them temporarily to prevent detection, they stowed their wearing apparel, with what little money they had, with some other articles, into their knapsacks.”
“Waterman and Hawkins, thus equipped, left the ship, being let down into the water with the aid of their fellow prisoners by means of an old service-rope which they had obtained. After reaching the water, Hawkins passed along the side of the ship to the stern and then struck out for land, being guided by the lights of the vessel and beacon light on shore….After being nearly three hours in the water, and swimming about three miles, according to his own statement, he reached land, cold, stiffened, and nearly exhausted."
National Park Service, Independence National Historical Park
General Washington’s Letters
In January 1777, the Continental Congress Executive Committee asked General George Washington to intercede with Admiral Howe “respecting the Ill usage our prisoners suffer onboard the Prison Ships in New York.”
Washington wrote to Howe only days later: “I am sorry that I am again under the Necessity of remonstrating to you upon the Treatment which our prisoners continue to receive in New York. Those who have lately been sent out, give the most shocking Accounts of their barbarous Usage, which their miserable emaciated Countenances confirm….I would beg that some certain Rule of Conduct towards prisoners may be settled….”
This appeal for a “Rule of Conduct” highlighted the disputed legal status of these prisoners: General Washington argued that the standards of treatment for prisoners of war should apply to captured American soldiers and sailors, while the British rejected recognition of the Continental Army and Navy as legitimate enemy forces.
Throughout the war, Washington attempted to negotiate with British naval and military leadership about the treatment of prisoners in both moral and practical terms. He repeatedly challenged British authorities over the severe mistreatment of American prisoners, especially those held in New York. His letters stressed that their suffering—lack of food, clothing, medical care, and basic shelter—violated accepted customs of war.
By 1781, he noted that seamen were experiencing much worse captivity than Continental Army prisoners held on land and called for visits to inspect the prison ships and correct their inhumane conditions.
British Land Prisons
In addition to the floating sea prisons, the British had numerous land prisons in New York City. The two most infamous were the Sugar House and the Provost.The Sugar House was a five-story building on Liberty Street (near Broadway) that housed more than 4,500 American prisoners. It was filthy, disease-ridden, and overcrowded.
Among its prisoners were those captured in the Battle of Fort Washington on Manhattan Island, the last American stronghold to be taken by the British in New York City. Of the fort’s 3,000 soldiers, 2,837 were made prisoners, including both black and white Americans. American Major Henry Bedinger reported what happened to him and his fellow captives:
Our poor soldiers… were crowded into sugar houses and jails without blankets or covering; had very little given to them to eat, and that little of the very worst quality. So that in two months and four days, about 1,900 of the [2,837] Fort Washington troops had died.
Another survivor of the Sugar House hellhole testified:
I have had men die by the side of me in the night and have seen 15 dead bodies sewed up in their blankets and laid in the corner at one time—the product of 24 hours. Every morning at 8 o’clock the dead-cart came, the bodies were put in, the men drew their rum, and the cart was driven off.
After the War ended, a survivor of the Sugar House returned with a friend, to show him where he had been kept. He told his companion:
For twelve months that dark hole was my only home. And at that door I saw the corpse of my brother thrown into the deadcart among a heap of others who had died in the night previous of the jail-fever. While the fever was raging, we were let out in companies of twenty, for half-an-hour at a time, to breathe the fresh air; and inside we were so crowded that we divided our number into squads of six each. Number one stood ten minutes as close to the window as they could crowd to catch the cool air, and then stepped back, when number two took their place, and so on. Seats? We had none; and our beds were but straw on the floor with vermin intermixed. And there is my kill-time work: “A.V.S. 1777”—viz. Abraham Van Sickler, which I scratched with an old nail. When peace came, some learned the fate of their fathers and brothers from such initials [carved into the walls].
The other infamous land-based jail was Provost Prison, run with a similar brutality by British Captain William Cunningham, who came to be known as “Bloody Billy Cunningham.” Like Sugar House, Provost was deliberately overcrowded. An early historian reported:
They were then confined in the gloomy cells… so closely crowded together that when at night they laid down to sleep upon the hard plank floor, they could change position only by all turning over at once, at the words “right”— “left.”
One prisoner, John Fell, kept sketchy notes during his time there, reporting:
[May] 30. Not allowed to fetch good water…
[June] 10. Prisoners very sickly…
[June] 13. Melancholy scene, women refused speaking to their sick husbands and treated cruelly by sentries…[June] 14. People in jail very sickly and not allowed a doctor…Aug. 1. Very sick. Weather very hot…[Aug] 4. Horrid scenes of whipping…And other similar entries.
[June] 10. Prisoners very sickly…
[June] 13. Melancholy scene, women refused speaking to their sick husbands and treated cruelly by sentries…[June] 14. People in jail very sickly and not allowed a doctor…Aug. 1. Very sick. Weather very hot…[Aug] 4. Horrid scenes of whipping…And other similar entries.
Prisoners were randomly selected and then taken out and hanged in the gloom of night, without trial or known cause for the foul murder.
