Name of Vessel:

Lovely Meriam

Master of Vessel:

Seth Ewill

Rig of Vessel:

Ship

Date of Capture:

18 January 1777

Place of Capture:

[Chesapeake Bay]

Captor:

HM Frigate Brune

Home Port:

From What Port:

St. Eustatius, Netherlands West Indies

To What Port:

Cargo:

Salt, cotton, dry goods

Tonnage:

Battery:

Crew:

Owners:

Prize master:

Prize crew:

Ordered Into:

New York, New York

Into What Port:

New York, New York

Date Arrived:

[1 March] 1777

Date Tried:

Date Sold:

Action:

No

Recaptured:

No

Comments: Seth Ewel [Ewill] was captured on 6 November 1776 in sloop Susannah, from North Carolina to St. Eustatius, and sent into Antigua. He then turned up in the ship Lovely Meriam, bound from St. Eustatius, Netherlands West Indies with salt, cotton, and dry goods. She was captured around Chesapeake Bay by HM Frigate Brune (Captain James Ferguson) on 18 January 1777. Ewel was kept aboard the Brune as a prisoner. When sloop Dispatch (Nathaniel Thayer [Fair]) was captured on 3 or 4 February 1777 one of her passengers gave an account of conditions on the Brune. The prisoners were plundered of some of their clothing and were brought aboard the Brune. They were kept two days with nothing to eat and then were given short rations: “three pounds of meat, and three pounds of bread for seven days, and two jills of rum for seven men . . .” The prisoners were forced to do equal duty with Brune’s crew. Brune was bound for New York, New York and had a large number of prisoners aboard. Ferguson had taken a sloop from the West Indies with a cargo of salt. He threw the salt into the ocean, stripped the sloop of sails and rigging, cables, anchors and the boat, and then put twenty American prisoners aboard her and turned her adrift, with no provisions or water. The nearest land was to leeward, about fifteen miles; the wind being from the east. The prisoners managed to make a square sail from blankets and steered for land. In about eight hours the sloop ran ashore on Gwin’s Island, two miles from the shore. A raft was made from the sloop’s hatches and some other lumber and William C. Meserve took the raft and got ashore. He obtained a boat and returned to retrieve his stranded friends. Thirteen prisoners are named in the letter reporting this incident, including William Russell, master of the William, captured by Brune on 30 January 1777; and a “Capt. Newall,” who is probably Seth Ewill of the Lovely Meriam, captured on 18 January. Lovely Meriam, along with other prizes, was escorted into New York about 1 March 1777.

[NDAR, VII, 428-429; VIII, 21, 117-118, 1053-1063]