OVERALL FACTS:

1. There were thousands of American prisoners held by the British during the war.
2. Of all of the prisoners held in captivity, 4 out of 5 men died.
3. New York City was the main city where prisoners were held.
4. By the end of 1776, there were over 5,000 prisoners held in New York City. More than half of the prisoners came from the soldiers captured at the battle of Fort Washington and Fort Lee. With a total population of New York City around 25,000, this meant that 1 out of every 5 people in the city were prisoners.
5. During the war, more military men on the British prison ships than were killed in battle.
6. A Prisoner Excange Program was used between the British and American forces during the American Revolutionary War. The premise of the exchange was to be able to exchange a sailor for a sailor, a soldier for a soldier, with the prisoners being of equal rank. Later on in the war, the exchange program was stopped by the British in 1780. The reason being that with the American forces being smaller than the British forces, the British didn't want to let the Americans get back more of their men by using the rate of attrition being that the Americans didn't have nearly as many military personel as the British.
   After the major british defeat at the battle of Yorktown in 1781, the British wanted to restart the program due to the severe shortage of soldiers and sailors in the British military. Gen. George Washington realized this, and with the war coming to an end with the Americans seeing that they were going to be victorious, decided to not start the program back.
7. Prisoners onboard the British prison ships could win their release if they signed an oath to serve as sailors with the British Royal Navy.
8. In the latter years of the war, the number of enlistments of British sailors were becoming smaller and more difficult to fulfill. To offset the low recruiting numbers, the British government authorized a plan whereas the American prisoners would be allowed to sign an oath to serve in the Royal Navy in exchange for being released from captivity as prisoners of war.
9. By the end of the war, almost 25% of the sailors serving aboard ships in the British Royal Navy were former American prisoners who signed the oath.
   

BRITISH PRISON SHIPS:
The number of American prisoners continued to grow with the progression of the war. The british were having trouble with finding enough places to houe these captured Americans. There was only 1 prison building in New York City at this time. The British had already taken over most of the empty buildings in the city for use as prisons, and there still wasn't enough room for the prisoners. Since it would be too expensive to build enough prisons to facilitate the number of prisoners on hand, plus the estimated number of future prisoners, the British had to come up with a solution.

There were about a dozen Royal Navy ships in the New York City area not being used. This was because the ships weren't seaworthy. It was decided to use these ships as prisons for the captured Americans since it was cheaper to build a ship than a prison. The ships had its masts removed and the gunports nailed shut. The ships were put at Wallabaugh Bay, which is near Brooklyn. The Wallabaugh Bay was really nothing more than mud flats because of the shallow water depth not being deep enough for a regular ship to navigate in.

The most infamous British prison ship was the H.M.S. Jersey. It was a decrepit, former hospital navy ship that was dilapitated and in serious need of repair to become seaworthy again. Normally, the ship would have a crew of about 350 sailors. When it became a prison ship, it held over 1,000 prisoners.

During the daytime, the prisoners were allowed above deck to walk around and get some fresh air. At sunset, they were sent back into the holds of the ship and locked up. The only ventilation while below deck was from a few windows with iron bars on them. It was almost completely dark in the holds. The latrines were buckets located with the prisoners. They would normally overflow from being full during the night, with its contents running over into the sleeping areas.

They were given only 1 cup of water once they went below deck. The prisoners had a ration issued to the in the morning. Most of the rations were inedible. They were left over rations from England and very old. The total amount equaled to about 1/2 of a normal British sailor's ration. Hunger and diseases were prevalent among the prisoners. Every prisoner suffered from vitamen deffenciency, typically it would be scurvey.

By 1781, the H.M.S. Jersey held over 1,100 prisoners. Smallpox and yellow fever outbreaks were at an epidemic proportion among the prisoners.

Every few days, some doctors would come aboard the ships and take the extremely sick prisoners off and transfer them to 1 of 3 hospital ships in the bay. The bad part of this is that the sick prisoners rarely left alive from the hospital ships. The prisoners who died on the ships during the night were put in a corner of the ship's hold until morning. The following day, the dead were bundled up, tied together, and hauled up to the top deck. They were then sent to the adjoining shoreline of the bay, where they would be buried. On the shoreline, from the waterline to about 30 yards away was a marshy shore. It was here that the dead would be buried. A group of prisoners would volunteer for a burial detail and go with the dead bodies, under heavy guard, and bury the bodies. On average, 5 to 6 prisoners a day died aboard the H.M.S. Jersey and likewise on the other prison ships.

The ship's guards were notorious for being very brutal. They would try to cheat the prisoners out of anything that they could. It was also known for them to torture the prisoners with the threat of injury and actually injuring or accidentaly killing the prisoners. The prisoners couldn't do anything about it, though. At the closing months of the war, when the british realized that they were going to lose, the treatment of the prisoners by the guards improved dramatically. Anytime a prisoner was caught trying to escape, or captured after escaping, was shot on the spot.

During the Revolutionary War, the management and treatment of prisoners was very different from the standards of modern warfare. Modern standards, as outlined in the Geneva Conventions, expect captives to be held and cared for by their captors. One primary difference in the 18th century, was that care and supplies for captives were expected to be provided by their own army, their government, or private resources.

Throughout the war, there were exchanges of prisoners. These might be made in the field or at higher levels of organization. Usually high ranking officer exchanges would be negotiated for specific named people. There were some exchanges based on numbers for lower ranking people, but these were so limited as to be rare events.

Three other aspects were different than those normally seen in modern warfare. The first is that letters were permitted, and sometimes even encouraged. Prisoners could buy or exchange for food and clothing, including any money sent by their families. The second was the use of "Parole" by both sides. This would allow prisoners some freedom, in exchange for their promise not to resume the war. The last is that prisoners were encouraged to enlist in the army of the other side. Over the course of the war, as much as a quarter of each army had actually seen service on the other side.

The British forces held relatively few places in strength for long periods. American prisoners tended to be accumulated at these sites. New York City was the major site, Philadelphia in 1777 and later Charleston, South Carolina were also important. Facilities at these places were limited, sometime severely. At times the occupying army was actually larger than the total civilian population.

The British solution to this problem was to use obsolete, captured, or damaged ships as prisons. Conditions here were appalling, and as many men died imprisoned as were killed in actual combat. While the Continental Army named a commissary to supply them, the task was almost impossible. Elias Boudinot, as one of these commissaries, was competing with other agents seeking to gather supplies for Gen. George Washington's army at Valley Forge.

Some British and Hessian prisoners were paroled to American farmers. Their labor made up for shortages caused by the number of men serving in the American army. Usually their return was room and board, supplied by the contractor.