Temporary+Prisons+-+Hulks

= Use of Old Ships as Temporary Prisons =

= = "........Old, rotting ships were moored in the Thames River and in a few other places. These ships were known as hulks. The Government decided to use these hulks to solve the immediate problem of overcrowded prisons. Like the prisons on land, the hulks were dark, filthy, infested with rats, almost airless and stinking. During the day prisoners worked dredging the river or shifting sand and gravel. At night they were locked in the hulks. Between 1776 and 1788, 2000 (English) prisoners lived on hulks........"


 * Convicts were rowed in small boats between land and the hulks.
 * Hulks were also used at Melbourne as a penal colony in the 1800's

= LIFE AS A PRISONER ON A HULK = = = I wake up every morning and find myself staring at an overcrowded, hungry and filthy-looking people. I am eleven years old and I am a prisoner, just for stealing a piece of chicken for myself. Poor people were most likely to get jailed, as we weren’t as important as the wealthy men. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of us that were placed in these ships called hulks, after we were kicked out of North America. These hulks are dark, filthy and even infested with rats, but the British do not care. They step on us like we are dirt from the ground. We are human beings, and even animals are treated better then us. When I look around I see all these innocent, sad and crying faces. Half of the people are boys that are my age or maybe even younger. If you are poor in Britain, then you were nothing. The prisons cells were overcrowded, so they threw us in these ships. I’d rather be in a prison cell instead of here. I had lost my family and I don’t know whether they are alive or not. It’s cold everyday, especially during the night when the weather is fierce. We are not given blankets, as they are too many of us, so we sleep on the hard, cold floor. Many people die everyday because they become sick. There were no doctors, so people could not be treated. We don’t even get fed well either. We fight everyday and sometimes kill each other just for a bit of food. I hate living like this. I envy all the wealthy rich men’s sons who get whatever they want, whenever they want it. To me, this place seems worse then death, and a young boy doesn’t deserve to live like this. I cry and pray every night that this is all a dream and I will once re-unit with my family. -Najma I wake up to see people suffering in this airless cell which is also infested with rats. The rotting wood around us stinks really bad and I always wonder if I will ever get out of this dim, dirty place. All I know now is that I want to get out as soon as possible to any place other than these stinking hulks and the wastelands around us. I can hear someone opening the lock to the hulk, a guard I suppose. Someone opening the lock means it’s time to work. We haven’t even gotten food. My job today is to help dredge the river. Apparently doing this allows ships to come in, the Thames River, more easily but I’ve never seen any “good” ships come into this wasteland other than more hulks. So as the day goes by and I work all day long with the other prisoners, night time comes and we’re all chucked back into these hulks, locked up. Extremely tired from working, we all continue to suffer. Each day is exactly the same, repeating exactly what we’ve done the day before; will this depressing life cycle ever end? - Sophia

When the last of the small boats docked onto the banks of the River Thames, the sun had begun to rise and the passengers were roughly handled onto the quay. Looking around, Martha saw the other two hulks and the other convicts being dragged into order. She saw Mathew, her brother but could not see her sister Becca. She hoped and prayed has hard as she could for her little sister’s safety. Five hours had gone by when they we allowed to break and have something to eat. She hated shifting sand and gravel but not as much as she hated dredging and was glad that she did not have to do it that day. As she sat waiting for the little ration of stale bread and little bit of hard cheese, she could not help remembering her parents and other relatives and her life before. She hated the privileged and how they thought they were above all that were lesser than them, and cursed them all for all they had done. She looked around her again and was relieved seeing Becca sitting down next to Mathew. It was a good thing Becca was on the same hulk as Mathew and momentarily Martha wish she was with them on the same hulk. ­­­­­­­­­And then shamefully and selfishly thought otherwise, preferring to be on the hulk she was in rather than be sent to the hulk her brother and sister were in. She had been lucky. The hulk she was in was not as rotten, stinking, and almost airless and rat infested as the other two hulks were. She heard the horn sound and packed where she had eaten and went back to shifting sand. Her heart weighed as she remembered all she and her brothers and sisters used to do, when things had been a lot different and they were all together and inseparable. ~Folakemi~