Besides Sugar House and Provost, other land prisons in New York included Bridewell and New Jail. And houses of worship, including Middle Dutch Church, North Dutch Church, and Brick Church (along with Columbia University, which was an Anglican school then), were also used as prisons. Early historians report:
In the North Dutch Church…were confined at one time 800 prisoners; and in the Middle Dutch Church…room was made for 3,000 prisoners. Both churches were stripped of their pews, and floors were laid from one gallery to the other. Smaller churches were used for hospitals.
At the Middle Dutch Church:
For many weeks, the dead-cart visited the prison every morning, into which eight to twelve corpses were flung and piled up, like sticks of wood, and dumped into ditches in the outskirts of the city.
The British also established POW prisons in Charleston, South Carolina, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Americans captured on the high seas were taken to England and confined in numerous jails across the country. American prisoners were also sent as slave labor to the British coal pits in Newfoundland (northeast of Canada) and to plantations in the British West Indies.
The American Treatment of British Prisoners
America’s treatment of British Prisoners of War was dramatically different.America’s leaders early chided Britain for its inhumane treatment of American prisoners, pointing out that this type of misbehavior was “never known to happen in any similar case in a Christian county.”
The mistreatment of Continental soldiers was so bad that General George Washington personally wrote British General Thomas Gage (the early British Commander-in-Chief in America) warning him that America would begin mistreating British prisoners in the same way and to the same degree American prisoners were being abused.
Washington repeated this same threat to other British generals several times across the eight years of the War, yet he never followed through. To the contrary, he confessed that the possibility of American “retaliation has distressed me exceedingly.” To have done so would have been inconsistent with the religious and moral character that undergirded American society from the time of the Pilgrims. Not surprisingly, then, America demonstrated markedly different behavior toward captured British prisoners.
From the first, Washington told his officers:
Any other prisoners who may fall into your hands, you will treat with as much humanity and kindness as may be consistent with your own safety and the public interest. Be very particular in restraining not only your own troops, but the Indians [allies], from all acts of cruelty and insult which will disgrace the American arms.
The treatment of British prisoners following the 1777 American victory in the Battle of Saratoga is one of many examples. At that time, some 6,000 British and Hessian soldiers surrendered, along with around 500 British Loyalists, Canadians, and their Indian allies.
All were offered parole. This meant they if they gave their personal word of honor not to reenter the War, they would immediately be released and sent home. They accepted the offer.
The 500 Loyalists, Canadians, and Indian allies immediately chose to go to Canada. The other 6,000 British captives were marched to Boston to be put on ships and sent back to England to reenter normal everyday civilian life.
But after the British prisoners arrived in Boston, the Continental Congress intervened and negated the agreement. The British high command had broken its word so often that America’s political leaders believed, with good reason, that the British would order the soldiers to break their parole and force them to again take up arms against the Americans.
The 6,000 British captives and their families were instead marched to Charlottesville, Virginia. Wagons were provided to aid them, and when they arrived, Thomas Jefferson, who lived in Charlottesville, urged his fellow citizens to serve as gracious hosts to the British. He personally made arrangements for the supplies needed for the soldiers and worked to make them comfortable, befriending many. Jefferson told Virginia Governor Patrick Henry:
The practice… of treating captive enemies with politeness and generosity is not only delightful in contemplation, but really interesting to all the world—friends, foes, and neutrals.
In speaking of the nearby POW camp established for the British, Jefferson reported:
Of 4,000 people, it should be expected, according to the ordinary calculations, that one should die every day. Yet, in the space of near three months, there have been but four deaths among them, two infants under three weeks old, and two others by apoplexy [stroke or heart attack]. The officers tell me the troops were never before so healthy since they were embodied [on active duty].
Some of the British prisoners raised livestock and grew gardens, selling their products to local citizens. Even General George Washington personally became involved, making sure that the Charlottesville prisoners were properly fed and nourished.
Significantly, there are virtually no records from either side showing that British POWs died from abuse at the hands of their American captors. This was the behavior expected from what the Continental Congress described as “a Christian county.”
References
The Connecticut Gazette; and the Universal Intelligencer. Friday, July 10, 1778. Naval Documents of the American Revolution.
"The Prison-Ship Martyrs." New York Times, January 21, 1877.
"Prison Ship Martyrs Monument." NYC Parks.
"Taft and Hughes at Martyrs’ Shaft." New York Times, November 15, 1908.
Dring, Thomas and Greene, Albert. "Recollections of the Jersey Prison Ship" (American Experience Series, No 8). Applewood Books. November 1, 1986.
Hawkins, Christopher. "The life and adventures of Christopher Hawkins, a prisoner on board the 'Old Jersey' prison ship during the War of the Revolution." Holland Club. 1858.
"Christopher Hawkins, Against All Odds, Escapes a Revolutionary Prison." New England Historical Society.
Charles I. Bushnell. "The Narrative of John Blatchford." Google Books. 1865
Dzurec, David. "Prisoners of War and American Self-Image during the American Revolution." War in History 20, no. 4 (2013): 430-451.
Danske Dandridge. "American Prisoners of the Revolution."