In April 1644, the parliamentary navy captured an unnamed ship carrying soldiers from Ireland to England and brought the vessel into Milford Haven in south Wales. There, on 23 April, St George's Day, Captain Richard Swanley, admiral of the Irish squadron, ordered the execution of seventy men and two women by tying them together and throwing them overboard. The royalist newspaper, Mercurius Aulicus, condemned this action as ‘unparalleled murder’ and its perpetrator as ‘that barbarous mariner Captaine Swanley’.Footnote 1 Parliamentarian newspapers, on the other hand, revelled in the details of the execution and lauded Swanley's actions. The Spie commended ‘the valiant and industrious Capt. Swanley’ and suggested that ‘salt water was a very convenient drench to cure those barbarous wretches, which had taken a Surfeit with Protestant blood in Ireland’.Footnote 2Mercurius Britanicus agreed that ‘it was just to cast them into the Sea and wash them to death from the blood of the Protestants that was upon them’ and that Swanley ‘hath a spirit made fit for revenging the blood of the poor Protestants in Ireland’.Footnote 3 In June 1644, Swanley appeared before the House of Commons to receive thanks and a gold chain valued at £200 for his ‘faithful service, and valiant Actions’ in Wales.Footnote 4 In October of the same year, parliament passed an act entitled Two ordinances of the Lords and Commons assembled in parliament one commanding that no officer or souldier either by sea or land, shall give any quarter to any Irishman, or to any papist borne in Ireland which shall be taken in armes against the parliament in England, which authorized the killing of Irish prisoners taken on land in England or at sea.Footnote 5 This article examines the treatment of prisoners, both mariners and passengers, captured in the seas around Ireland during the 1640s. It focuses particularly on whether or not the killing of captives taken at sea became the norm. It also seeks to analyse how thoroughly the English navy enforced the ordinance denying quarter to Irishmen taken at sea and factors that mediated the manner in which prisoners were treated.
The treatment of prisoners of war and incidents of atrocities has a timelessness that has always attracted historiographical attention. Debate on these issues ranges from the ransoming and killing of prisoners after battles such as Poitiers in 1356 and Agincourt in 1415 to German atrocities in Belgium and France in 1914. Writing on the killing of prisoners in the First World War, Alan Kramer has concluded that it was ‘episodic, not routine; opportunist, not systematic’.Footnote 6 For the early modern period historians, such as Geoffrey Parker, have examined this issue and the conduct of warfare in Europe.Footnote 7 Considerable attention has hitherto been devoted to the occurrence of atrocities and treatment of prisoners of war in the three kingdoms during the 1640s. Recent studies have reassessed the relatively benign reputation of the war in England and the view that the 1640s represented for Ireland a period of ‘indiscriminate blackness’.Footnote 8 Barbara Donagan noted that ‘the English Civil War offered examples of painfully conscientious behaviour by captives and prisoners, but it was also marked by casual cruelty and atrocities’.Footnote 9 Many incidents of atrocity occurred throughout the war in Ireland. In 1642, for example, at Silvermines in County Tipperary some Irish rebels stripped and beat a group of twenty Protestants to death.Footnote 10 However, as Micheál Ó Siochrú has shown, revulsion at the horror of unrestrained war combined with the return of veterans from continental armies and increased professionalism exerted a stabilizing and moderating effect on fighting in Ireland between 1642 and 1647.Footnote 11 This situation altered and the war reverted to being much bloodier in 1647 with the arrival both of new parliamentary regiments in Munster and Dublin, and of Oliver Cromwell in 1649.Footnote 12 By contrast, most historians pay little attention to the conduct of the war in the waters around the three kingdoms and atrocities that took place there. Naval histories of the period, such as J. R. Powell's The English navy in the Civil Wars, likewise ignore or pass briefly over acts of atrocity committed at sea.Footnote 13 This article thus supplies a new insight into atrocities in the three kingdoms and the war at sea in the 1640s.
