The list of prisoners currently contains 1576 names of American seamen held in French prisons during the Napoleonic Wars. Categories of information about them are:

• Name and various spellings (spelling was fluid at the time, many seamen spelt their names unusually, the French often spelt the name phonetically)
• Age (ages were rarely given on prison documents, but they do appear on lists of captured crew and on death register entries)
• Prisons where the man was held (Some prisoners were moved about quite a bit; others stayed in the same prison depot for years)
• Place of birth (At times, this was confused with the port from which he sailed, but rarely. The same spelling variations as with names occurred)
• Ship from which captured (This is one of the details that is absolutely crucial to finding a man in the French prisoner records, as are the two that follow)
• Capturing privateer (The French records were based not on the prison but the point of capture and records of that were held at the ports, and arranged by the date of arrival and the name of the capturing privateer)
• Port taken into when captured (This will indicate where the capturing record will be held. Unfortunately, when the man arrived at a prison depot, months after capture, this detail was rarely recorded.)
• Biographical notes (Any and all details I could glean from the archives and further research. For some men, I have nothing. For others, full stories.)
• Sources (I used my own coding system to organise and identify each of the thousands of pages I photographed in the archives.)

Of course, there are dozens of prisoners for whom I have very little information, but many, many more for whom I have been able to piece together quite a lot, enough to give a full account of their imprisonment. With some added genealogical research, it has been possible to piece together biographical sketches for many of them. The stories of more than one hundred and fifty prisoners are included in Napoleon’s American Prisoners.

Contact me if you would like to enquire about a seaman who may be in the list.