Thomas Dunton

THE NARRATIVE OF THOMAS DUNTON, JR., THE RICHMOND ENQUIRER, AUGUST 6, 1814. “The following narrative we received from the gentleman in whose charge the two unfortunate little orphans, from whom it comes, were brought from Boston, and was taken down from the lips of the eldest by the magistrate who has signed it...We have seen and conversed with the boys, they being yet here under the care of the Commissary General of Prisoners, waiting an opportunity to be sent to their friends.

Thomas Dunton says and declares as follows: the first night my father he went down aboard the little schooner, and he saw one of the Baltimore privateers-he took it to be-it wasn’t a Baltimore privateer, it was the brig Sophia, after one of the Baltimore privateers; and then he went up to home that night, then he went down next day alone to one of my cousins, cousin John Evans was his name. Some people told him the brig Sophia was up the bay, and then some others again told him she had come down the bay and was gone out, and by his thinking so, he goes next day and gets his boat under way and went out. We, that is, my father my brother, Robert Dunton, one year younger than me, and myself got a good breeze that night right fair, and went before it, and next morning about day, we got a calm, and the Sophia was astern of us about two miles, and she fired a great gun, and the man at helm was so frightened that he jumped down below. My father was so sick that he could not get up to go to the helm, and then me and my brother, we could not work her, and so we drifted down to the fleet. Then the brig Sophia, she got out sweeps and she caught us. Then when she caught us, she sent her barge on board, and took us to the brig, who took us in tow, and carried us to the Lacedemonian, the commodore's ship. They then took us on board the Lacedemonian, captain Lockart of the Sophia came on board and asked the commodore it he should let us go ashore, he said he didn’t see the sense of keeping such small shallops, as they did no harm, and the large ones they did, and they would get money for them. the commodore said he would not let us go. We were then sent on board the Sophia, and went down the bay in her, and then was put on board the brig Acteon, and then we went out in chase of the Baltimore privateers, but took none, and then we came back again. My father asked the captain of the Dragon to let us go on shore, no, says he, I have let so many go already, that I will not let you go. We were kept in Chesapeake bay, until cold weather, and it was snowy, and my brother and I was barefoot, and could not get any shoes. At last, they put us on board the [12 gun] brig Conflict, and sent us to Bermuda. they put us forward with negroes who had run away from their masters, and they were sea-sick and vomited over myself and father, who were laying on the bare deck without beds or covering. then my father he crawled out on his bare knees, and went to the serjeant and told him, if he did not give him a better bed than he had, he would die in a better way. the serjeant then gave him a blanket, and he lay down in another port of the ship, under a midshipman's hammock. myself and brother kept among the negroes, without any bed or covering, and without shoes during the whole of the voyage. while we were in the Chesapeake we were every day in sight of home, and when they burnt our shallop, which was the first night after we were taken, they burnt her right before my father's face, after they had stript her of her mast and sails. When we got to Bermuda, they put us on board a prison ship, where we stayed about five weeks, and my father was sick. they gave us about a half a pound of salt beef, and a pint of peas, (about five years old and wormy) and a pound of dirty wormy bread and sour musty flour, each man a day. My father, though he was sick, draw’d the same provision, and nothing else at all. then they sent us to the hospital ship, and put us in a little cabin, where it was as dark at 12 o’clock at noon, as it was out of doors at night, and we could not see our hand before us, and they gave us fresh provisions which stunk so that we could not eat it, and threw it away, and this same provision was served to my father, though he was sick. my father never received any medicine, nor did any person nurse him but me and my brother, and no doctor ever came to see him, only the night he died. we were allowed half of a little bit of a candle at night and so my father died which was about a week after to the hospital ship we were without candle that night the carpenter he goes right strait and got some plank and he sawed it up and nailed it and made a box of it. it was not like a coffin at all; the nails where they banged them through, they stuck out, and when they put my father into the box, they stuck into his flesh.

