The account by Andrews is tinctured with animosity, and is not to be taken au pied de la lettre. He is unquestionably wrong in stating that these two crouching men were shot by Shorthand's orders. The evidence taken later is contradictory. Shortland, by his own account, had already retired from the yard.
A dispatch was immediately sent to Admiral Sir J. T. Duckworth, Commander-in-Chief at Plymouth, who lost no time in directing Rear-Admiral Sir Josias Rowley, Bart., and Captain Schomberg, the two senior officers at that port, to proceed to Dartmoor and inquire into the circumstances.
It was ascertained that seven of the prisoners had been killed outright, seven were so badly wounded that they had to have legs or arms amputated, thirty-eight were dangerously wounded and fifteen slightly.
Before the two sent from Plymouth arrived, Shortland had asked for a reinforcement, and a colonel at the head of more troops arrived. "The colonel came to the gate attended by the guilty Shortland," says Andrews, "who could not look a prisoner in the face, but walked towards the prison bars with his face fixed on the ground."
The report of Sir J. Rowley and Captain Schomberg was to the effect that "the rioters endeavoured to overpower the guard, to force the prison, and had actually seized the arms of some of the soldiers and made a breach in the walls of the depot, when the guard found itself obliged to have recourse to firearms, and five of the rioters were killed and thirty-four wounded … that the Americans unanimously declared that their complaint of delay was not against the British Government, but against their own, which ought to have sent means for their early conveyance home; and in replies to distinct questions to that effect, they declared they