I
People in the three kingdoms were keenly aware of the codes and norms governing seventeenth-century warfare. Accounts of atrocities combined with memoirs and manuals produced by veterans of the Thirty Years War provided soldiers and civilians with information on the actualities of war.Footnote 14 These included the Scotch military discipline (1644) by Major General Robert Monro, who served in the Swedish army and became commander-in-chief of the Scots army in Ulster, in which he advised young and inexperienced officers on the treatment of prisoners of war.Footnote 15 Sir James Turner, another officer who served with the Swedes in the 1630s, wrote an account of his experiences that included an in-depth analysis on the issue of prisoners of war and how the laws of war should be applied to the issue of quarter. He noted that, although prisoners should not be killed in cold blood, ‘neither can the promise of Quarter secure Rebels from that death Rebellion deserves’.Footnote 16 Irish soldiers, such as Garret Barry, also wrote military treatises, basing A discourse of military discipline (1634) on his experiences with the Spanish army in the Spanish Netherlands.Footnote 17 By contrast, there are much fewer contemporary writings providing direction on this issue for sailors. In A sea grammar (1627) John Smith acknowledged the lack of naval manuals available for inexperienced officers, but offered advice to captains on how to treat captives seized on a prize at sea. They should look after any wounded men, women, or old men they found, whilst any sailors could be imprisoned and their goods pillaged.Footnote 18
Given the lack of written guidelines, it is difficult to determine the norms of warfare at sea and the actual experience of captured seamen in the early modern period. The treatment of maritime prisoners varied considerably and factors such as time, place, and manner of capture, or the prisoner's religion, often determined the usage received. Spanish regulations from 1621, for example, ordered the summary execution of all Muslim sailors taken at sea by its ships.Footnote 19 Survivors from the Spanish Armada shipwrecked in Ireland generally fared worse than those who came ashore in England because of fear that they would prompt an Irish rebellion. Sir Richard Bingham, the governor of Connacht, reportedly executed at least 1,100 men in the province. By contrast, Sir Francis Drake spared the lives of the crew of the badly damaged Neustra Señora del Rosario. Similarly, in November 1588 the Spaniards who came ashore from the San Pedro Mayor near Salcombe were spared.Footnote 20 Some of the most brutal atrocities that took place at sea in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries occurred between Dutch and Spanish seamen. The duke of Alba, Spanish governor in the Netherlands, and Dutch privateers, known as ‘Sea Beggars’, regularly tortured and executed captured seamen.Footnote 21 After the failure of the Armada in 1589, a group of survivors secured passes from Elizabeth I to sail from Scotland to Dunkirk. A flotilla of Dutch privateers ambushed the Spaniards, seized one vessel and threw 270 men overboard. According to Francisco de Cuéllar, who managed to escape and swim ashore, the Spanish subsequently reciprocated by killing 400 Dutch prisoners.Footnote 22 The practice of drowning captured mariners continued into the 1620s and became known as ‘foot watering’.Footnote 23
Military commanders in the three kingdoms in the 1640s issued laws and ordinances to regulate the operations and administration of their forces. These articles, many adapted from other armies or previous campaigns, generally made few references to prisoners beyond an obligation to report them to commanding officers and a prohibition on the private disposal of captives.Footnote 24 Occasionally, some laws went further, such as those issued by the earl of Essex for the parliamentary army in 1642 which forbade the killing of prisoners and stated that ‘none shall kill an Enemy who yeelds and throwes downe his Armes’.Footnote 25 Surviving articles of war issued by the confederates, parliamentarians, and royalists in Ireland conform to such strictures.Footnote 26 While printed regulations offered little explicit guidance on the treatment of prisoners, a series of well-known customs and norms dictated how captives should be treated depending on the manner of their surrender.Footnote 27 Throughout the three kingdoms, breaches of these standards, too numerous to list, occurred. In an Irish context, officers knew of, and generally tried to adhere to, these codes of conduct. An anonymous ‘British officer’, who fought in Ulster, wrote that ‘after an enemy having surrendered his sword and arms, and is a prisoner ‘tis murder to kill him’.’Footnote 28 Some commanders were even willing to punish their own men for violations of agreed terms of surrender. In 1645, the confederate earl of Castlehaven, commanding an army in Munster, executed two of his own men for breaking the terms of quarter he had granted to a castle in the province.Footnote 29
The issue of the treatment of prisoners captured at sea received equally little formal consideration. From 1642 onwards, the confederate association in Ireland relied exclusively on a fleet of licensed privateers to wage war against its enemies at sea. The confederate supreme council supplied letters of marque and instructions to captains who sailed under their colours, the letter of marque serving as a licence for a captain to seize any vessels suspected of trading with parliamentary ports. The issue of what to do with prisoners was not a high priority for the confederate admiralty. Surviving commissions, such as those for the Mary of Antrim, St John of Waterford, and Cornelius of Wexford, do not mention the issue.Footnote 30 Captain Joseph Content's instructions as commander of the St Peter of Waterford stipulated that he should bring any prisoners seized into a confederate harbour where he should hand them over to a port officer for questioning to establish the legitimacy of his prize. A commander could only release captured seamen if he feared they might overpower his crew.Footnote 31 No surviving orders given to captains with confederate letters of marque authorized the killing of prisoners taken at sea.
