A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed.

We speak here of the vagrant Scotch, the fortune-hunters of the Caledonian tribe; at the same time we respect her philosophers and literary men, who appear to us to compose the first rank of writers. Without mentioning their Ossian, Thompson and Burns, we may enumerate their prose writers, such as Hume, and the present association of truly learned and acute men, who write the Edinburgh Review. A Scotchman may be allowed to show pride at the mention of this celebrated work. As it regards America, this northern constellation of talent, shines brightly in our eyes. The ancient Greeks, who once straggled about Rome and the Roman empire, were not fair specimens of the refined Athenians.

Our peasantry, settled around our own frontier, and around the shores of our lakes, have a notion that the Scotch Highlanders were, not long since, the same kind of wild, half-naked people compared with the true English, that the Choctaws, Cherokees, Pottowatomies and Kickapoo Indians are to the common inhabitants of these United States; and that less than an hundred years ago, these Scotchmen were in the habit of making the like scalping and tomahawking excursions upon the English farmer, that the North American savage makes upon the white people here. This is the general idea which our common people have of what Walter Scott calls "the border wars." Some of them will tell you that the Scotch go half naked in their own country—wear a blanket, and kill their enemies, with a knife, just like Indians. They say their features differ from the English as much as theirs do from the Indian. In a word, they suppose the Scotch Highlanders to be a race who have been conquered by the English, who have taught them the use of fire arms, and civilized them, in a degree, so as to form them into regiments of soldiers, and this imperfect idea of the half savage Sawney will not soon be corrected; and we must say that the general conduct of this harsh and self-interested race towards our prisoners, will not expedite the period of correct ideas relative to the comparative condition of the Scotch and English. The Americans have imbibed no prejudice against the Irish, having found them a brave, generous, jovial set of fellows, full of fun, and full of good, kind feelings; the antipodes of Scotchmen, who, as it regards these qualities, are cold, rough and barren; like the land that gave them birth.

We moved from Portsmouth to the Nore or Noah, for I know not the meaning of the word, or how to spell it. The place so called is the mouth of the river Thames, which runs through the capital of the British nation. We were three days on our passage. Here we were transferred to several tenders in order to be transported to Chatham. We soon entered the river Medway, which rises in Sussex, and passes by Tunbridge, Maidstone and Rochester, in Kent; and is then divided into two branches, called the east and west passage. The chief entrance is the west; and is defended by a considerable fort, called Sheerness. In this river lay a number of Russian men of war, detained here probably by way of pledge for the fidelity of the Emperor. What gives most celebrity to this river is Chatham, a naval station, where the English build and lay up their first rate men of war. It is but about thirty miles from London; or the distance of Newport, Rhode Island, from the town of Providence. We passed up to where the prison ships lay, after dark. The prospect appeared very pleasant, as the prison ships appeared to us illuminated. As we were all upon deck, we enjoyed the sight as we passed, and the commander of the tender appeared to partake of our pleasure. We were ordered on board the Crown Prince prison ship; and as our names were called over, we were marched along the deck between two rows of emaciated Frenchmen, who had drawn themselves up to review us. We then passed on to that part of the ship which was occupied by the Americans, who testified their curiosity at knowing all about us; and sticking to their national characteristic, put more questions to us in ten minutes, than we could well answer in as many hours. We passed the evening and the first part of the night in mutual communications; and we went to rest with more pleasure than for many a night before.

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 of, (by way of preventing the hearts blood of Old England from being drained off into America,) is to people Nova Scotia and Newfoundland with Scotchmen; where they can raise a few sheep, for singing, and for haggiss; and where they can wear their Gothic habit, and be indulged in the luxury of the bag-pipe, enjoy over again their native fogs, and howling storms, and think themselves at home. Nature seems to have fixed the great articles of food in Nova Scotia to fish and potatoes; this last article is of excellent quality in that country. Then let these strangers, these transplanted Scotchmen, these hostes, these antipodes to the Americans, man the British fleet; and fill up the ranks of their armies, and mutual antipathy will prevent the dreaded coalition.

But I hasten to return from these people to my prison ship. Among other conveniences, we had a sort of a shed erected over the hatch-way, on which to air our hammocks. This was grateful to us all, especially to those whose learning had taught them the salutiferous effects of a free circulation of the vital air. It is surprising, that after what the English philosophers have written concerning the properties of the atmospheric air; after what Boyle, Mayhew, Hales and Priestly have written on this subject: and after what they have learnt from the history of the Calcutta black hole; and after what Howard has taught them concerning prisons and hospitals, it is surprising that in 1813, the commanders of national ships in the English service, should be allowed to thrust a crowd of men into those hideous black holes, situated in the bottom of their ships, far below the surface of the water. I have sometimes pleased myself with the hope that what is here written may contribute to the abolition of a practice so disgraceful to a nation; a nation which has the honor of first teaching mankind the true properties of the air; and of the philosophy of the healthy construction of prisons and hospitals; and one would suppose of healthy and convenient ships, for the prisoner, as well as for their own seamen.

Our situation, in the day time, was not unpleasant for prisoners of war. Confinement is disagreeable to all men, and very irksome to us, Yankees, who have rioted, as it were, from our infancy, in a sort of Indian freedom. Our situation was the most unpleasant during the night. It was the practice, every night at sun-set, to count the prisoners as they went down below; and then the hatch-ways were all barred down and locked, and the ladder of communication drawn up; and every other precaution that fear inspires, adopted, to prevent our escape, or our rising upon our prison keepers; for they never had half the apprehension of the French as of the Americans. They said the French were always busy in some little mechanical employment, or in gaming, or in playing the fool; but that the Americans seemed to be on the rack of invention to escape, or to elude some of the least agreeable of their regulations. In a word, they cared but little for the Frenchmen; but were in constant dread of the increasing contrivance, and persevering efforts of us Americans. They had built around the sides of the ship, and little above the surface of the water, a stage, or flooring, on which the sentries walked during the whole night, singing out, every half hour, "all's well." Beside these sentries marching around the ship, they had a floating-guard in boats, rowing around all the ships, during the live long night. Whenever these boats rowed past a sentinel, it was his duty to challenge them, and theirs to answer; and this was done to ascertain whether they were French or American boats, come to surprise, and carry by boarding, the Crown Prince! We used to laugh among ourselves at this ridiculous precaution. It must be remembered, that we were then up a small river, within thirty-two miles of London, and three thousand miles from our own country. However, "a burnt child dreads the fire," and an Englishman's fears may tell him, that what once happened, may happen again. About one hundred and fifty years ago, viz. in 1667, the Dutch sent one of their admirals up the river Medway, three miles above where we now lay, and singed the beard of John Bull. He has never entirely got over that fright, but turns pale and trembles ever since, at the sight, or name of a republican.