Day after day passed and I received no reply to my letter, nor did I hear from it in any way. A week, two weeks, three weeks, and the situation was the same. I began to despair, not that I doubted the fidelity of Captain Graham to his promise, but because I feared my letter had gone astray and failed to reach its destination. I asked for the privilege of writing another letter, but was told that such indulgence was not permitted to the prisoners, except by permission of some high official in London, whom it was impossible for me to reach. It was against the rules for me to write a letter without the consent of some one outside the prison, and I was not permitted to send to him for that consent.
Time hung heavy on my hands. During the day we had the privileges of the prison yard; at night we were locked up in our quarters, and sentries, with loaded muskets, were at the doors to prevent our going outside the building. We had only the floor to sleep upon, unless we were ill enough to be sent to the hospital, where the beds consisted of the rudest kind of cots, with bags of straw for mattresses. Our food was barely enough to support life, and of the most common description. For those in the hospital it was a little better; but even there it was not such as would tempt the appetite.
Some of the prisoners had been there for several years, having been sent to Dartmoor long before the breaking out of the war in 1812. They were Americans who had been impressed into the British service, and refused to serve against their country. They had undergone severe punishment, some having been flogged repeatedly in the hope of subduing them, and as a last resort they had been sent to Dartmoor for incarceration.
Altogether, there were more than two thousand of this class of prisoners, and some had been ten years in captivity; then there were about four thousand who had been captured on naval vessels, privateers, and merchantmen, during the war; so that the total of the American population of the prison was little, if any, short of six thousand. We had the melancholy satisfaction of knowing that there was a considerable number of British subjects confined in American prisons; but, after all, there was very little comfort to be derived from this knowledge. We would have gladly consented to the liberation of every Briton then in American hands, provided, of course, we could have gained our freedom at the same time.