You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart Radio and Greyman, and from Aaron Minkey. It was the Fourth of July 1782, the small group of men sang patriotic songs and waved makeshift flags on the deck of a British prison ship, the armed guards weren't feeling as celebratory, though the Revolutionary War had begun to favor the American rebels and their patience with the inmates group. Then they ordered the men to stop singing. But the prisoners only sang louder, drowning out the demands for silence.

Having had enough of the men's defiance, the guards ordered them below deck, half starved, dehydrated and kept in deplorable conditions. The men were used to such treatment and worse, with nothing to lose. They rushed the guards without weapons, though their fight was short lived, easily outnumbered, they were forced into their cramped and overcrowded cells with the others. Usually, prisoners were rotated between the cells in deck, but not this time. The holding area below was rodent infested, dark and dank.

The men had no clean water and access to fresh air. Buckets had been supplied for them to relieve themselves in. But forcing the men into the filthy cells wasn't enough for the guards, nor was refusing the next group access to the deck. The guards also confiscated the rebels decorations and for emphasis, they stomped on them in front of the prisoners, satisfied that they had killed the men celebration and spirit. The guards climbed the stairs, closing the hatch behind them.

Broken flags didn't break their spirit, though, one by one in the stench and darkness, they began to sing out once more. Infuriated by their patriotism, the guards threw back the hatch and descended loudly carrying Blanton's and swords, seeing their intent. The prisoners scrambled on top of each other like cornered rats, yelling and cursing at the men. The British rammed their blades in between the bars, stabbing as many men as they could reach after several of the men lay wounded, dead or dying.

The guards retreated, shutting the door on the men's cries the remainder of the day and night. The prisoners received no food or water, no medical treatment, despite their pleas for help instead of showing decency. The guards laughed and mocked the desperate men. And as the night turned to dawn, the cries for compassion below deck grew weaker. By morning, the British guards opened the hatch and returned, still without food and water. They didn't attend to the injured, nor did they give them any means to clean their wounds.

Their request was short. Send up the dead. Ten of the men had died overnight, either from the previous night's injuries or from the diseases that ravaged the ship. A few of the men were ordered to carry their deceased companions topside once the bodies were on deck. The guards ordered the men blow once more and closed the hatch among the moans of the sick, starving and wounded, the hundreds of remaining prisoners listened as the bodies of their fellow soldiers were thrown overboard.

For the moment, there is no more singing. I'm Lauren Bacall. Welcome to American Shadows. After Margaret Davis passed away in 2010, her relatives set about the task of cleaning out her house amid a lifetime of memories and cherished treasures, they came across something they didn't know. She had an old handwritten journal. The writing wasn't hers, though. The Yellow Pages within the book dated back to the eighteen hundreds and to a man named Christopher Hawkins. After some investigating, the Davis family discovered that he was an ancestor they had never known about before.

Carefully, they turned each delicate page and as they read, they uncovered a truly historic tale, vividly detailing his time during the American Revolution. Based on the entries, Hawkins had started the journal when he was 70 years old, and in it he recounted his entire life, or at least as much as he remembered. He wrote so well that his descendants were treated to a front row intimate saga, almost as though he were right there. The suffering of my youth is still fresh in my memory, he wrote.

He reflected that he wasn't writing for publication, but to simply record his narrative so that he could pass it down to his family one generation to the next, it was his hope, he said, to show the struggle of his country for independence. He finished the introduction with a note of dedication to my descendants and those of my fellows. Christopher Hopkins', Newport, New York, April 3rd, 1834. Throughout the pages, there were drawings of ships, technical descriptions and some unusual terminology, but mostly there was a story to tell and the Davis family turned page after page.

Hawkins had been born sometime in 1764 in Providence, Rhode Island, and like many other children in his day, he'd been sent to live with an apprentice and they were offered room and board and an education in exchange for what was essentially child labor, all in the guise of teaching a trade. Still, an apprenticeship was considered a lucky thing, and the adults around him thought Hawkins had a bright future ahead of him, thanks to a tanner named Aaron Mason.

Perkins didn't feel the same about his future with Mason or the Tennessee business in general. So at the age of 13, he ran away. He didn't return home, though. Instead, he headed to the coastline. After a while, he secured a position on the eagle, a schooner under the command of one captain, Maury Potter. The eagle was armed with 12 cannons, which was a good thing. The crew were privateers. Government commissioned pirates tasked with plundering enemy ships in the case of the eagle.

