A history of the hard conditions of the British penal system.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Britain had eased its problem of crowded jails and surplus criminals by packing them into ships and sending them off to the American colonies to be sold as what amounted to slave labour. All this came to an end with the revolution of 1775 and the legal system was stuck with an ever-increasing army of desperate felons.

As there was no national prison system, these felons were crammed on to derelict sailing ships, the hulks, and put to hard labour in appalling conditions, mainly along the rivers Thames and Medway. Their story has been largely ignored by generations of historians and here, for the first time, detailed accounts of their plight, along with the lives and careers of the quite extraordinary men who ruled over them, is examined. Duncan Campbell, for instance, was the ship's captain and plantation owner who first organised the hulk system, and Aaron Graham the magistrate who spied upon, and then defended, the leader of the Nore mutiny and employed William Bligh of the Bounty mutiny to captain his ships.

There are biographies of some of the colorful rogues, children and gentleman thieves who were crammed together and condemned to spend years in despair, starvation and degradation, often with their arms and legs manacled and subject to vicious punishments for minor infringements of the regulations.

In theory, the hulks were simply holding pens until convicts could be shipped off to the new colonies in Australia, but many sentenced to be transported for terms of between seven years to life were destined to serve most of, if not all, their term onboard. Those that did make it to the other side of the world after a harrowing journey were seldom better off and their story is told in the final chapter.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Vagabonds, Vagrants & The Bloody Code
  • The Criminal Law: Brutal and Bloodthirsty
  • The Vagabonds Act of 1597
  • Beginnings of Transportation 1600s
  • The Caribbean and The Bloody Code
• Chapter 2 To the New World and Beyond
  • The Transportation Act of 1717
  • Jonathan Wild (1683–1725)
  • Jonathan Forward (1680–1760)
  • The Journey Begins
  • Arrival and Sale
  • The Colonies Revolt
• Chapter 3 Case Histories I
  • John Meff – 1721 (as told to The Ordinary of Newgate)
  • Mary Young – 1733
  • Bampfylde Moore Carew – 1738
  • Eleanor Conner – 1748
  • Alice Walker – 1772
• Chapter 4 Duncan Campbell 1726–1779
  • The Hulk Act of May 1776
  • Life on Board
  • Work
  • Expansion and Organisation
  • Revolt and Discipline
  • The Rise of Reform – John Howard
  • The Bunbury Committee 1779
• Chapter 5 Duncan Campbell II 1780–1803
  • Hulk Fever
  • After Bunbury
  • Lord Beauchamp’s Committee: 1785
  • Family and Finance
  • Jeremy Bentham Visits the Hulks
• Chapter 6 Case Histories II: Aristocrats of Crime in the Eighteenth Century
  • George Barrington
  • David Brown Dignam
  • George Barrington Reformed
  • Gentleman Harry Sterne 1778
  • David Battie
  • Wakeman and Dew
  • Thomas Muir: The Scottish Martyr, 1793
• Chapter 7 Aaron Graham 1802–1814
  • Mutiny on the Bounty
  • Captain Anthony Molloy
  • The Spithead Revolt
  • A Nasty Incident at Sheerness
  • Cobbett
  • Inspector of Hulks
  • The Holford Committee of 1811
• Chapter 8 The Capper Years: 1814–1847
  • John Henry Capper – 1774–1847
  • Robert Pitts Capper
  • Bermuda 1826
  • The Middle Years
  • The Williams Enquiry of 1847
  • After Capper 1847–1857
• Chapter 9 Case Histories III
  • Henry Phanton, 1826
  • The Howarth Bros 1827
  • Tolpuddle Martyrs 1834
  • Richard Wiltshire Loader, 1848
  • Miles Confrey, 1854
• Chapter 10 To the Ends of the Earth
  • The First Fleet, 13 May 1787
  • The Second Fleet, 3 June 1790
  • The Third Fleet 1791 and Bunbury’s Concerns
  • The Lady Shore Mutiny, 1797
  • The Nineteenth-Century Thomas Bigge
  • Sir William Molesworth’s Committee, 1838
• Appendix 1 The Transportation Act of 1717 (4 George 1 c.11)
• Appendix 2 The Hulks Act of 1776 (16 George 3 c.43)
• Appendix 3 List of British Prison Hulks from Wikipedia
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Plates