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Aprison ship, is a current or former seagoing vessel that has been modified to become a place of substantive detention forconvicts,prisoners of war orcivilian internees. Some prison ships werehulked. While many nations have deployed prison ships over time, the practice was most widespread in 18th- and 19th-century Britain, as the government sought to address the issues of overcrowded civilian jails on land and an influx of enemy detainees from theWar of Jenkins' Ear, theSeven Years' War and theFrench Revolutionary andNapoleonic Wars.
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The terminology "hulk" comes from theRoyal Navy meaning a ship incapable of full service either through damage or from initial non-completion. In England in 1776, during the reign of King George III, due to a shortage of prison space inLondon, the concept of "prison hulks" moored in the Thames, was introduced to meet the need for prison space. The first such ship came into use on 15 July 1776 under command of Mr Duncan Campbell and was moored atBarking Creek with prisoners doing hard labour on the shore during daylight hours.[3]
The vessels were a common form ofinternment in Britain and elsewhere in the 18th and 19th centuries. Charles F. Campbell writes that around 40 ships of theRoyal Navy were converted for use as prison hulks.[4] Other hulks includedHMS Warrior, which became a prison ship atWoolwich in February 1840.[5] One was established atGibraltar, others atBermuda (theDromedary), atAntigua, offBrooklyn inWallabout Bay, and atSheerness. Other hulks were anchored offWoolwich,Portsmouth,Chatham,Deptford, and Plymouth-Dock/Devonport.[6]HMSArgenta, originally a cargo ship with no portholes, was acquired and pressed into service inBelfast LoughNorthern Ireland to enforce theCivil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland) 1922 during the period around theIrish Catholics'Bloody Sunday (1920).Private companies owned and operated some of the British hulks holding prisoners bound forpenal transportation toAustralia andAmerica.
HMPWeare was used by the British as a prison ship between 1997 and 2006. It was towed across the Atlantic from the United States in 1997 to be converted into a jail. It wasberthed inPortland Harbour inDorset,England.
During theAmerican War of Independence, the British used asystem of prison ships to imprison American prisoners of war. Many of these prison ships were moored inWallabout Bay nearNew York City, which was a major British stronghold during the conflict.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Conditions onboard these ships were abysmal due to overcrowding, the poor quality of the ships, mistreatment from guards and contaminated water and food. Waves of disease frequently spread through the ships, which combined with starvation killed 12,000 American prisoners of war. The bodies of those who died were mostly hastily buried along the shore,[16] and were commemorated by thePrison Ship Martyrs' Monument inFort Greene Park,Brooklyn.[16]
Christopher Vail, of Southold, who was aboard one such prison ship,HMS Jersey in 1781, later wrote:
When a man died he was carried up on the forecastle and laid there until the next morning at 8 o'clock when they were all lowered down the ship sides by a rope round them in the same manner as tho' they were beasts. There was 8 died of a day while I was there. They were carried on shore in heaps and hove out the boat on the wharf, then taken across a hand barrow, carried to the edge of the bank, where a hole was dug 1 or 2 feet deep and all hove in together.
In 1778, Robert Sheffield, ofStonington, Connecticut, escaped from a British prison ship and told his story in theConnecticut Gazette, printed July 10, 1778. He was one of 350 prisoners held in a compartment below the decks.
