What were Prison Hulks?
Britain had been transporting its criminals to Maryland and Virginia in America since the early 18th century, but the America Revolutionary War and that colony’s subsequent Independence brought this convenient arrangement to an end in 1776. However, the courts were still handing down transportation sentences and filling the prisons to overflowing. Despite this the Government resisted the call to build more gaols while it looked for other places to deposit the country’s criminal element. Eventually it decided upon setting up penal colonies in New South Wales and Van Deimen’s Land (Tasmania).
With prisons overflowing and with a limited number of berths upon ships bound for Australia stop gap legislation was passed in 1776 to use prison hulks to provide interim accommodation for prisoners until they were shipped overseas. The measure was originally authorised for just 2 years but actually remained in force for 80 years. In fact their use was extended so that some spent all their years of incarceration on the hulks. Fortunately there was a good supply of decommissioned vessels since the cessation of the American Revolutionary War, the Napoleonic Wars and the French Revolutionary Wars.
Hulks were ships that floated but were not fit to go to sea. Many were old war ships well used to housing hundreds of crew which, with some modifications such as the construction of cells and the removal of rudders, masts and rigging, made fairly secure prisons, although some successful escapes took place. They were moored in large harbours such as Gosport, Portsmouth and Devonport on the south coast and close to inhospitable marshes along certain stretches of the Thames and Medway estuaries at Deptford, Woolwich and Chatham. These were the sites of the original prison hulks.
Who is included in the Prison Hulk Registers 1802 – 1849?
The prison hulk registers contain the incarceration records of almost 200,000 convicts imprisoned on these dreadful floating gaols. One in three died. Victim mainly to disease.
The inmates were transferred to the hulks from all over the country from the Quarter Sessions and Assize courts which had sentenced them whether in Sheffield, Rye or Worcester as the example shows or from the Old Bailey, often referred to as the Central Criminal Court in the registers. There was also traffic between hulks as numbers on the crowded vessels were balanced or criminals transferred near a ship soon bound for Australia. They came from all over the country to be processed on the hulks and transported.
What can the records tell us?
Each one line record details the inmate’s name, age, date and place of conviction and offence committed. It also includes the sentence and how the prisoner was “disposed of” which provides clues to his destination post- incarceration on the hulk. This information is contained on a single page in the earlier records.