By contrast, additional instructions set out by the admiralty in the spring of 1643 dealt extensively with the issue of Irish prisoners. In general, English sailing instructions given to naval captains provided considerable guidance for officers and covered most aspects associated with running a man-of-war. As in Ireland, however, parliamentary instructions included few provisions relating to prisoners other than to bring some ashore to be examined by an admiralty court.Footnote 32 This changed in April 1643 when additional instructions were issued to Richard Swanley which related exclusively to Ireland and not to parliamentary commanders on other stations. In conjunction with standard directions, they ordered Swanley to prevent any Irish coming to England, stating that ‘as for the Irish Rebells you are to use Martiall Lawe on them both by sea and land’ and that he should ‘use a more free and liberall hand over them in executing Martiall lawe upon them’.Footnote 33 The lord high admiral, the earl of Warwick, reiterated these commands in May 1643 when he reminded Swanley to put to death any who tried to cross from Ireland to England to cause disturbance and that he should be ‘very strict in your justice’.Footnote 34 These explicit instructions authorized the parliamentary Irish squadron to execute any soldiers detained at sea crossing to England and promised parliamentary protection to Swanley for his obedience.Footnote 35
II
Despite receiving these orders in April and May 1643, Swanley did not kill any prisoners seized by his squadron in the Irish Sea until April 1644. The delay that occurred from the initial issuing of the orders to the drowning of the Irish captives a year later cannot be attributed to a lack of prizes during that time. The fleet intercepted at least eleven ships going to and from confederate ports in Ireland.Footnote 36 In November 1643, for instance, the Sampson captured the Fortune of Wexford en route to Spain laden with pipe staves.Footnote 37 None of these prizes met the criteria laid down for executing prisoners captured at sea. The ships apprehended by the navy in this period consisted of merchantmen, rather than troop transports. The vessel Swanley intercepted in April 1644 thus had the misfortune to be the first ship carrying soldiers that he detained since regiments from Ireland began to arrive in England and Wales.
The conclusion of a cessation of arms between the confederates in Ireland and Charles I in September 1643 greatly influenced Swanley's treatment of captured Irishmen the following year. Following the outbreak of the Ulster rising in October 1641, stories of massacres in Ireland circulated in print and by word of mouth from fleeing refugees.Footnote 38 Pamphlets such as A remonstrance of divers remarkeable passages concerning the church and kingdome of Ireland outlined the rebels' motivations, intentions, and cruelties visited on the Protestants in graphic detail.Footnote 39 Rebellion in Ireland also heightened fears in England of ‘popish plots’ and invasions from across the Irish Sea.Footnote 40 From a parliamentary perspective, the threat of an Irish army crossing to England finally occurred in the autumn of 1643. The end to hostilities in Ireland allowed James Butler, marquis of Ormond, the king's lord lieutenant, to transport the bulk of the royalist army to England. In reality, most of the men who crossed to England consisted of returning English and Welsh veterans who had been sent to suppress rebellion in Ireland in 1641 and 1642. Mark Stoyle has estimated that, between October 1643 and March 1644, approximately 7,740 men sailed from Ireland to join royalist armies in England. Of this force, Stoyle calculated that only about 1,200 can be identified as Irish soldiers.Footnote 41 Nevertheless, parliamentarian propaganda portrayed this force as mainly comprising Irish Catholics who sought ‘to joyne with the Papists here to destroy the Protestants, and for the utter extirpation of the Protestant religion’.Footnote 42
From a naval perspective, the arrival of extra forces to strengthen the royalists in Wales threatened the security of the key parliamentary harbour at Milford Haven. At the time of the cessation in Ireland, the English navy lost the use of harbours at Dublin, Cork, Youghal, Kinsale, and Duncannon which left Milford Haven as the base of operations for ships assigned to guard the Irish coast. In late 1643, however, royalist forces commanded by Richard Vaughan, second earl of Carbery, overran most of Pembrokeshire and threatened to seize this key parliamentary harbour. In January 1644, Swanley arrived at Milford Haven with a squadron of five ships. Swanley's fleet assisted the army, under Major General Rowland Laugharne, in relieving the town of Pembroke and clearing the county of royalist forces in February and March.Footnote 43 It was around this time that reports relating to the execution of Irishmen captured in England began to appear in parliamentary news books. In November 1643, for example, The kingdomes weekly intelligencer claimed that parliamentarians at Liverpool planned to ‘make short work’ with some captive Irish. The following February, The true informer reported that Sir William Brereton, the parliamentary commander in Cheshire, intended to execute some Irishwomen, possibly by tying them back-to-back and casting them into the sea.Footnote 44 Paranoia over the landing of soldiers from Ireland, pressure on the naval outpost at Milford Haven, and reports of the killing of Irish prisoners thus combined to render the early months of 1644 the worst possible time for a ship, laden with soldiers coming from Ireland, to be captured by the English navy.
