The Forgotten Massacre at Dartmoor Prison
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 July 2022
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
During the War of 1812, the last time Britain and the United States went to war with each other, more than six thousand American sailors ended up in Dartmoor Prison. At the end of the war, prisoners remained behind Dartmoor’s walls for months after peace had been ratified. The prisoners’ fury at their continued incarceration led to an uprising on April 6, 1815, and then to a massacre: nine Americans were shot dead, the last men to be killed in a war between the two countries.
Nick Guyatt is a historian, author and lecturer in modern history. Nick joins Dan on the podcast to discuss the extraordinary story of what happened at Dartmoor during the War of 1812, what really took place in the prison, and how the tragedy created a brief and fiery outrage in the United States but then slipped from view.
Produced by Hannah Ward
Mixed and Mastered by Dougal Patmore
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, buddy. Welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. |
| 0:04.0 | A strange story to tell you today. It's the story of the last Anglo-American |
| 0:09.0 | violence in history. Well, there was a bit of a fight, I think, over a little |
| 0:13.0 | island next to Vancouver that involved a pig getting shot, but basically bear |
| 0:16.0 | with me. It's the story of the last Anglo-American violence, interstate violence |
| 0:21.0 | kind of involved the British prisoners shooting a number of American |
| 0:27.0 | prisoners of war in a gigantic prison in Dartmore in 1815, over 200 years ago. |
| 0:33.0 | These American prisoners were being held until the final peace negotiations |
| 0:38.0 | had been agreed, the ink signed and dried on the peace treaty to |
| 0:43.0 | ended the so-called War of 1812 between Britain and America. These American |
| 0:48.0 | prisoners had been brought from all over the world, but they had been seized by |
| 0:51.0 | British naval vessels, and they had been warehouseed in a gigantic purpose-built |
| 0:56.0 | prison in Dartmore, which folks is still a prison today. Wow. This |
| 1:02.0 | prison had been built to intern the expert professional sailors of Napoleon's |
| 1:07.0 | fleet during the Polo-Nit Wars, thinking it would do grave damage to the French |
| 1:11.0 | Admiralty as they tried to resurrect their forces after Trafalgar if many |
| 1:15.0 | of their most experienced sailors were imprisoned in the UK. The story of |
| 1:20.0 | the prison and the story of the French and the Americans within it had just been |
| 1:23.0 | written up by a very brilliant historian. He's a professor in North American |
| 1:27.0 | histories, Nick Guides, he's at University of Cambridge, and he joins me in this |
| 1:30.0 | podcast to talk all about it. If you wanted to listen to my interview with Simon |
| 1:34.0 | Mayo about this prison that I recorded years ago, you can do so on history |
... |
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