I then strait complained to them and told them they ought’ent to put him in so, and then they took the dirt and trash which they swept off of the deck, and put in with my father, but did not alter the nails. The purser then came up, and said to my brother and me, “You cannot complain when you get home, but what I have done my best for you, and your father and brother too.” I told him he did not do his best at all, and he then told the carpenter to nail down the top of the coffin, and me and my brother, we did not see him any more. The grave was so far from the edge of the earth, that the coffin was above the edge of the earth as much as the length of my hand; and they covered it with dirt and rocks. My brother and I staid at about two months after my father died. six weeks of which we were confined in the prison ship, with upwards of five hundred other prisoners, French and English. We were treated very bad, and they told me and my brother our father was a damned old rascal, and that we were damned rascals too; that if we run about the decks, they would break our necks. We were then sent to Halifax and into the goal, which was dirty, lousy, and crowded. We got rather better provision at Halifax than got at Bermuda; but the bread was wormy at Halifax, and we did not get enough meat. We staid Halifax one month, and then were sent in a cartel Salem, [Massachusetts] where we arrived in May. Capt. Webb care of us at Salem, and got us wholly cleaned, kept us at his house, and used us very kind indeed. We then were sent to Boston, and Mr. Prince provided for us; he took my brother to his house, and put me to Mr. Skinner; provided us with clothes, and wrote a letter about us. He treated us very well, indeed, and got us put under the care of gentleman bound to Washington, who took us with him and gave us up to general Mason, commissary general of prisoners. It was on the fourth day of July, 1813, we were taken and the shallop was from the Eastern Shore of Virginia, bound to Baltimore where my father was carrying me and brother to school. I was eleven years old when taken prisoner, and was a prisoner almost a year, and absent from home more than a year. My father owns a plantation at Eastern Shore and my grandmother owns a plantation at Maggotty [Magothy] Bay, with about twenty slaves; my mother has been dead three years, and I have uncles who are called rich men and own a great many negroes….25th July 1814.”

Editor’s Note: Captain Thomas Dunton (1758-1814) was born in Northampton County, Virginia. Dunton was a merchant who lived near Cherrystone Creek. He owned one vessel, the schooner Fox. In 1794, he married Susannah "Suky" Bell (died 1813) and they had 2 sons and 2 daughters. Dunton made his will in 1805 writing, “…it is my desire that Mr. Eyre should take my two sons Thomas Dunton and Robert Dunton…and put them to a trade in Baltimore or Philadelphia.” By the time young Thomas and Robert returned home to the Eastern Shore in summer 1814, they had travelled over 4,000 miles. Nothing is known of their fates.

Colonel Thomas M. Bayly (1775-1834), lieutenant colonel of the 2nd Virginia Militia Regiment, attempted to return the Dunton boys to their home throughout Summer 1814. He wrote to a letter to the Commissary General stating “Thos. Dunton lived in Northampton county, and…was a respectable man of moderate fortune, usually kept a small bay shallop and a small grocery store. Having lost his wife…he declined keeping house, and was taking the children to school, when he was captured. He left North-Hampton the last summer, went to Richmond, obtained a load of coal, was blockaded in James River, Hampton or Norfolk, and in attempting to cross the Bay, was captured. The vessel in which he was captured was very small, navigated only by Mr. Dunton and one man...Thomas Dunton was not a mariner accustomed to go to sea. Occasionally he went into the bay, as most of our citizens in Accomac and N. Hampton are accustomed to do. The mother of the children was a daughter of Mrs. Burroughs, a respectable widow lady, living near Arlington (Mr. Custis’s plantation) six miles from Cape Charles, and has been in great grief for the fate of her grand children and their father. She will to-morrow be informed of their safety and his death.”

HMS Acteon was the brig Actéon, launched in France in 1804 as the second of the two-ship Lynx-class. The British Royal Navy captured her in 1805 and commissioned her in 1809. She later served in the Channel, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Chesapeake Bay. She was broken up in 1816.

Images: George Heriot, “Virginia Pilot Boat,” early 19th century. The Dunton’s boat likely resembled a pilot boat of this type. Unknown Artist, “Portrait of a Boy,” early 19th century. W. H. Harriot, “Convicts Being Rowed Out to a Prison Hulk,” 19th century. The Duntons stayed in a prison ship similar to this one in Bermuda. Rev. Thomas Streatfeild, “A deck scene with a man being seasick over the ship's rail,” 1820. Captain Dunton was ill from the date that he was captured in summer 1813 until his death months later. Rev. James Madison, Details from “Map of Virginia,” 1807. Cherrystone (ie. Cherryton) and Magothy Bay are marked in red.