The heat was so intense that (the hot sun shining all day on deck) they were all naked, which also served well to get rid of vermin, but the sick were eaten up alive. Their sickly countenances, and ghastly looks were truly horrible; some swearing and blaspheming; others crying, praying, and wringing their hands; and stalking about like ghosts; others delirious, raving and storming,--all panting for breath; some dead, and corrupting. The air was so foul that at times a lamp could not be kept burning, because of which the bodies were not missed until they had been dead ten days.[17]
Some British scholars[who?] have written that for prisoners of war held in hulks at Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth, living conditions on board and the mortality amongst prisoners were misrepresented by the French for propaganda purposes during the Wars and by individual prisoners who wrote their memoirs afterwards and exaggerated the sufferings they had undergone. Memoirs such asLouis Garneray'sMes Pontons (translated in 2003 asThe Floating Prison), Alexandre Lardier'sHistoire des pontons et prisons d’Angleterre pendant la guerre du Consulat et de l’Empire, (1845), Lieutenant Mesonant'sCoup d’œuil rapide sur les Pontons de Chatam, (1837) the anonymousHistoire du Sergent Flavigny (1815) and others, are largely fictitious and contain lengthy plagiarised passages. Reputable and influential historians such as Francis Abell in hisPrisoners of War in Britain, 1756–1814 (1914) and W. Branch Johnson in hisThe English Prison Hulks, (1970) took such memoirs at their face value and did not investigate their origins. This has resulted in the perpetuation of a myth that the hulks were a device for the extermination of prisoners and that conditions on board were intolerable. The truth appears to be much less lurid and when the death rates of prisoners are properly investigated a mortality of between 5 and 8 per cent of all prisoners, both on shore and on the hulks seems to have been normal.[18]
The first British use of a prison ship was the privately ownedTayloe, engaged by the Home Office in 1775 via contract with her owner, Duncan Campbell.[19]Tayloe was moored in the Thames with the intention that she be the receiving point for all inmates whose sentences of transportation to the Americas had been delayed by the American Rebellion. Prisoners began arriving from January 1776. For most, their incarceration was brief as the Home Office had also offered pardons for any transportee who joined the Army or Navy, or chose to voluntarily leave the British Isles for the duration of their sentence.[19] By December 1776 all prisoners aboardTayloe had been pardoned, enlisted or died, and the contract ceased.[19]
While theTayloe was still in use, the British Government was simultaneously developing a longer-term plan for the use of transportees. In April and May 1776, legislation was passed to formally convert sentences of transportation to the Americas, to hard labour on the Thames for between three and ten years.[20] In July 1776,Tayloe's owner Duncan Campbell was named Overseer of Convicts on the Thames and awarded a contract for the housing of transportees and use of their labour. Campbell provided three prison ships for these purposes; the 260-tonJustitia, the 731-ton former French frigateCensor and a condemnedEast Indiaman, which he also namedJustitia.[20] Collectively, these three prison ships held 510 convicts at any one time between 1776 and 1779.
Conditions aboard these prison ships were poor, and mortality rates were high. Inmates aboard the firstJustitia slept in groups in tiered bunks with each having an average sleeping space 5 feet 10 inches (1.8 m) long and 18 inches (46 cm) wide. Weekly rations consisted of biscuits and pea soup, accompanied once a week by half an ox cheek and twice a week by porridge, a lump of bread and cheese.[21] Many inmates were in ill health when brought from their gaols, but none of the ships had adequate quarantine facilities, and there was a continued contamination risk caused by the flow of excrement from the sick bays.[21] In October 1776 a prisoner from Maidstone Gaol broughttyphus aboard. It spread rapidly; over a seven-month period to March 1778, a total of 176 inmates died, or 28 percent of the prison ship population.[22]
Conditions thereafter improved. In April 1778 the firstJustitia was converted into a receiving ship, where inmates were stripped of their prison clothing, washed and held in quarantine for up to four days before being transferred to the other vessels.[22] Those found to be ill were otherwise held aboard until they recovered or died. On the secondJustitia the available sleeping space was expanded to allow for just two inmates per bunk, each having an area 6 feet (1.8 m) long and 2 feet (61 cm) wide in which to lie.[22] The weekly bread ration was lifted from 5 to 7 pounds, the supply of meat enhanced with the daily delivery of ox heads from local abattoirs, and there were occasional supplies of green vegetables.[22] The effects of these improvements were evident in the prisoner mortality rates. In 1783 89 inmates died out of 486 brought aboard (18%); and by the first three quarters of 1786 only 46 died out of 638 inmates on the ships (7%).[23]
Naval vessels were also routinely used as prison ships. A typical British hulk, the formership of the lineHMS Bellerophon, was decommissioned after theBattle of Waterloo and became a prison ship in October 1815.[24] Anchored offSheerness in England, and renamed HMSCaptivity on 5 October 1824, she usually held about 480 convicts in woeful conditions.[4]HMS Discovery became a prison hulk in 1818[1] atDeptford.[25] Another famous prison ship wasHMS Temeraire which served in this capacity from 1813 to 1819.