The 150 soldiers captured by Swanley in April sailed from Dublin and, according to the marquis of Ormond, had fought against the rebels in Ireland since the outbreak of the rebellion.Footnote 45 Swanley spared the lives of those who swore the Solemn League and Covenant.Footnote 46 Those who refused to take the Covenant – seventy men and two women – were thrown overboard and drowned. Swanley's brutal actions had the desired effect of slowing down the transportation of soldiers to aid Charles I. News of the atrocity made men preparing to sail from Dublin unwilling to venture across the Irish Sea, whilst the killing of Irish soldiers taken in England and Wales continued during the summer and autumn of 1644.Footnote 47 The parliamentary garrison at Bolton hanged a captured Irishman from the town ramparts. Later in July, the earl of Essex approved the killing of Irish prisoners taken at Dorchester stating that ‘he would not have quarter allowed to those’.Footnote 48 In October 1644, parliament granted official sanction to the killing of Irish prisoners when it passed an ordinance which stated that no officer on land or sea was to grant quarter to any Irishman or Catholic born in Ireland, captured in arms against parliament in England.Footnote 49
After the passing of this ordinance, a number of atrocities at sea can be identified sporadically thereafter. Naval captains received orders from the committee of the admiralty reminding them to carry out this directive.Footnote 50 As well as executing Irishmen captured in arms, parliamentary sailors also killed some civilians and merchant seamen they seized. In December 1644, Thomas Plunkett from the Discovery found two friars disguised as mariners aboard the Nostra Dama of Le Croisic sailing for Limerick. Plunkett tortured the friars by placing lighted match between their fingers before throwing them overboard.Footnote 51 Two years later, Captain John Gilson in the Constant Warwick allegedly cast fifteen men from Wexford overboard.Footnote 52 Newsbooks and pamphlets provided detailed accounts of executions by parliamentary naval officers. These reports need to be treated with caution, especially in relation to atrocities and accusations of torture. Stories of the use of burning match placed between victims' fingers to elicit intelligence or a confession are widespread throughout the 1640s. Writers sometimes fabricated or exaggerated stories such as the description in a pamphlet from 1645 of some English sailors finding a priest with a box of pardons for Catholics in England and Ireland inside a whale's belly.Footnote 53 In July 1644, Perfect occurrences of parliament reported that Captain Robert Moulton had thrown other Irish captives overboard.Footnote 54 In August 1646, the Scottish dove related the drowning of sixty Irish sailors, from a confederate privateer, after their seizure by two unnamed parliamentary warships.Footnote 55 Overall, most of the incidents involving the drowning of prisoners at sea by parliamentary forces relate to soldiers and civilian passengers on ships rather than to mariners. By comparison, English royalist sailors who surrendered to parliamentary forces could expect favourable treatment; indeed many duly deserted the king's service. In August 1643, for example, the master and crew of the Fellowship of Bristol overpowered their captain and yielded the ship to Captain William Smith in the Swallow after receiving guarantees concerning payment of their wages.Footnote 56
By contrast, the confederates do not seem to have been as willing to execute prisoners at sea. A number of well-known incidents of drowning prisoners in rivers nevertheless took place in Ireland in the 1640s. In November 1641, the rebels in Ulster drove approximately 100 Protestant men, women, and children into the River Bann.Footnote 57 This was followed in January 1642 by an incident in Wexford Bay in which eyewitnesses claimed that Irish sailors deliberately cast away a ship taking Protestant refugees to England. They stated that only the mariners and a Catholic woman reached safety whilst the rebels forced any Protestants that swam ashore back into the sea where they drowned.Footnote 58 Newsbooks occasionally published stories of atrocities perpetrated by Irish privateers. In