Gustavus Conyngham - First Return To America and Imprisonment

First Return To America and Imprisonment

It is ironic that the first friendly port Conyngham had seen in years would treat him so poorly. Though the local newspapers hailed him as a returning war hero, the Continental Congress was less than pleased with his disobedience to orders and his loss of his original commission, which had been confiscated by the French during his brief stay in their prison. Adding to this, as Conyngham was not the owner of the Revenge, it was sold at a private auction. However, because Conyngham had been so successful as her captain, he was again given command with orders to raid British shipping for a private profit. However, during one of his first cruises he was unable to outrun the British warship Galatea, and was taken aboard as a prisoner. As his notoriety had grown since his last capture, the British treated him very poorly. Since he did not have a commission at the time, and he was arrested for piracy and sent to the English prison at Pendennis Castle, where he escaped, only to be caught again and transferred to Mill Prison, Plymouth. By his own report he was kept in irons until he reached prison, and was given no more than a “cold plank as my bed, a stone for a pillow”. Additionally, he was not fed properly, causing him to lose fifty pounds while imprisoned on the ship en route to his English prison. He was kept in irons continuously at both Pendennis Castle and Mill Prison. In fact, it was only by the watchful hand of Benjamin Franklin that Conyngham was kept from the gallows. Franklin wrote to General George Washington about Conyngham’s missing commission, and Washington wrote to the British saying that if Conyngham met with the noose, he would hang six of the British officers he had captured. However, despite these conditions, he refused to accept the invitation to leave prison by joining the British Navy. In fact, while in prison he aided in the creation of a document stating that each member who signed would not leave the American cause regardless of how terrible the conditions became. Conyngham was placed on trial for high treason, but before his sentence was determined and carried out he escaped. Conyngham and eleven other prisoners had broken into the prison vault allowing them to use tools to dig a tunnel extending “a considerable distance” underneath the outer wall of the prison . Had a boy’s arm not been broken during the scramble for the exit, alerting the sentries, hundreds more prisoners may have escaped with him.