Ugh, this smells like poo man. This is great,waking up in the morning and seeing people suffocating in this airless crap. All I hear is the rats. This stupid ship is covered with rats everywhere. All I see is rats. EW. There is Jim suffocating and his young. He's barely an adult and he's on this ship already. He kicked a rock and it hit a rich person. Hate those snobby people. People who treat us crap because we’re poor. I rather die in here then get one of those people picking me up and making me there slave. Over my dead body, oh finally someone is here to let us outside to work. Same thing everyday, this is going to be like hell. Wow, pretty day to bad I’m locked in this hulk. It’s disgusting and overwhelmed with rats. It’s so overcrowded I have to stand up to sleep. Is it just me or is this darn ship stinking slowly? at the end of the day we get back on the ship. Jim comes running to me screaming. "Jim what's wrong? " "there stinking the hulk tonight" - amanda = = ­ I opened my eyes, from the “sleep” I just had. Men, women and even kids were all talking, screaming, complaining and moving about, like they could. You might be wondering where I am, and what I’m doing in a place like this. Well I am on a hulk, which is a ship with hundreds of people all cramped together. I was put in here because I borrowed my neighbor’s shoes. I need them, mine had holes and if I took one more step, it would literally fall apart. Plus my neighbor has heaps of them, he wouldn’t mind if I just took one, wouldn’t make a different. But I was wrong it did. I was told that I’ll be here forever and every single day, I was ordered to work. Even in one split second I wasn’t working, BAMM I was hit. Somedays it would be even worse. I wish my life was over. I would do anything even go to prison then being here. It hurts, I miss my family, my friends, everyone. I miss someone thinking positive and telling to stay happy and smile. But that’s never going to happen. - helen

Use of hulks as temporary prisons - first person account
The sound of loud banging woke me up from my uncomfortable sleep. The light was very dim, it stank of rotting wood and vomit and I could hardly breathe. I squinted my eyes to make out see my surroundings. People lay restlessly on the wooden floors, one on top of the other, some rolling around in pain and others, not moving at all. Hundreds of people are imprisoned on this rotting ship, swarming with filthy infested rats. As shocking as it may seem, life on a hulk couldn’t get any worse. This is where I have ended up, for stealing a piece of bread. There was no more room in the inland prisons, so the Government solved this problem by dumping prisoners in hulks. It is 1776; I have lost track of what day and month it is, all that I know now is dawn and dusk. The sun slowly ascended into the sky and the light was slightly getting brighter each minute. Everyone was unlocked from their cells to start our day's work. We rowed small boats into land and started on our hard labour. I worked on shifting sand and gravel from place to place, which I guess is better than dredging the river, despite the fact that both jobs are just as hard as the other. After a day's work, I'm exhausted and drowsy because of uncomfortable sleep. Everyone, returned to their prison cells, everyone moaning and groaning from the exhaustion and we were locked back into our cells. - John Dinh

Use of hulks as temporary prisons - third person account
In the eighteenth century, being an English prisoner meant that they were treated badly. In addition, to the life on a hulk can’t get any worse. Prisoners on hulks lived in dark dirty places infested with rats. Prisoners certainly could not maintain hygiene because of the unhygienic environment they lived in; due to the lack of cleanliness, this led the majority of prisoners on hulks to diseases which could not be cured at the time. Prisoners were not kept permanently on the hulks until they starved to death. During the day, the prisoners were forced to row small boats into land to work. They had to dredge the river (digging a ditch in the river for more depth for large boats) or shift sand and gravel. Both of these jobs were very hard, as they were done only by man. At the end of the day, the prisoners returned to the hulks and were locked in the rotten cells. There was a total of two thousand English prisoners between 1776 and 1788 who were attached to living the terrible life on hulks. - John Dinh