December 1644, The kingdomes weekly intelligencer reported that an unnamed Irish man-of-war seized a vessel sailing from London to Rotterdam and shot the master and threw the crew into the sea.Footnote 59 Some Irish sailors threatened to adopt a hard-line approach to Englishmen apprehended at sea. In 1643 a privateer, named Donnell, vowed to decapitate any English sailors he took at sea and when some captive seamen were brought before him, asked ‘why did you bring these parliament doggs a shore could not you throwe them over board’?Footnote 60 Overall, despite such incidents and threats, the confederates do not appear to have perpetrated a large number of executions at sea against captured parliamentary mariners. Robert Venard, an English mariner incarcerated in Wexford, and therefore a possibly unreliable source, even went so far as to write to his wife to refute claims that the confederates threw captured sailors overboard.Footnote 61
Hence, neither side ever fully implemented a policy of executing sailors or soldiers detained at sea. Indeed, only a few months after the massacre at Milford Haven and before the passing of the parliamentary ordinance prohibiting the granting of quarter to Irishmen in October 1644, the earl of Warwick reluctantly accepted the necessity of exchanging maritime prisoners with the confederates. In August of that year, Warwick approved the freeing of twenty-four Irishmen taken on the Mary and Dorothy and held in London for twenty-seven Englishmen detained in Wexford and Limerick, describing the exchange as ‘a work of charity to get our men from under so base an enemy’.Footnote 62 Local parliamentary commanders in Ireland often preferred to make their own arrangements with the confederates for any captured sailors brought into their garrisons. Lord Inchiquin, the commander in Munster, retained the Irish sailors taken in the Phoenix of Flushing and brought into Cork until they could be exchanged for Protestant captives.Footnote 63
The dangers of engaging in a policy of large-scale executions had been fully realized on land in the three kingdoms. In February 1645, parliamentary forces executed a number of Irish soldiers after seizing the town of Shrewsbury. Prince Rupert, a royalist commander, retaliated by executing the same number of parliamentarians. Rupert warned Essex that the continuation of these tit-for-tat killings would make the war ‘much more mercilesse and bloody then it hath been’.Footnote 64 From a naval standpoint, the threat of retaliatory executions was equally real for parliamentary seamen. Throughout the 1640s, frigates with confederate commissions operating from ports such as Wexford and Waterford seized large quantities of English merchant shipping. If English naval officers regularly put to death captured Irish mariners then the confederates promised retaliation. As Irish forces usually held around 150 English and Scottish seamen in their port towns, this threat was taken seriously. The prospect of retaliatory executions quickly persuaded most warring parties of the need for moderation in dealing with captives. Even the Dutch suspended their practice of ‘foot watering’ Flemish privateers for fear of reprisal as numerous Dutch captives were held in Dunkirk.Footnote 65
Officials in confederate port towns, such as Wexford, sought to assure parliamentary commanders that they would take retaliatory measures if Irish sailors were killed. In June 1646, Captain Mathew Woods in the Samuel, blockading Dublin Bay, seized a small bark carrying forty confederate soldiers. When he asked Ormond to help secure the release of English seamen held at Wexford, the marquis wrote directly to the town's mayor to try to arrange an exchange of prisoners.Footnote 66 In reply, Walter Turner, the mayor of Wexford, indicated that he had already released the captives, adding a warning that if Woods executed any of the Irishmen he held, then ten English sailors would be killed for each Irishman in retaliation.Footnote 67 Jaspar Bolan, the next mayor of Wexford, reiterated this threat. Later in November of the same year, Bolan wrote to parliament after receiving news of the killing of fifteen townsmen at sea, reminding the Commons that he held approximately 168 Englishmen in his custody and