The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1902-06-20
"a. NEW ' PRISON SHIP.

VIII be Kept by the Government at
Norfolk to Relieve Naval
Prison There.
Every schoolboy knows in brief the
frightful story Of cruelty and horror prac
ticed upon the prisoners Of our privateers
by the British during the revolution, and
especially Of that record of the old Jersey.
which will go down the long corridors of
time with undiminishing reproach to an
otherwise valor0us foe.
The whole story was born anew the
other day by the announcement that the
navy department would use one of it's
golfers as a prison ship at Norfolk, Va,
to tighten the tax upon the pretty well
filled prison at the Boston navy-yard.
The report Of the judge-adyocate of the
navy for the past fscal year pointed out
the Inadequate quarters for prisoners at
Boston-long the principal naval prison
on the Atlantic coast, and urged that
something be done to meet the growing
demand for such accommodations, incl
dent to the great increase of the service.
To one familiar with the service, it is
or twenty years to recall the dark, ILL
ventilated cells in some dingy corner Of
most CT the navy-yards, and to remem-
Der how thoroughly unsanitary were the
conditions surrounding the prisoners. It
was to relieve that condition that the
central naval prison at Boston, amid
healthful surroundings, and with much
improved features, was Established
Other even more advanced improve
ments are now being made there, but,
pending their accomplishment, it has been
found necessary to provide temporary
| quarters, and, in the name of health and
modern consideration, the collier Southery
ia f01 H0~ %oI
prison ship. Anchored off the Norfolk
maynard, in the Elizabeth river and
within reach Of the tempting breezes Of
chesapeake bay and the sea, confinement
! there is even an improvement upon incar-
ceratlon now at Boston.
Lying white and relatively, cool even in
| the hot summer sunshine, with the am
plest and ARREST Of 'tween-deck accommo-
| dations, and with only modest prison
| complement, at present of couple of
dozen, that iron craft is an Instructive
contrast to the old Jersey, filth-reeking,
rotten, wooden hulk, into which hundreds
Of our patriot forbears were crowded I'M
der conditions that beggar description.
Story of the Jersey.
| The story Of the prison ship Jersey is a
| criminal record of the progressive murder
Of nearly, 10000 continental PATRIOTS. and
that within the sight Of their own dear
land and amid the Wanted plenty of their
captors; and it is something to the dis
credit Of us, who enjoy the fruit of their
sacrifice, that no fitting monument has
vet been reared to their memory, even
Christian burial first denied them.
| Tn Jersey, the most notorious of the
several prison ships, was an old. ship-of-
the-line, 64-gun craft, which had passed
the days Of naval usefulness ere the revo-
luton was more than begun.
| Foct viprr +bo
and first turned into storeship and
moored in the East river at New York.
In the year 1880, however, becoming un-
ut for that service, she was relocated to
the duty of prison ship and a; place Of
conhnement for our privateersmen cap
bitterest animosity was felt Smallpox
IN its most yirulent form soon fastened
upon her inmates, and fearing that the
disease might spread to the well-populat-
ed shore, the ship was moved to the
Wallabout, then: solitary and unfre-
site, Of the flourishing Brooklyn navy
yard. There she slowly rotted away
during the remaining years of our strug-
| gie for liberty, and finally sank on the
site she had made the center of so much
human misery and needless suffering.
| Anyone that has been aboard the old
order of our wooden ships can recall the
limited space between decks, the scantv
allowance of sunshine that found it's wav
IN through the neutrality-suspicious. gunports
and the general atmosphere of confinement
eYen under the pleasantest conditions.
these 1e: limitations intensified by an in
| devilish cunning.
Cut OFF from Sunshine.
The old gun ports were securely closed
| as. soon as the ship was given over to
prison purposes, and small holes, about
ten feet apart were cut instead. These
openlngs' only twenty inches square,
iron bars that crossed them in two d.
| rections; and when we remember thar
the vessels sides were from eighteen tn
twenty-odd inchs thick, one can realiz.
how effectually the inmates were cut out
from the reach of sunshine, except for
the .briefest while in the earliest and lat-
est hours of the day.
The boWsprt of the ship was the only
original spar of the ship left. and ont
| upon it's ample length the hardest of
| the prisoner clambered to be as free as
possible, from the, noisome atmosphere
of the body Of the hulk. Several &C.
counts of the ship have been written.
but none of them with more fullness and
startling truth of color than the simple.
straightforward account of Capt. Thorn
as Dring of the Providence privateer.
The Chance-a vessel Of twelve G-pound-
er cannon and complement Of sixty-five
men.
With every reasonable consideration
for their health and comfort, the pris-
| oners on the Southery have nothing to
endure save confinement to the ship.
Food they. have in plenty. and of work
and exercise enough to keep them in
proper trim.
The ship is under the police control Of
a marine guard detailed from the re-
ceiving ship Franklin-herself most IA
mouse because she brought back from
the Mediterranean the notorious ''Boss''
Tweed years ago.--Boston Herald.
Stature of EskimOs
The old tradition that the Eskimos are