Charles Herbert

Charles Herbert was an American Revolutionary War sailor from Newburyport, Massachusetts, remembered for the journal behind A Relic of the Revolution. Library and catalog records identify him as living from 1757 to 1808, and describe him as the author of a narrative drawn from his own wartime experience.

Herbert was captured in December 1776 while serving aboard the brigantine Dolton. Records describing his journal say he was taken to Plymouth, England, where he was confined in Old Mill Prison and wrote about hunger, illness, escape attempts, and the daily strain of imprisonment. That eyewitness account gives his writing its lasting value: it is both personal and deeply historical.

His book was published long after the events it describes and has continued to circulate through archives, library catalogs, and public-domain editions. For readers interested in the American Revolution from the viewpoint of ordinary sailors and prisoners, Herbert offers a rare voice from inside the ordeal itself.