[Mill Prison, Plymouth, July 1778]
31st. Friday Last Night the Centry at the L[ong]. End of the L. Prison gave them a Signal to Come Out, Seven Accepted of the Invitation & Cut of a Bar in ye. window & let them selves down by a Rope, before they got Clear of they Surprised & three were taken.1 Henry Lunt, Thos. Barker & Robt. Swan got off2 We hear the Guard have Recd. Orders to fire upon Any One who Attempts to Elope for the Future To Day Adml. Keppels Fleet Arived in the Sound, & we hear they have had an Engagement with the F. fleet but the particulars we’ve not heard3 Some more frenchmen Comttd. Our officers sent up from the B[lack] hole.
D, MeHi, Jonathan Haskins Journal.
1. In his journal entry, Charles Herbert adds that the same sentry who had invited the prisoners to escape, alerted the guard. He also writes that had the escapees waited “a few moments longer, we should have had a hole in the back side of the prison, for a number more to have got out.” Herbert, Relic of the Revolution, 150.
2. Henry Lunt of the Massachusetts privateer brigantine Dalton, and Thomas Barker and Robert Swan of the Massachusetts privateer brigantine Fancy.
3. The British fleet commanded by Adm. the Hon. Augustus Keppel engaged a French fleet commanded by Lt. Gen. Louis Guillouet, Comte d’Orvilliers at the indecisive battle of Ushant on 27 July.