Their targets were British merchant ships, and Captain Potter had a reputation for being relentless and bold. He often sailed straight to England to catch the British ships off guard. Hawkins Journal recounted one particular evening at the Eagle came across a large British merchant ship. As usual, Potter ordered a shot fired over the merchant ships bow when the eagle drew closer, Potter demanded that the British captain board his ship alone. After much deliberation, the enemy captain convinced Potter to wait till morning before boarding them that it would take its crew hours to unbury their wares from beneath the load of equipment they were carrying.

And oddly, Potter believed him. Even more oddly, though, he failed to post sentries to watch the British ship overnight. When the crew awoke at daybreak, the British were gone. Potter set sail for Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in an attempt to catch up with the merchant ship, the Eagle was fast, but it couldn't outrun a storm, but it cropped up for two days. The Eagle and crew toughed it out on the gale swept seas, doing their best to keep their ship from taking on water.

Then, when they least expected it. Another ship emerged from out of the gray, a British sloop of war called the HMS Sphinx. It was a sort of ship that made no distinction between privateers and pirates and hunted down ships like the Eagle. Without mercy, Hawkins and the others scrambled to hoist their sails, getting as much canvas against the wind as possible. But the Sphinx quickly overtook them. While the men of the eagle fought bravely, they were outnumbered, and that matched by the British.

As Hawkins and his shipmates were brought on board the Sphinx. They watched as their ship already damaged, was sunk. Now, prisoners Potter, Hawkins and the rest of the crew were transferred to the HMS Asia, a British gunship, before being offloaded. The HMS Maidstone, a Coventry class frigate, those smaller than the Asia. The Maidstone had been well stocked, allowing her to stay at sea longer. Now, maybe it was his youth that saved him from the partisanships, or perhaps the British needed extra hands and found a willing young boy.

Either way, Hawkins was kept on board to serve as part of the Maidstone crew during the Revolutionary War. It wasn't uncommon for the British to capture young American men and forced them into servitude. Of course, they didn't call it that. They dressed up what was essentially kidnapping and human trafficking by calling it impressment. The term was familiar to anyone living in the colonies. In fact, back in 1757, seven years before Hawkins was born, the British swept New York City, taking 800 men prisoner and eventually keeping half.

So common was the practice that the British used special groups of soldiers called press gangs to roam colonial towns and kidnap men and boys. England's king had even declared the practice legal, using the rebellion as justification. And so Hopkins decided that playing along with his captors was better than being taken to a prison ship, becoming instead both the cabin boy and waiter for the made crew where he served for the next 18 months. During his imprisonment, Parkins managed to assure his captors that he was quite happy to be among them and that he didn't want to be returned home to the colonies.

His lie was so convincing that when the Maidstone docked in New York Harbor, he and another boy were sent ashore to deliver a message. And this had been the opportunity Hawkins had waited for once ashore. He made a run for it, hiding in Long Island before carefully heading North Providence, where he found employment. He'd achieved what many others in his situation had not, and his work and life were good. But a safe life on dry land wasn't what fulfilled him.

After a few years, his sailors legs and patriots' heart began to look toward the sea. What he would find there, however, would put his life at risk once more. In 1781, Hawkins turned 17, Jan had seen the British, led by Benedict Arnold Byrne Richmond through spring and summer. The colonists fought in several other battles and skirmishes, and by late August, help arrived by way of a French fleet that entered Chesapeake Bay, effectively cutting off the British General Cornwallis escape.

The rebels were proving much more resilient than the British had anticipated, and Hawkin's unable to resist the call of the sea in the excitement of privateering, returned to the coast. Finding a vessel and captain happy to have his experience.

Soon, the captain and crew set a course with land. Four days behind them, Hawkins was back in his element. The smell of the ocean and the sound of the spray against the ship made him happy. He was meant to be a privateer, capturing British vessels and taking over their shipments. Unlike pirates, privateers didn't keep their hard earned prizes. Instead, they were paid a portion. The remainder of the goods helped fund the fledgling American naval fleet and support the war effort.

They were so essential that by 1781, privateers were known as Washington's Navy and the colonists loved them. In fact, while not officially part of the military, privateers had become one of the colonies best weapons of war. The British fleet was far superior to the Americans, though they had more ships which were all bigger and better armed. Their men were highly trained, whereas the Americans took on anyone willing to learn to the British. These privateers were inferior.