warning that he would respond in kind unless he received assurance that the navy would cease its practice of drowning Irishmen. To illustrate his point, he placed the English captives he held in a ‘woeful dungeon’ for fifteen days.Footnote 68 Parliament thus could not afford to engage in reprisal killings of seamen. If English mariners who feared for their lives refused to go to sea, then the fishing industry and parliament's overseas trade would suffer. In 1649 the council of state advised the generals at sea to arrange exchanges of maritime prisoners as ‘it will do much to the satisfaction of the seamen, when they see that care is had of them’.Footnote 69
The spread of reciprocity was a key factor that led to restraint in early modern warfare. Geoffrey Parker, writing on this subject, argued that for reciprocity to work, there must be ‘some recognition of adversaries from earlier encounters and some certainty that the two sides will meet again’.Footnote 70 In contrast to the armies that fought in the three kingdoms, the prospect of meeting the same foe again and possibly becoming a prisoner did not effectively apply to most sailors who served in the parliamentary navy in the 1640s. Soldiers in a small geographic area might encounter each other on multiple occasions at different sieges, skirmishes, and battles over the course of the war. In the war at sea, with no battles and Irish privateers preferring to prey on easy merchant targets, very few mariners in the employ of the English state fell into confederate hands. Between 1641 and 1649, only six men-of-war owned or on hire to parliament can be definitely identified as having been seized by the confederates.Footnote 71
While the confederates did not seize many sailors from parliamentary men-of-war, they did detain large numbers from English merchant vessels. At least 293 ships can be identified from prize records in the 1640s.Footnote 72 The parliamentary navy and its crews did not operate in isolation from the rest of the population who earned their living from the sea. From the outset of the war this may have made parliamentary seamen reluctant to execute their confederate counterparts. Many sailors captured by the confederates probably had friends and relatives serving in the navy and the sailors and officers who manned the state's ships often first went to sea in the merchant or fishing fleets. The council of state described the fishing industry as ‘the very nursery and means of breeding our mariners and seamen, and without which we could not supply our naval forces’.Footnote 73 Robert Moulton, for instance, had sailed on trading voyages to the Americas before the war whilst his son, Robert junior, also served in the navy. Equally, Irish sailors or officials in ports who might threaten to execute English seamen also often had relatives at sea who, if captured, might face a similar fate. Nicholas Hay, the mayor of Wexford in 1643, had a brother, William, who commanded the St Patrick of Wexford.Footnote 74 Some parliamentarian officers can likewise be identified as having seafaring relatives seized by the confederates. Captain Thomas Plunkett's brother, Robert, commanded a privateer named the Sampson on the Irish coast. In January 1647 it was seized in Galway Bay by Captain Darcy. Reciprocity clearly worked in this instance. The confederates had released Robert Plunkett by October 1647 when he testified before the high court of admiralty in London.Footnote 75 These men came from, and lived, in the same maritime communities as sailors held by the confederates. Maritime towns and parishes in London, such as Ratcliff, appeared in numerous depositions from seamen in merchant vessels and men-of-war. In 1643, for example, two Irish frigates seized Jacob Frasor, a sailor from Ratcliff in a merchantman called the Trade. Numerous sailors and officers in state men-of-war and privateers gave their address as this parish, including William Martell, the master's mate of the Constant Warwick, Thomas Drew, a mariner in the Warwick frigate, and Richard Waters, a common seaman in the Hunter.Footnote 76 Therefore, the fear that their friends and relatives might suffer if they carried out the full rigours of parliamentary policy probably encouraged reciprocity at sea.
