Prison ship Totally Explained

Everything about Prison Ship totally explained

A prison ship, historically sometimes called a prison hulk, is a vessel used as a prison, often to hold convicts awaiting transportion to prison colonies.

History

The vessels were a common form of internment in Britain and elsewhere in the 18th and 19th centuries. Charles F. Campbell writes that around 40 ships of the British Navy were converted for use as prison hulks. One was established at Gibraltar, others at Bermuda, at Antigua, and off Brooklyn in Wallabout Bay and Sheerness. Other hulks were anchored off Woolwich, Portsmouth, Chatham, Deptford, and Plymouth. Private companies owned and operated the hulks holding prisoners bound for penal transportation.
Prison ships were also used to detain prisoners-of-war during the revolutionary wars and the Napoleonic wars. A typical British hulk, the former man-of-war HMS Bellerophon, was decommissioned after the Battle of Trafalgar. Anchored off Sheerness in England, it usually held about 480 convicts in woeful conditions.. Other hulks included the Warrior (Woolwich) in the 1780s, The Discovery (Deptford).
More American prisoners of war during the American Revolutionary War died on British prison ships than died in every battle of the war combined. According to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, more than "11,500 men and women died of overcrowding, contaminated water, starvation, and disease aboard the ships, and their bodies were hastily buried along the shore". A monument in Fort Greene Park commemorates those who died. One such Revolutionary War ship was HMS Jersey. In New South Wales, hulks were also used as juvenile correctional centres. The Vernon (1867-1892) and the Sobraon (1892-1911) - the latter officially a "nautical school ship" - were anchored in Sydney Harbour. The commander of the two ships, Frederick Neitenstein (1850-1921), introduced a system of "... discipline, surveillance, physical drill and a system of grading and marks. He aimed at creating a 'moral earthquake' in each new boy. Every new admission was placed in the lowest grade and, through hard work and obedience, gradually won a restricted number of privileges."

Modern prison ships

HMS Maidstone was used as a prison ship in Northern Ireland in the 1970s for suspected Nationalist guerrillas and non-combatant activist supporters held without trial. The current president of the Nationalist political party Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, spent time on the Maidstone in 1972. He was released at the time in order to take part in peace talks.
In 1997, the United Kingdom Government established a new prison ship, HMP Weare, as a temporary measure to ease prison overcrowding. Weare was docked at the disused Royal Navy dockyard at Portland, Dorset. On 9 March 2005 it was announced that the Weare was to close. Since then, the government has advertised for a contractor to supply 800 prison ship spaces to alleviate overcrowding.

Other types of prison ships

Around the Mediterranean, convicts and prisoners-of-war were used as oarsmen on galleys as late as the 19th century.

Literary references

Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations opens in 1812 with the escape of the convict Abel Magwitch from a hulk moored in the Thames Estuary. In fact, the prison ships were largely moored in the neighbouring River Medway, but Dickens combined real elements to create fictional locations for his work.
In the early stages of Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables, Jean Valjean is a convict on the galleys at Toulon in France.

Further Information

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