[Mill Prison, Plymouth, April 1778]
28th. Tuesday Cloudy weathr. Last Night Wm. Carpenter & Alexander Frazer Climbed over the L.P. Pisdale Wall into the G. Yard1 in Order to make their Escape & get of[f] with Impunity; as they were suspected of being Informers:2 but was Discover’d taken & Comttd. to the B. hole that there is 180 Prisoners there3 They Likewise Write that Capt. Weeks in the Reprisal had founder’d at sea of[f] N-f-land & Every Sole (Except one) Lost—4
D, MeHi, Jonathan Haskins Journal.
1. “L.P.” refers to the Long Prison and “G. yard” probably means “graveyard.”
2. Charles Herbert, in his diary entry of 28 Apr., provides further details concerning this escape attempt, writing that one of the “young men” cut “his hammock and blanket into strips and tied them together; got over the wall at the end of the yard.” Herbert, Relic of the Revolution, p. 117.
3. By “there,” Haskins refers to Mill Prison in Portsmouth, England. See Charles Herbert diary entry of 3 May, Ibid., p. 118.
4. The report was true. The Continental Navy ship Reprisal, Capt. Lambert Wickes, commander, foundered with the loss of all hands, save the cook, Nathan Jaquays. In his diary entry for 28 Apr., Herbert notes “all the negroes were taken out of this prison, and put into a separate building, called the itchy yard.” Herbert, Relic of the Revolution, p. 117.
