The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [151]
When the weapons cabinet doors were thrown open, however, the men of the Cumberland found less than thirty swords and only a few muskets. There would be no fight. The captain decided to surrender, striking his colors when the captain of the Pomona yelled across the water for him to do so.
The boarding of the Cumberland was delayed by the distance between the ships and high waves that tossed both vessels up and down and made it difficult to close the space between them. A comedy followed, according to Greenwood. The men of the Cumberland, resigned to capture and prison, decided to have one last fling. They broke open the liquor casks in the hold and began to pour the contents down their throats; many became drunk. The drunken sailors then raced to the storeroom where the captain had put dozens of British uniforms taken from the men of the ship they captured earlier. The inebriated men were certain that if they dressed like the Redcoats they would not be jailed. Unable to distinguish coat and trouser sizes in their stupor, they put on uniforms that did not fit, their pants legs dragging across the deck and their arms sticking through short sleeves of coats designed for much smaller men. Many of the inebriated “Redcoats” then collapsed on the deck and had to be tossed into the boats to take them to the Pomona, “like hogs,” Greenwood wrote. The officers of the Cumberland rowed over to the Pomona but the rough waves upended their boat at the last moment, smashing it against the side of the frigate. The British had to lower their own boat and fish the Americans out of the ocean.
“It would have made a saint laugh to see the men tumbling about,” Greenwood observed.
The last laugh was on Greenwood. He carefully wrapped up several pounds of chocolate, some sugar, and some biscuits in a handkerchief, put some of his clothes in a small bag with the sweets and climbed into the longboat to be taken to the Pomona. There, a teenage British sailor just as young as Greenwood told him that the captain would seize his candy and biscuits. He offered to take them and hold them for Greenwood until they could split the sweets later. Greenwood breathed a sigh of relief, thanked the teen, and handed him the handkerchief. He never saw the sweets again.
The Americans were rushed into the dark hold of the ship that was already filled with supplies. “Here we were stowed so close that we had no room to stand, sit, or lie, except partly on each other, for with the exception of the captain, doctor, first and second lieutenants, and captain’s clerk, we had all officers and men, to the number of 125, been placed indiscriminately together.”
Their prison in Barbados was awful. Greenwood wrote, “Our dungeon consisted of three apartments connected together, the floors of which were nothing but mud and clay, and, on account of the heavy rains prevalent in the West Indies, the water had settled in the center of these to the depth of two inches. Every part of the place was wet and damp yet here on the ground we were obliged to lie, having been robbed of everything except what we had on our backs. No bread was furnished us, nor do I recollect that they gave us a particle during the five months we were kept on the island.”
It was in that jail that Greenwood was scarred for life. Another prisoner, assigned to assist with the kitchen facilities, stumbled while carrying a large pot of scalding hot soup as he walked through the yard. The soup pot tipped over and its contents spilled over Greenwood, barechested, lying on the ground to relax. The soup burns left a permanent scar on his shoulder and chest.
A few days later, word spread that on the following morning British navy and English privateer captains would arrive to choose men to be placed on their ships as impressed seamen for the remainder of the war. Greenwood and five others attempted to escape to avoid that fate, but they were caught. Greenwood then came up