Most of the French prisoners were released or paroled to make room for the Americans, who were seen as more of a risk.

The most famous prisoners were the 320 American survivors of the capture of USS Chesapeake in 1813 who were interned on Melville Island.

[5] After the decommissioning of the military prison, Melville Island was used as a receiving depot for 727 of the black refugees, the estimated 1600–2000 escaped slaves who arrived in Halifax between 1815 and 1818.

[7] In 1855, Nova Scotia politician Joseph Howe developed a plan to use Melville Island as a recruitment and training centre for American soldiers to fight for the British Foreign Legion in the Crimean War.

[8][9] Author of the Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper, briefly used Melville Island as the setting for his book Ned Myers: Life Before the Mast (1843).