Daniel Mosher served as a sailor during the Revolutionary War. He was taken prisoner by the British and was held on board the infamous Old Jersey prison ship for 18 months. He survived.
Daniel
Mosher (father of Ruth Mosher, wife of Moses Chute) was
born on December 30, 1746, in Dartmouth, Massachusetts to Ephraim and Eunice. He
married Elizabeth
Macomber on December 30, 1764, in his hometown. He initially moved to Rome, Maine with several of his sons, purchasing land from the proprietors. He moved to Ohio in 1816. They had 10 children in 26 years. He died on
February 7, 1840, in Athens, Ohio, at the impressive
age of 93, and was buried in Morgan, Ohio.
When the
American Revolution began, the British used Old Jersey as a prison ship for
captured Continental Army soldiers, making her infamous due to the harsh
conditions in which the prisoners were kept. Thousands of men were crammed
below decks where there was no natural light or fresh air and few provisions
for the sick and hungry. James Forten was one of those imprisoned aboard her
during this period. Political tensions only made the prisoners' days worse,
with brutal mistreatment by the British guards becoming fairly common. As many
as eight corpses a day were buried from the Jersey alone before the British
surrendered at Yorktown on 19 October 1781. When the British evacuated New York
at the end of 1783, Jersey was abandoned in the harbor, having had
approximately 8,000 prisoners on board.
One of the most
gruesome chapters in the story of America's struggle for independence from
Britain occurred in the waters near New York Harbor, near the current location
of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. From 1776 to 1783, the British forces occupying New
York City used abandoned or decommissioned warships anchored just offshore to
hold those soldiers, sailors and private citizens they had captured in battle
or arrested on land or at sea (many for refusing to swear an oath of allegiance
to the British Crown). Some 11,000 prisoners died aboard the prison ships over
the course of the war, many from disease or malnutrition. Many of these were
inmates of the notorious HMS Jersey, which earned the nickname "Hell"
for its inhumane conditions and the obscenely high death rate of its prisoners.
Christopher Vail, of
Southold, who was aboard Jersey in 1781,
later wrote:
'When
a man died he was carried up on the forecastle and laid there until the next
morning at 8 o'clock when they were all lowered down the ship sides by a rope
round them in the same manner as tho' they were beasts. There was 8 died of a
day while I was there. They were carried on shore in heaps and hove out the
boat on the wharf, then taken across a hand barrow, carried to the edge of the
bank, where a hole was dug 1 or 2 feet deep and all hove in together.'
In 1778, Robert
Sheffield of Stonington, Connecticut, escaped from one of the prison ships, and
told his story in the Connecticut Gazette, printed July 10, 1778. He was one of
350 prisoners held in a compartment below the decks.
"The
heat was so intense that (the hot sun shining all day on deck) they were all
naked, which also served them well to get rid of vermin, but the sick were eaten
up alive. Their sickly countenances, and ghastly looks were truly horrible;
some swearing and blaspheming; others crying, praying, and wringing their
hands; and stalking about like ghosts; others delirious, raving and
storming,--all panting for breath; some dead, and corrupting. The air was so
foul that at times a lamp could not be kept burning, by reason of which the
bodies were not missed until they had been dead ten days."[13]
By the end of the
war in 1783, it was estimated that roughly 8,000 men and boys had died of
disease, starvation, and maltreatment aboard New York’s prison ships: that’s
8,000 out of the estimated 25,000 Americans who died in the entire war.
From
<http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/59062175/person/40057691268/mediax/3?pgnum=1&pg=0&pgpl=pid%7CpgNum>
Captain T. Dring, who survived imprisonment on the Jersey,
discussed the prisoners’ celebration of July 4th on the ship. They stored
rations for the celebratory occasion, and during their daily furlough on the
top deck, they ate, drank, and made merry, much to the chagrin of their British
captors. Before long, tempers flared, and the Americans were forced back below
deck by the Redcoats, who slashed haphazardly with their bayonets in their
frustration at the prisoners’ refusal to stop singing patriotic songs. Captain
Dring recounts:
“It had been the usual custom for each person to carry below,
when he descended at sunset, a pint of water, to quench his thirst during the
night. But, on this occasion, we had thus been driven to our dungeon three
hours before the setting of the sun, and without our usual supply of
water. Of this night I cannot describe the horror. The day had been
sultry, and the heat was extreme throughout the ship. The unusual number of
hours during which we had been crowded together between decks; the foul atmosphere
and sickening heat; the additional excitement and restlessness caused by the
unwonted wanton attack which had been made; above all, the want of water, not a
drop of which could be obtained during the whole night, to cool our parched
lips; the imprecations of those who were half distracted with their burning
thirst; the shrieks and wails of the wounded; the struggles and groans of the
dying; together formed a combination of horrors which no pen can describe”
The Prison
Ship Martyrs' Monument in Fort Greene Park, in the New York City borough of
Brooklyn, is a memorial to the more than 11,500 American prisoners of war who
died in captivity aboard sixteen British prison ships during the American
Revolutionary War.[1] The remains of a small fraction of those who died on the
ships are interred in a crypt beneath its base. The ships included the HMS
Jersey, the Scorpion, the Hope, the Falmouth, the Stromboli, Hunter, and
others.[2][3] Their
remains were first gathered and interred in 1808.
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