III
As the war at sea on the Irish coast intensified from 1645 on atrocities became less common and reciprocity and prisoner exchanges became the norm. The strength of parliamentary squadrons assigned to patrol the Irish coast increased and the navy played an active part in the coastal sieges at Duncannon and Youghal in 1645 and Bunratty in 1646. The strength of the confederate privateering fleet also increased considerably from 1646 on.Footnote 77 This led to the seizure of large numbers of ships and captives by both the confederates and parliamentarians. Therefore, in December 1646, parliament recognized the practicality of maritime prisoner exchange and the House of Commons approved the policy.Footnote 78 Officers who formerly executed prisoners actively participated in this process. Captain Swanley, for example, wrote to the confederate supreme council in February 1647, offering to exchange 150 men he held for 160 sailors imprisoned at Wexford and Kilkenny.Footnote 79 Even privateer commanders might be freed if they had treated captured Englishmen honourably and if prisoners of similar status in Irish captivity could be found to exchange. In March 1648, the committee of the admiralty approved the release of Captain William Hoville, the commander of the privateer the Angel Keeper of Waterford, on this basis.Footnote 80
However, problems involving the high cost of detaining men and a shortage of space meant that a formal exchange process was not the most practical manner of dealing with most maritime captives. By the spring of 1649 substantial numbers of Irishmen taken at sea were held in English prisons. With preparations underway for the invasion of Ireland and a large royalist fleet, under the command of Prince Rupert, anchored at Kinsale, parliament forbade the exchanging of Irish mariners on security grounds. By May of that year the council of state reported that they held between 400 and 500 Irish sailors and required instructions on how to dispose of these men.Footnote 81 Complaints from coastal towns such as Plymouth highlighted a lack of capacity in the gaol and security concerns relating to holding important prisoners in the town.Footnote 82 In order to help alleviate the problem of maritime detainees, parliament ordered the release of non-Irish sailors. By the middle of May 1649 the policy of arranging exchanges for captured Irish seamen had been reinstated.Footnote 83 To improve further the situation the navy received orders a few months later to set directly French and Flemish prisoners ashore in their home countries rather than bring them into an English port.Footnote 84 Some parliamentary captains also chose to adopt this approach to dealing with Irish prisoners and put them ashore on the nearest land, rather than bring them into port. In 1649 Captain Harrison in the Phoenix set all the seamen from the St Peter of Waterford ashore. Captain Wynd of the Adventure of London also landed twenty crewmen of the Margaret of Waterford in Holland after capturing the vessel.Footnote 85 Like their parliamentarian counterparts, confederate officers sometimes landed captured crews on the closest shore. The Cornelius of Wexford set the company of a Dover ship on shore after they set the vessel on fire.Footnote 86
After being freed many Irish seamen returned to Ireland. In 1649 Lawrence Trehy and John Brennan were seized en route from Galway to Spain. On their return to Ireland in August, they gave a detailed account of the preparations taking place around Milford Haven for Cromwell's army.Footnote 87 Some Irish mariners had the misfortune to be captured more than once by parliamentary ships. In 1643 Christopher Turner from Wexford, for example, was detained on the Margaret of Wexford. Later in October 1649 Turner escaped with his life, but lost a twelve gun frigate, the Mary Conception of Wexford, when Cromwellian forces stormed that town. In 1650, the parliamentary navy seized Turner again in the privateer the Peter of Scilly.Footnote 88 Elsewhere, some English mariners gained their freedom by serving on Irish ships. If recaptured by parliament they usually claimed, echoing Thomas Webb, arrested on the Fortune of Wexford in 1643, that they had been coerced into service by their captors.Footnote 89 Religious differences generally precluded the pressing of Catholic confederate sailors by English naval vessels.
