"Sights of woe, regions of sorrow, doleful shades; Where peace and rest can never dwell
"When I became an inmate of this abode of suffering, despair, and death, there were about 400 on board, but in a short time they were increased to 1,200.
"All the most deadly diseases were pressed into the service of the king of terrors, but his prime ministers were dysentery, small pox, and yellow fever. The healthy and the diseased were mingled together in the main ship."
He says that the two hospital ships were soon overcrowded, and that two hundred or more of the prisoners, who soon became sick in consequence of the want of room, were lodged in the fore-part of the lower gun-deck, where all the prisoners were confined at night.
"Utter derangement was a common sympton of yellow fever, and to increase the horror of darkness which enshrouded us, for we were allowed no light, the voice of warning would be heard, 'Take care! There's a madman stalking through the ship with a knife in his hand!'"
Andros says that he sometimes found the man by whose side he had lain all night a corpse in the morning. There were many sick with raging fever, and their loud cries for water, which could only be obtained on the upper deck, mingled with the groans of the dying, and the execrations of the tormented sufferers. If they attempted to get water from the upper deck, the sentry would push them back with his bayonet. Andros, at one time, had a narrow escape with his life, from one of these bayonet thrusts.
"In the morning the hatches were thrown open and we were allowed to ascend. The first object we saw was a boat loaded with dead bodies conveying them to the Long Island shore, where they were very slightly covered with sand. * * * Let our disease be what it would we were abandoned to our fate. No English physician ever came near us."
Thirteen of the crew to which Andros belonged were on the Jersey. In a short time all but three or four were dead. The healthiest died first. They were seized vith yellow fever, which was an epidemic on the ship, and died in a few hours. Andros escaped contagion longer than any of his companions, with one exception. He says that the prisoners were furnished with buckets and brushes to cleanse the ship, and vinegar to sprinkle the floors, but that most of them had fallen into a condition of apathy and despair, and that they seldom exerted themselves to improve their condition.