In August 1781, Botto Sculteus Aeneae was “a twelve-year-old boy from Amsterdam, feverishly excited about his fanciful midshipman job.”
He was serving on a ship called the South Carolina, ferrying military supplies from the Dutch island of Texel to Charleston in the young United States of America.
On 25 Nov 1783, Botto was back in Amsterdam. He described his previous two and a half years to a notary. The intervening experiences included:
- shying away from the Charleston port on learning that it had been recaptured by the British.
- sailing the Caribbean on the South Carolina, taking prizes.
- helping the Spanish military seize the Bahamas in May 1782.
- reaching Philadelphia, where the ship had to be restaffed with “mostly inexperienced youth desiring adventure, and Germans recruited out of British prisoner camps.”
- quickly being captured by three British warships.
- being sent as a prisoner onto the infamous Jersey prison ship in New York harbor.
That purpose also makes Botto’s deposition somewhat frustrating. He didn’t tell his story to inform his family what he went through, to entertain readers, or to create meaning for himself. He was simply getting his experiences and basic suffering down on paper for the record. The account doesn’t have a lot of daily detail or emotion beyond frustration and suffering.
Still, it’s a side of the war we rarely see from an even more unusual witness and participant. De Boer’s translation of the text appears under the notes for her essay about it.
Thank you for sharing this. However, I think I missed something? Where in his testimony does the boy say he was in a prison SHIP? To me, the narrative makes it appear he was in a prison in New York. Certainly one would expect a lot more detail if he escaped from a ship on the water to the "gates of the city."
ReplyDeleteThat’s a provocative question. De Boer’s essay states: “ He did not explicitly state the name of the prison where he subsequently ended up, but the historical context matched with his observations makes it abundantly clear: Botto’s destination would be the Jersey.” The boy’s account indeed doesn’t name the ship, but it also doesn’t say the prison was a ship or include any details that would only fit a ship. So the question bears investigating.
ReplyDeleteI think most of the Royal Navy’s prisoners at this time were sent to prison ships. But that doesn’t mean Botto necessarily was. As a boy, and also an officer, he might have received a less harsh assignment. And I’m working on the story of another teenager captured by the British who downplayed how he got off the Jersey by enlisting in the British army. Did Botto have something to hide?
The British National Archives contains a roll of the Jersey listing every prisoner it held to keep track of the rations the navy needed. Now I wonder if Botto’s name appears on it.