Dartmoor prison, located in southwest England near Plymouth, was the compound used by the British in the War of 1812 (1812-15) to hold as many as 6,000 captured seamen and privateersmen from the United States. These prisoners of war hated Dartmoor's desolate location on a barren moor. While many suffered illness and malnourishment, others set up trades and stores within its walls to service their fellow prisoners. Confined in a world unto themselves, the prisoners even established schools to teach navigation, dancing, and boxing.

The most famous section of the compound was Prison Number 4. In 1814 the British placed all of the African-American prisoners in this prison, along with European Americans whom other prisoners considered undesirable. The African-American prisoners were led by a huge man named Richard Craftus, popularly called King Dick, and were known for holding religious services and theatrical performances in their prison house. The prisoners were often unruly and challenged the authority of the British guards. Conditions became even more explosive after the Treaty of Ghent (1814) peace agreement. Without an easy means of accommodating the prisoners and sending them to the United States, and preoccupied by the return of Napoleon Bonaparte to France in spring 1815, the British did not release their U.S. prisoners of war. On April 4, 1815, the prisoners rioted when the British commissary attempted to serve them hard biscuits instead of the usual soft bread. They actually won that confrontation and were given the appropriate bread. On April 6, 1815, an incident along the prison wall, where some prisoners were thought to be trying to escape, led to a general alarm. Amid the confusion, and as the prisoners began to rush the gate, the British guards opened fire on them, killing six and wounding many more. This event, called the Dartmoor Massacre, remained a searing testimony of British perfidy for the U.S. maritime community.

A joint U.S. and British diplomatic commission, however, determined that no officials were at fault, thus defusing a potentially divisive diplomatic incident immediately after the War of 1812.

Bibliography:

1) W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press., 1997)

2) Paul A. Gilje, Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)

3) Reginald Horsman, "The Paradox of Dartmoor Prison," American Heritage 26 (1975): 13-17, 85

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