Hulks were used in many of thecolonies of Australia, including New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia.
In New South Wales, hulks were also used as juvenile correctional centers.[26] In 1813 a tender document was advertised inthe Australian newspaper for the supply of bread to prisoners aboard a prison hulk in Sydney Harbour.[27]
Between 1824 and 1837Phoenix served as a prison hulk in Sydney Harbour. She held convicts awaiting transportation toNorfolk Island andMoreton Bay. One source claims she was Australia's first prison hulk.[28]
Vernon (1867–1892) andSobraon (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."[26]
Between 1880 and 1891 the hulkFitzjames was used as a reformatory by theSouth Australian colonial government inLargs Bay. The ship kept about 600 prisoners at a time, even though it was designed to carry 80 or so crewmembers.[29]
Marquis of Anglesea became Western Australia's first prison hulk following an accident in 1829.[30][31]
At the start of the war, cruise liners inPortsmouth Harbour were used to hold detained prisoners.[32]
Nazi Germany assembled a small fleet of ships in theBay of Lübeck to hold concentration camp prisoners. They included the passenger linersCap Arcona andDeutschland, and the vesselsThielbek, andAthen. All were destroyed on May 3, 1945, byRAF aircraft whose pilots erroneously believed them to be legitimate targets; most of the inmates were either killed by bombing or strafing, burned alive, drowned while trying to reach the shore, or killed by theSS guards.
Reports fromAmnesty International, theUS Senate andChilean Truth and Reconciliation Commission describeEsmeralda (BE-43) as a kind of a floating prison for political prisoners of theAugusto Pinochet administration from 1973 to 1980. It is claimed that probably over a hundred persons were kept there at times and subjected to hideous treatment,[2] among them the British priestMiguel Woodward.[33]
In 1987, ColonelGregorio Honasan, leader of various coups d'état in the Philippines was captured and was imprisoned in a navy ship then temporarily converted to be his holding facility. However, he escaped after convincing the guards to join his cause.
HMS Maidstone was used as a prison ship inNorthern Ireland in the 1970s for suspectedRepublicanparamilitaries andnon-combatantactivist supporters. The former president of the Republican political partySinn Féin,Gerry Adams, spent time onMaidstone in 1972. He was released in order to take part in peace talks.
In 1997 theUnited Kingdom Government established a new prison ship,HMPWeare, as a temporary measure to ease prison overcrowding.Weare was docked at the disused Royal Navy dockyard atPortland,Dorset.Weare was closed in 2006.
The bargeBibby Stockholm, planned to houseasylum seekers, has been called a "floating prison".[34]
In the United States, theVernon C. Bain Correctional Center was a prison barge operated by theNew York City Department of Correction as an adjunct toRikers Island, opened in 1992. However, it was built for this purpose rather than repurposed.[35] It was the largest operational prison ship facility in the United States during its operation.[36]
In June 2008The Guardian printed claims byReprieve that US forces are holding people arrested in theGlobal War on Terrorism on active naval warships, including theUSS Bataan andPeleliu, although this was denied by theUS Navy.[37] The United States subsequently admitted in 2011 to holding terrorist suspects on ships at sea, claiming legal authority to do so.[38] TheLibyan nationalAbu Anas al-Libi who worked as a computer specialist foral-Qaeda was imprisoned in theUSS San Antonio for the1998 United States embassy bombings.[39]
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In 2009 the US Navy converted the main deck aboard the supply shipUSNS Lewis and Clark into abrig to hold pirates captured off the coast ofSomalia until they could be transferred to Kenya for prosecution. The brig was capable of holding up to twenty-six prisoners and was operated by a detachment of Marines from the26th Marine Expeditionary Unit.[40][41][42]
Charles Dickens' novelGreat Expectations opens in 1812 with the escape of the convictAbel Magwitch from a hulk moored in theThames Estuary. In fact, the prison ships were largely moored offUpnor in the neighbouringRiver Medway, but Dickens used artistic licence to place them on the Thames.[43]
French artist and authorAmbroise Louis Garneray depicted his life on a prison hulk at Portsmouth in the memoirMes Pontons.
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