IV
Despite the setting free of some prisoners many parliamentary naval officers and town officials continued to face the problem of feeding and housing prisoners until appropriate exchanges could be arranged. The treatment received by confederate sailors detained by parliament varied depending on the circumstances of their capture. After their surrender, soldiers and sailors could generally expect to be robbed of their money and clothes. Men on all sides also complained about harsh conditions in the prisons in which they found themselves incarcerated. Mariners seized by parliamentary men-of-war underwent similar hardships. The crew of a Kinsale bark seized in Devon in 1642 and suspected of carrying soldiers for Ireland complained that their goods had been seized and that they ‘are lyable to remaine in great misery’ in Newgate prison. Inventories taken for the high court of admiralty from captured vessels often listed the personal property of mariners. An inventory for the St Nicholas seized near Waterford in 1649, for example, concluded ‘and all the money and goods of the mariners’.Footnote 90 Parliament incurred high costs in maintaining captive seamen in its gaols. Initially they granted a daily allowance of 3d to the keeper of Marshalsea prison to maintain Irish sailors detained there. This was less than the daily allowance of 6d generally given for the upkeep of prisoners of war by both sides in England. Later in the war the council of state ordered an increase to 8d per day in the amount allowed to prisoners of war taken at sea. The committee of the navy also approved payments to pursers on warships for the victualling of men detained on Irish prizes. In November 1647, they ordered £17 7s 8d be paid to John Attawell, the purser of the Assurance, for captives taken in the Irish Sea.Footnote 91
As well as being robbed and kept in unfavourable prison conditions, some captives were assaulted and tortured by their captors. The torture of prisoners at sea usually involved some personal motivation by the naval officers rather than having official government approval. Captain William Penn, in the Assurance, humiliated some high-ranking Spanish nobles intercepted in the St Patrick of Waterford en route to Bilbao in late 1646. Penn stripped Don Juan de Urbina naked and left him with the seamen. The Spanish ambassador in London complained about this incident to the committee of the admiralty who ordered the Spaniard's release.Footnote 92 Penn's actions can probably be attributed to the detention of his brother, George, then a prisoner in Spain. Penn's abuse of the Spaniards did not receive official sanction but it seems to have been effective as his brother was released soon afterwards.Footnote 93
Other commanders that adopted a harsh line when dealing with Irish prisoners may have acted for personal profit. In order for a ship to be condemned by the admiralty court as a legitimate prize it had to be sailing to or from a port in hostility to parliament. Some captains tortured prisoners to force them to confess that they sailed to rebel ports in Ireland. Adrian Block, the master of the Charity of Flushing, alleged that Captain John Gilson, in the Constant Warwick, tortured an Irish passenger named Richard Butler to make him say that the vessel sailed for the confederate held town of New Ross. Block maintained that the Charity carried salt for Dublin, a parliamentary harbour.Footnote 94 In October 1646 the passengers on the John of London, claimed that Captain Thomas Plunkett threatened to hang or shoot any who refused to sign a confession that said the ship was bound for a confederate town. Later the men recanted their confessions insisting that they had given false statements under duress. Plunkett denied such accusations and produced papers from the John that showed the ship's destination as the rebel-held towns of Galway, Limerick, or Tralee.Footnote 95
The allegations made against John Gilson and Thomas Plunkett suggest that they abused prisoners to extract confessions to legitimize prizes. As many of the intercepted vessels carried merchandise of considerable value, this may well have been a factor in their actions. The John of London, for example, laded tobacco weighing 180,000 pounds.Footnote 96 This may have made captains willing to threaten or torture the crew and passengers to improve their claim to the prize. The fact that many merchant ships carried false documentation to avoid seizure if detained by parliamentary men-of-war may also have persuaded captains, such as Plunkett and Gilson, to apply ruthless methods. Passengers on the Mary of St Malo gave evidence against her master after its capture in June 1649. According to their statements the master carried ‘false writings’ indicating the Mary was bound for the parliamentary port of Dublin, although it actually laded a cargo of barrel staves at confederate held New Ross.Footnote 97 While parliament never formally approved of the use of torture by its naval captains it equally never sanctioned officers like Gilson, Penn, and Plunkett for their actions on the Irish coast.
V
The ‘unparalleled murder’ of Irish men taken at sea that Mercurius Aulicus reported in May 1644 proved to be the best-documented incident of this type to take place during the 1640s. Other killings of prisoners captured at sea occurred thereafter, but they received less coverage in contemporary publications. There is a disparity between the polemic of the confederates and parliamentarians and the actuality of the war on the Irish coast. The language of both warring parties threatened no quarter for captured mariners and parliamentary press regularly praised naval officers who executed prisoners at sea. However, the realities of war at sea and the prospect of tit-for-tat executions, as on land, limited the worst excesses on both sides. The execution of captives never became the norm for any of the naval forces fighting in the seas around Ireland. After the initial phase of atrocities at sea the maritime conflict in Ireland became less brutal and bloodier as the war progressed. As both the confederates and parliamentary fleets in Irish waters increased from 1647, the number of prisoners of war rose substantially as both sides detained more ships. Neither side could afford to implement such a severe policy. The presence of so many English sailors imprisoned in Irish ports generally constrained the actions of parliamentary commanders such as Richard Swanley. If the navy executed all Irish mariners they captured, they could expect the confederates to retaliate by killing English sailors. As had happened elsewhere in the seas around Europe, reciprocity precluded ruthlessness. Hence, exchange, rather than execution, became the norm for prisoners taken at sea.
