PRISONERS AT PORTCHESTER 211 



They accordingly tied him down to a ring on the 

 deck, and flogged him most unmercifully. They then 

 trampled upon him, and the man actually expired 

 under their barbarous treatment." 



Duels, as may well be imagined, were not of un- 

 common occurrence, and several, with fatal results, 

 are known to have taken place within the castle of 

 Portchester. The weapons used were of the most 

 nondescript character. Nails, or knives, or scissor- 

 blades fastened with string to sticks a few feet long, 

 or even a wooden foil with a sharpened point, were 

 made to serve the purpose with deadly effect. Several 

 executions, too, took place within the castle walls. In 

 July 1796, a young French seaman, named Vallerie 

 Coffre, only twenty-two years of age, was condemned 

 to death at Winchester for stabbing a fellow-country- 

 man with a large cook's-knife. He is said to have 

 heard without concern the dreadful sentence, " that on 

 the following Monday morning he was to be taken at 

 4 o'clock in a post-chaise to Portchester, and there to 

 be executed about 6 A.M., and his body to be afterwards 

 dissected." 



Sickness at times was terribly rife among the pri- 

 soners. We find, for instance, that at Forton in 1794 

 nearly two hundred died in a single month ; while in 

 November 1810, no less than eight hundred men were 

 reported as sick. It was the same at Portchester. 

 The negroes captured in the West Indies suffered 

 the most severely. The winter which followed their 

 arrival at the castle proved to be an exceptionally hard 

 one, and some hundreds of them perished from the 

 cold, while not a few of the survivors were crippled 

 for life. It is difficult, however, to estimate the num- 

 ber of deaths among the prisoners, as no register of 



