Yankee Sailors in British Gaols offers the first comprehensive account of American servicemen detained within the confines of Mill and Forton prisons, the principal land-based detention centers in Britain during the American Revolution. Forton and Mill during the course of the War of Independence held approximately 3,000 American prisoners, almost all of them naval personnel.

In a few cases, these American prisoners were incarcerated for more than four years, a longer recorded period of incarceration in overseas prisons than in any United States war prior to Vietnam.

Professor Cohen's examination of wide-ranging and widely scattered primary and secondary sources provides an extraordinarily detailed picture of life within the closed society of each prison, as well as insight into the various ways in which Britons and Americans outside the prisons provided legal and extralegal help to the rebel detainees.