Transportation

Penal Colonies in Australia

To the Hulk in Chains

Confusion and Delay

From their smoke-filled, stinking cell below the Crown Court in Dorchester, five of the convicted men were taken in chains to the prison hulks, York and Leviathan, lying off Portsmouth. The sixth, George Loveless, was ill in gaol and was not to follow for several weeks. Hulks were condemned ships. There were usually three decks, each containing between 500 and 600 prisoners, issued with coarse convict clothing and fettered with heavy irons riveted to their legs.

Disease was rampant. Epidemics of cholera, dysentery and smallpox swept through the packed masses, resulting in wholesale death.

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