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In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was commonplace to house convicts in prison ships. These vessels, modified to accommodate several hundred inmates, became notorious as floating jails. Conditions were often deplorable, with overcrowding, lack of food, and regular mistreatment by their captors ending the lives of many who found themselves detained in these reimagined boats. The prison ship concept survived into the 20th century and beyond: the world's largest prison barge located in the United States only closed in 2023. So how did ordinary seagoing watercraft end up holding criminals, convicts, and other lawbreakers, and where were they moored?
Click through for a fascinating look at how the prison ship was launched.
In 1779 during the American Revolutionary War, the British Royal Navy converted HMS Jersey into a prison ship before receiving Patriot prisoners of war, who primarily consisted of captured Continental Army soldiers.
The Jersey was the most notorious of the British navy's prison hulks. Up to 1,100 men were imprisoned on board a vessel designed for a 400-man complement of sailors. Conditions were deplorable. Crammed below vermin-infested decks with no natural light or fresh air, the rebels were fed meagre rations and regularly beaten by their captors. Overcrowding and a cruel environment was to become a grim reality of life on board a prison ship.
Not too far from Rikers Island stands the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument. This austere-looking memorial commemorates the more than 11,500 American prisoners of war who died in captivity aboard 16 British prison ships during the American Revolutionary War, including those who perished on the previously mentioned HMS Jersey.
Sources: (Encyclopedia.com) (The Digital Panopticon) (Royal Arsenal History) (Royal Museums Greenwich) (Amnesty International)
In Australia, the merchant ship Success was converted to a prison hulk in 1852. She was moored in Melbourne at the height of the Victorian Gold Rush.
Crime was rife during that period, with murder not uncommon. Success and other prison hulks including Deborah, Sacramento, and President were quickly filled.
In 1854, Success was converted from a convict hulk into a stores vessel. From 1890, she served as a museum ship, displaying various torture instruments allegedly used on those interned in the vessel. She sank as a result of a fire in 1946 in Port Clinton Harbor, Ohio.
Conditions on prison hulks improved somewhat during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. Relatively speaking, that is. Sleeping arrangements were still cramped and provided ideal conditions for the spread of disease, including typhus and tuberculosis.
Similarly, ocean liners were frequently used as floating prisons in the Second World War. The liner SS Cap Arcona was converted by Nazi Germany to hold concentration camp prisoners.
Amnesty International, the US Senate, and the Chilean Truth and Reconciliation Commission, jointly claimed that the Chilean barquentine Esmeralda was used as a floating prison for political prisoners of the Augusto Pinochet administration from 1973 to 1980.
During the Second World War, HMS Maidstone served as a submarine depot ship. Decades later in 1971, the vessel was used as a prison ship in Northern Ireland. Detainees were held in the ship's hold as part of Operation Demetrius, a British Army operation initiated during the Troubles.
In October 2013, Al Qaeda operative Abu Anas al-Libi was seized in Libya and then transferred to the USS San Antonio to await transport to the United States. Al-Libi was wanted in connection to the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa.
Convicts confined within the Thames fleet were put to work maintaining the vessels and laboring on shore, for example at the Woolwich Arsenal, a facility that manufactured armaments and ammunition.
Some of the converted hulks were among the Royal Navy's most celebrated vessels, ships such as HMS Warrior, which saw action at the Battle of Cape Finisterre in 1805, and HMS Discovery (pictured), known as the lead ship in George Vancouver's exploration of the west coast of North America in his famous 1791–1795 expedition.
The use of hulks had been first authorized by Parliament for only two years. But in fact, the 1776 Act lasted 80 years.
In the Unites States, the USS Alabama was launched in 1819. The vessel was renamed New Hampshire (pictured) in 1863 and served as a storeship before being converted into a receiving ship, a boat used to house newly recruited sailors before they are assigned to a ship's crew. A receiving ship partly solved the problem of unwilling recruits escaping, with most potential draftees of that era unable to swim.
During the Russian Civil War (1917–1923), the authorities on both sides reverted to using so-called death barges in which to imprison POWs and political enemies. In the event of these ships being attacked, the crew would deliberately sink them using explosives, drowning the caged captives in the process.
The Criminal Law Act 1776 was passed in England a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. It suspended the transportation of convicts to colonies and plantations in America. Measures were instead taken to house criminals at home in prison hulks, vessels that had been rendered incapable of going to sea. It's why the legislation was also known as the "Hulk's Act."
On February 16, 1940, the German tanker Altmark was intercepted in neutral Norwegian waters by HMS Cossak. British naval personnel boarded the cornered vessel and after fierce hand-to-hand fighting freed 300 Allied POWs. The Nazis had been using Altmark as a prison ship.
The United Kingdom's modern-day prison hulk was HMP Weare. Berthed in Portland Harbour in Dorset, England, the Adult Male/Category C facility was commissioned as a temporary measure to ease prison overcrowding. It closed in 2006.
Most prison hulk inmates were either prisoners of war or those awaiting transportation to penal colonies, many based in Australia.
Elsewhere in the colonies of Australia, prison hulks were used in New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia. One ship, Phoenix, served as a prison hulk in Sydney Harbor, operating from 1824 to 1837.
Anchored in the South Bronx near Rikers Island, the barge was operated as a measure to ease overcrowding in the New York Department of Correction prison system.
The Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center closed in 2023, having previously been named by Guinness World Records as the world's largest prison barge in operation.
When it opened in 1992, the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center was the largest prison barge in the United States, with 800 beds in 16 dormitories and 100 cells.
Convict labor was also needed for the development of the Arsenal and the nearby docks, and for dredging the Thames' main channel. Hours were long, the toil backbreaking.
While this served as a simple but effective obstacle against absconding, covering these side scuttles prevented the ship's interior from being ventilated. The air inside was rank and stale.
Prison ships were used during the Spanish Civil War. In one notorious incident in 1936, sailors from Jaime I (pictured), having learned that the destroyer Almirante Ferrándiz had been sunk by the Nationalists, took revenge by marching to the prison ship Cabo Quilates and executing dozens of prisoners.
In the First World War, passenger cruise ships were requisitioned for use as floating prisons to house POWs. The Canadian ocean liner HMT Royal Edward was one of these vessels, anchored off Southend-on-Sea in England to hold detained German prisoners.
In England, meanwhile, prison hulks could also be found moored in Portsmouth and Langstone Harbors. To prevent anybody jumping ship, so to speak, ports on the landward side of the vessels were boarded over as a deterrent against escape.
Before the Slave Trade Act 1788 limited the number of enslaved people that British slave ships could transport, vessels such as the Brooks (pictured) regularly carried well over 600 captives arranged on decks designed to contain half that number.
Following the Criminal Law Act 1776, the Thames prison fleet was established. Inmates who would have ended up in America found themselves sentenced to hard labor on the River Thames in London. By 1778 the fleet of hulks on the Thames held 510 prisoners.
How exactly was the prison ship launched?
The seagoing vessels modified to detain law breakers
LIFESTYLE Law enforcement
In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was commonplace to house convicts in prison ships. These vessels, modified to accommodate several hundred inmates, became notorious as floating jails. Conditions were often deplorable, with overcrowding, lack of food, and regular mistreatment by their captors ending the lives of many who found themselves detained in these reimagined boats. The prison ship concept survived into the 20th century and beyond: the world's largest prison barge located in the United States only closed in 2023. So how did ordinary seagoing watercraft end up holding criminals, convicts, and other lawbreakers, and where were they moored?
Click through for a fascinating look at how the prison ship was launched.