lors of New York and New Jersey, confined in these floating
dungeons, were the sacrifices to the ambition of King George. They died
by hundreds and even thousands during the war; the whole shore was lined
with the unmarked graves of the patriot dead; the prison-ships were the
scandal of the time, and their starved inmates seldom bore long the
pains of the merciless imprisonment. It is said that the bones of eleven
thousand dead were found upon the shore, and reverently buried in a
common tomb.

Yet the prisoners of the old _Jersey_ and the other ships were not left
always without sympathy and aid. Often a boat was seen sailing from the
rich farms on the Wallabout, laden with provisions for the famished
patriots. The Dutch farmers from their own diminished resources gave
bountifully to the sufferers. The ladies of the household worked warm
stockings with the busy knitting-needle; the spinning-wheel was never
idle; the fair Dutch damsels, demure and prudent, blushing with the rich
complexions of Amsterdam, were never weary of their charitable toil; and
many a poor prisoner was saved and strengthened by the gifts of his
unknown friends. As the war advanced, too, the successes of the
Americans seem to have convinced the royal chiefs that they were at
least deserving of tolerable treatment. Some of the worst abuses of the
system were removed. Hospital-ships were provided; the sick were
separated from the healthy; the _Whitby_, the most infamous of the
floating jails, was abandoned. Yet still, an observer relates, the dead
were carried away every morning from the old _Jersey_, and still the
horrors of captivity in the prison-ships exceeded all that had been
known in every recent European war.

Several curious escapes are related. Once, in 1777, as a boat hung
fastened to the old _Jersey_ unnoticed, three or four prisoners let
themselves down into it quietly, cast off the rope, and drifted away
slowly with the tide. It was evening, and the darkness saved them. Their
escape was discovered, and guns were fired at random after them; but
they floated unharmed along the East River, passed what are now the
Fulton and South ferries, and reached by a miracle the New Jersey shore.
Here they found friends, and were safe. At another time, in the cold
winter of 1780, fifteen half-clad, half-famished prisoners escaped in
the night on the ice; others who followed them turned back, overpowered
by the cold. One was frozen to death. It is alm