Uploaded September 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
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, the largest prisoner of war facility anywhere before the Second World War. Most of them had been sailing on private ships and felt abandoned by their government. At the end of the war, delays in securing ships to repatriate them meant that the prisoners remained behind Dartmoor’s stone walls for months after peace had been ratified. The prisoners’ fury at their continued incarceration led to an uprising on 6 April 1815, and then to a massacre: nine Americans were shot dead, the last men to be killed in a war between the two countries. The episode created a brief and fiery outrage in the United States but then slipped from view. The survivors spent decades trying to tell their story, and to persuade their government to compensate them for what they had experienced, but to no avail.
Drawing on his new book 'The Hated Cage', historian Dr Nicholas Guyatt, Reader in North American History at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Jesus College, will share the extraordinary story of what happened at Dartmoor during the War of 1812. He'll reflect on the challenges of finding out what really took place in the prison, and will ask why this dramatic story of courage, perseverance and despair was quietly but firmly forgotten.
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, the largest prisoner of war facility anywhere before the Second World War. Most of them had been sailing on private ships and felt abandoned by their government. At the end of the war, delays in securing ships to repatriate them meant that the prisoners remained behind Dartmoor’s stone walls for months after peace had been ratified. The prisoners’ fury at their continued incarceration led to an uprising on 6 April 1815, and then to a massacre: nine Americans were shot dead, the last men to be killed in a war between the two countries. The episode created a brief and fiery outrage in the United States but then slipped from view. The survivors spent decades trying to tell their story, and to persuade their government to compensate them for what they had experienced, but to no avail.
Drawing on his new book 'The Hated Cage', historian Dr Nicholas Guyatt, Reader in North American History at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Jesus College, will share the extraordinary story of what happened at Dartmoor during the War of 1812. He'll reflect on the challenges of finding out what really took place in the prison, and will ask why this dramatic story of courage, perseverance and despair was quietly but firmly forgotten.