And when men like Hopkins were captured, they weren't merely prisoners of war known to the British. They were rebellious, backwater colonists guilty of treason and piracy. Of course, the privateers knew the risks. They had heard the stories firsthand from the fortunate few who had either escaped or been freed in exchange for British soldiers.

They knew that if they were captured, their fate would be far worse than the already appalling treatment of soldiers and civilians. The British had assumed that the rebel colonies would be beaten back into submission quickly, but they had underestimated how scrappy the colonists could be, how hard that fight for their freedom was. So as the war dragged on, the British needed more and more prisons. When there weren't enough to hold the number of men captured, they confiscated warehouses, churches and other buildings to serve that new purpose.

Without permission or restitution, land and property were stripped from farm owners. British soldiers tore down bones and whatever else they could find, scavenging for enough material to make holding cells to run the prisons. The British commanders wanted only the cruelest of men. The colonists were to be shown no mercy. Beatings, murders and torture were common.

And while the Americans had certain standards for treating prisoners of war, the British seemingly did not. Men didn't have to be part of the continental military to be arrested, colonists were occasionally charged and taken in for failing to pledge allegiance to England. The British declared the colonies under martial law and closed all courts when it came to the colonists rights. Imprisonment was so prevalent and dangerous that more colonial soldiers died in British prisons than in battle. Those detained were fed a mere two thirds of the rations of British soldiers, and the food was often moldy or infested with maggots.

During the winter months, they weren't supplied with sufficient blankets or clothing. Cells were overcrowded and filthy. The men were beaten, kept without sufficient water and their wounds and illnesses left untreated. One evening, the men of Hawkins ship exchanged stories about the prisons on land. It was said that as many as 20 men shared a single prison cells. One of the sailors recounted the story of a British captain. Cunningham, who ran a prison in Provost on top of the usual treatment, had starved the rebels and refused loved ones requests to visit.

Yet even Sered prisoners flushed with hot irons. Still, the men on Hawkins' ship remain hopeful, and there were rumours that the war might be at a turning point. The fifth day aboard the ship began, just like before, a vast landscape of sea and sky and not much else but for Hawkins and the rest of the crew. It wouldn't end the same. That day, two British cruisers found their schooner outmatched and outnumbered. The British overtook the ship, and Hawkin's, along with his captain and the rest of the crew, were immediately arrested and charged with treason.

The crew was taken to a packed ship. They consoled themselves in the relief that they weren't treated as poorly as some before them, that at least they weren't made to sleep on cattle dung or drink bilge water, as was done on some prison ships. So far at least, it all depended on which ship they'd be sent to next. There were certain levels of hell, it seemed, and some ships had worse reputations than others. The mentor, the Aagot and the Whitby were bad enough.

The Pacific would be far worse, though tales of psychological warfare and torment on that ship were rampant. Men were frequently stabbed and whipped, often without provocation. But the worst of the worst. The ship everyone feared was the HMS Jersey. The treatment on other ships was almost civil. By comparison, the odds of survival above the jersey were nearly non-existent. And worse than death was the fate of those who survived. For them, the ship's nickname set it all.

Prisoners called it hell afloat. And sadly, that was precisely where Hawkins and the crew were headed next. The HMS Jersey was a hulk of a ship badly damaged and needing repairs. It found alternate use as a prison ship in 1780 designed to hold 400 men within a year. The ship's reputation had spread not just through the privateering community, but throughout the colonies as well. The British supply ships reputation would prove a powerful psychological weapon against the colonial soldiers that the treatment of men aboard the jersey would deter colonists from rising against them.

Pamphlets and fliers were created with gruesome tales of conditions, torture and murder. No other prison ship reported as many deaths as the jersey. It had the opposite effect, though the stories became proof of British cruelty and oppression.

Anger over the treatment of their newfound countrymen fueled the fires of rebellion, spurring the colonists to fight even harder.

British Commissario David Sprout openly allowed and even encouraged the mistreatment and death of prisoners. The men were kept below deck and almost total darkness with no fresh air in the summer, suffocation and heat stroke or the most common causes of death in winter. Prisoners limbs blackened with frostbite while other men simply froze to death, they were fed moldy bread, rotting meat, worm infested fruit and something the guards called soup, which was little more than bilge water mixed with brackish sludge from the East River.

