The hated cage An American tragedy in Britain's most terrifying prison

In the early nineteenth century, Yelverton, England's Dartmoor Prison touted a new, progressive approach to criminal justice with a goal of rehabilitation over retribution (execution). In April 1815, Dartmoor housed a contingent of 5,000 American prisoners, most of them held as captives during the War of 1812. When an argument among inmates led to an alleged attempted prison break, prison guards began wantonly firing on the men, killing nine Americans. Guyatt (Bind Us Apart, 2016) aims to correct the written record of this tragedy, which has been largely obscured, as the events took place after the formal conclusion of the war, and stained by racism, with one influential African American inmate portrayed as something of a criminal mastermind while 80 percent of the American prisoners were white. Cruel treatment of the inmates was not solely to blame for the massacre; many of the American prisoners were privateers, leading to lack of acknowledgement by U.S. officials responsible for requesting their release. With breathtaking revelations, Guyatt illustrates poignantly why the past is not to be disregarded.

Guyatt (Bind Us Apart), an American history professor at the University of Cambridge, chronicles in this colorful account the little-known story of more than 6,000 American POWs held at Dartmoor Prison in southwest England during the War of 1812. Explaining that "virtually all" of the prisoners were sailors whose private vessels had been outfitted with guns and ordered to harass British merchant ships, Guyatt notes that British impressment of American sailors was a primary cause of the war, and draws on prison diaries and letters to explain how Dartmoor became "the first racially segregated prison in American history" when white prisoners asked to be housed in separate quarters from their Black compatriots. Guyatt also delves into the story of Black sailor Richard Crafus, known as "King Dick," who became a leader of the Black section of the prison, which white inmates visited for gambling, theatrical plays, and even Sunday sermons, and documents how mounting tensions over delays in releasing the Americans after the war's end and an attempted escape led to the massacre of nine prisoners and the wounding of many others in April 1815. Expertly weaving digressions on the history of incarceration and the racial dynamics of America's shipping industry into the narrative, Guyatt delivers an engrossing look at an intriguing historical footnote. (Apr.)

Guyatt (North American history, Univ. of Cambridge; Bind Us Apart) has written an engrossing account of a little-known incident from the War of 1812 in which over 6,000 Americans were held as prisoners of war in England. American sailors previously impressed into the Royal Navy found themselves locked away in the fearsome Dartmoor Prison alongside privateers caught in the act of attacking British ships. Rather than presenting a united front against their common enemy, the Americans were divided by issues of loyalty, national identity, and race. Although high-ranking white officers requested the separation of Black sailors, Guyatt draws upon the contemporary journals of prisoners to show how the segregated block became the vital center of the prison's economy, culture, and acts of resistance. With great sympathy, Guyatt depicts the daily deprivations and mounting tensions inside the prison as the sailors' imprisonment stretched beyond the end of the war, thanks to an ineffectual consul in London and a government that turned a blind eye to their suffering. The inevitable result, Guyatt argues, was an explosion of violence that cost nine American POWs their lives. VERDICT A powerful depiction of race relations, international politics, and governmental neglect in the early years of the American republic.--Sara Shreve