Lieutenant of the Alexander 74, commanded by Captain R. R. Bligh, whom he gallantly supported in his memorable defence against a powerful French squadron under Rear-Admiral Neilly, an event already alluded to in our memoir of Captain F. P. Epworth, and which will be more fully noticed hereafter.
The treatment experienced by Lieutenant Carter and his fellow captives, affords us an instance of the brutal and ferocious conduct of the friends of “Liberty and Equality,” towards those who had the misfortune to fall into their hands at that unhappy epoch. On their arrival at Brest, after being stripped of every article of property, except the clothes on their backs, they were put on board a prison ship, but soon transferred from thence to a castle (originally a receptacle for culprits under sentence of death), where they were confined in cells with naked walls, having neither tables, chairs, nor any other furniture, and obliged to sleep on straw, without the least covering. In this miserable abode they passed three months, during which the fever, so common in crowded gaols, proved fatal to many, and numbers died for want of the common necessaries of life, their diet consisting of nothing more than black bread, horse-bean soup, and occasionally a scanty supply of salt fish[1].
In order to escape from such a scene of wretchedness, Lieutenant Carter agreed with Captain Cracraft, late of H.M.S. Daphne, and Lieutenant Godench of the Alexander, to try
- ↑ “Officers and men shared the same lot; they were denied the commonest rations of provisions, and reduced to starvation. A wretched dog that had crept into the cells was kitted, and his head alone sold for a dollar, to satisfy the cravings of nature. A prisoner, in a state of delirium, threw himself into the well within the prison walls: his dead body, after lying some time was taken out, but no other water allowed to the people to drink. An English lady and her daughters, confined along with the men, had no separate apartment, and all their privacy was supplied by the generous commisseration of the British sailors, who, standing side by side close together, with their backs towards the fair captives, formed a temporary screen while they changed their garments.” See Brenton’s Naval History, Vol. I, p. 364. N.B. Th number of prisoners confined in the castle amounted originally to 700, among whom were many women and children.