Newcomer's tried to pick the worms and maggots out of their food. Long term prisoners were so starved they didn't even bother themselves. And surrounding holding areas were never cleaned. Even when diseases transformed into epidemics, the refugees from the sick covered the floor in the ship was infested with lice and rats. The death toll aboard the jersey averaged about a dozen men every 24 hours. Corpses were left with the prisoners anywhere from a day to a week, depending on the mood of the guards.

When Hawkins and the crew stepped aboard, there were already 800 other prisoners.

The overcrowding was discouraging enough, but the nights were the worst, he recalled.

There were so many men they could hardly sit, much less lie down. Typhoid, dysentery, smallpox and yellow fever were rampant. There was no escape from the smell, the decay and the sickness. Only two prisoners were allowed to visit the upper deck at the time, he wrote. There was no place between decks provided us to satisfy those calls. Occasionally, the guards would offer them a choice serve the Royal Navy or stay on the jersey and die the prisoners, though all but one chose to stay without much hope beyond a certain death.

The men held tight to each other as best they could as time aboard the jersey dragged on. Hopkins, like so many of the men, dreamed of escape. Those who tried were shot, but that never stopped men from trying. By October, six men had managed to pry the bars off the starboard port silently, one by one, they lowered themselves into the water and began to swim away. A young boy followed them, but seeing the others far ahead, he foolishly cried out that he couldn't swim well, terrified of slipping beneath the surface.

The boy grabbed the gun while his cries had alerted the guards, and one of them used the butt end of his bayonet, hitting the boy's hand so hard that bones broke through the skin. The guard then ran the boy through with a blade. Other guards fired at the other escapees, killing five. The sixth, knowing he would soon share their fate, chose instead to return. He clung to the ship's anchor chain, keeping just his nose above the water when the guards gave up their watch.

He climbed back aboard into the mass of prisoners. Hawkins decided then and there that no matter what the consequences might be, he'd had enough of the jersey and began to plan his escape. Before long, he and another prisoner named Waterman had managed to steal an axe and a crowbar on a stormy night. They worked along with the collapse of Thunder to hack away at bolts and bars below deck. Hawkins captain, however, begged him to stay, believing that attempting an escape would surely mean the young man's end.

But death felt more certain on board the jersey. With the bolts loosened and the bars free, Hawkin's covered the damage with old scraps of clothing. A haze set over the water that night and the two men quietly exited through the hole that made secured a rope and then lowered themselves into the water. The pair swam for some time through the darkness. And when the lights from the jersey had vanished from sight, Hawkins called out to Waterman. When there was no answer, fear assumed the worst, and Hawkins kept going on his own.

It was only when he had made it to shore when he realized he had no money, no clothes, no supplies and no one on Long Island to call on for help. Hawkins ended up walking until he found a barn to sleep in. Along the way, he reluctantly stole food from orchards. And while he found assistance for a short while, when two boys stumbled upon him, a woman in the house alerted the British to his presence.

Soldiers eventually captured Hawkins, promising to send him right back to the jersey. But when the guards ordered some civilians to watch over him for a short time, Hawkins discovered they were sympathetic to the rebel cause and turned their heads while he slipped out of the house. The rest of his travels were more of the same and stealing food and resting in unlocked barns. But his luck changed one day when he came across one captain, Daniel Havens, the uncle of a privateer Hawkins had been impressed with on the Maidstone years before.

Havens agreed to stow Hawkins' on a smuggling vessel that was heading back home to Rhode Island free at last. Hawkins decided to keep his patriotic feet firmly on solid ground. For the rest of his life, his eyes never again wandered toward the sea. We are always weighing the cost, whether it's the risks involved in taking on a bit of debt or uprooting our family to seek out a better life, our choices all come with a cost we'll have to bear.

During the American Revolution, people like Christopher Hawkins risked so much more after all he had experienced. It's hard to blame Hawkins for settling down, but deciding he'd had enough of a sailor's life didn't stop him from thinking about all the men he'd left behind on the jersey. He thought of them often. On October 19th of 1781, just two days after Hawkins had boarded that smuggler's ship to journey home, General Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia.

