Excerpt from Recollections of the Jersey Prison-Ship: Taken and Prepared for Publication From the Original Manuscript of the Late Captain Thomas Dring, of Providence, R. I., One of the Prisoners IN presenting the following narrative to the public, it is deemed proper that it should be accompanied with a brief notice Of the individual from whose memory these Recollections were drawn; and with some account of the materials left by him, from which this work has been compiled. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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These vivid recollections of life on a prison ship during the American Revolution were written by a colonist, who, at the age of 25, was taken prisoner by the British and placed on The Jersey, a prison ship docked at what is now the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The detail of his captivity and the depravity of the conditions illustrate the horrors associated with the Revolutionary War. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Pierides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include: General Description of the Jersey Prison-Ship - References to the Plates - Our Capture - The First Night on Board - The First Day - The Gun Room and Messes - The Cook's Quarters - Our Situation - The Working Party - The Hospital Ships and Nurses - The Interment of the Dead - The Crew of "The Chance" - The Marine Guard - "Dame Grant" and Her Boat - Our Supplies - Our By-Laws - Our Orator - The Fourth of July - An Attempt to Escape - Memorial to Gen. Washington - The Exchange - The Cartel - Our Arrival Home

How three white, non-elite American sailors turned their experiences of captivity into diverse career opportunities—and influenced America's physical, commercial, ideological, and diplomatic development. Winner of the John Lyman Book Award by the North American Society for Oceanic History From 1784 to 1815, hundreds of American sailors were held as "white slaves" in the North African Barbary States. In From Captives to Consuls, Brett Goodin vividly traces the lives of three of these men—Richard O'Brien, James Cathcart, and James Riley—from the Atlantic coast during the American Revolution to North Africa, from Philadelphia to the Louisiana Territories, and finally to the western frontier. This first scholarly biography of American captives in Barbary sifts through their highly curated writings to reveal how ordinary individuals in extraordinary circumstances could maneuver through and contribute to nation building in early America, all the while advancing their own interests. The three subjects of this collective biography both reflected and helped refine evolving American concepts of liberty, identity, race, masculinity, and nationhood. Time and again, Goodin reveals, O'Brien, Cathcart, and Riley uncovered opportunities in their adversity. They variously found advantage first in the Revolution as privateers, then in captivity by writing bestselling captivity narratives and successfully framing their ordeal as a qualification for coveted government employment. They even used their modest fame as ex-captives to become diplomats, get elected to state legislatures, and survey the nation's territorial expansions in the South and West. Their successful self-interested pursuit of opportunities offered by the expanding American empire, Goodin argues, constitutes what he calls "the invisible hand of American nation building." Goodin shows how these ordinary men, lacking the genius of a Benjamin Franklin or Alexander Hamilton, depended on sheer luck and adaptability in their quest for financial independence and public recognition. Drawing on archival collections, newspapers, private correspondence, and government documents, From Captives to Consuls sheds new light on the significance of ordinary individuals in guiding early American ideas of science, international relations, and what it meant to be a self-made man.