But that didn't earn the men aboard the jersey their freedom. Far from it. It didn't even stop the British from transferring more prisoners onto the ship or stop the atrocities taking place on board. The jersey would remain active until April six of 1783. The ship's incredulous commander complained bitterly, but eventually the last surviving prisoners were taken from the ship. They returned home. Yes, but as mere shells of the men had once been both physically and mentally unable to be at ease until he knew the outcome and his fellow shipmates, Hawkins eventually tracked down Waterman's brother.

He was relieved to hear that watermen had also survived, although he wasn't living in the area and was doing well. All that remained of that dark time and his life was the jersey itself, an empty ghost of a ship still floating in the bay. That is, until some unknown individuals set it ablaze, letting it burn until the ship known as hell afloat, sent to the bottom of the bay, close enough, perhaps, to the depths of hell.

After that, Hawkins moved to Connecticut and finally Newport, New York, where he settled down and took a job as the town supervisor while he had no urge to spend another moment at sea. He never forgot his time there, nor the men he sailed alongside. When he turned 70, Hawkins decided to record his story. He didn't think of it as the sort of tale one might find in the history books, but he wanted to make sure the sacrifice of his fellow privateers was never forgotten or lost to time.

Not all tales of bravery are easy to hear, and there are plenty of dark shadows across the records he left behind. But by writing it all down for us, Christopher Hawkins made one truth abundantly clear. It's never a bad time to sing the praises of the unsung hero. There's more to this story. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. Daniel Benton, son of Pound, Connecticut's first settlers, built his colonial family homestead in 1720 on the 40 acres given to him by his father.

Over time, his father passed traditional tracts of land to him for a total of one hundred and thirty one acres. Collectively, the buttons owned over four hundred for our Metrick friends. That's about a hundred and sixty hectares, a true patriot and believer in the strength of family. Daniel taught those values to his sons and grandsons, all of whom lived on the homestead. The property would stay in the family for six more generations. All of Daniel sons followed in their father's patriotic footsteps and served in the French and Indian war.

And when his sons had boys of their own, well, they served two. In fact, one of Daniel's sons, also named Daniel, had three boys who all proudly went off to serve in the American Revolution. But before he left for battle, Daniel's eldest grandson, Elijah, promised his sweetheart, a girl named Jemima Barrows that had returned to her shortly. While the brothers were at war, the Benton Homestead was called upon to do their part and offered to house prisoners in the farmhouse basement.

The British had hired Germanic mercenaries to supplement their forces in the buttons. Makeshift prison housed them both. The family took care of their prisoners, though, ensuring that they were well-fed, given plenty of clean water for drinking and hygiene and supplying them with clothing, blankets and even wood for the basement fireplace. During the cold winter months in September of 1776, during the Battle of Long Island, the continental troops were easily bested by the British losing one thousand one hundred men.

But while the Benton brothers fought in the battle, they all managed to survive long enough to be captured. They weren't given the same treatment their family gave the British back home. The brothers were whisked off to a prison ship in Long Island Bay, forced to work menial and pointless jobs and live in unsanitary conditions. Starved, beaten. Only one of the brothers ultimately survived. And then, when a wave of smallpox spread through the ship, Elijah began to show symptoms during a prisoner exchange.

Elijah was chosen in trade for British soldiers. While survivable, the disease was still deadly. The British often selected infected men for prisoner swaps in the hopes that, in fact, their fellow soldiers or the rebel families and towns they'd come from. While the family was grief stricken, they'd lost two of the brothers. They were also relieved that Elijah had survived. Back home, they placed him in quarantine, but his sweetheart, Jemena, soon rushed to be by his side.

At first, the Benton's tried to turn her away, but Jemima's snuck into the house and by law then had to be under quarantine herself there. She cared for Elijah every day until he died on January 21st of 1777, two weak and worn from his treatment to board the prison ship. Tragically, Jemima also became sick and died alone in the same room. Just one month later, the families agreed that although the young couple couldn't be buried together since they weren't married, they decided to place them near one another.

Today, the Benton Homestead is a museum. Eliza and Mima's graves are still on the property undisturbed after all these years, with an old carriage road passing between them. Close, but probably not close enough. And that ship where the Benton brothers were imprisoned. The jersey. American Chateaux is hosted by Lauren Vogel Bomb. This episode was written by Michelle Muto with researcher Robin Midnighter and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young with executive producers Aaron Manque, Alex Williams and Matt Frederich.

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