Illuminations: The Floating Prisons of Bermuda
- iIrish Admin
- November 25, 2024
- Edited 1 month ago
Table of Contents
By Mike Finn
“The various horrors of these hulks to tell,
These Prison Ships where pain and horror dwell,
Where death in tenfold vengeance holds his reign,
And injur’d ghosts, yet unaveng’d, complain;”
– Philip Morin Freneau
In England in 1823, prisons were overcrowded, and reformers and administrators were experimenting with new forms of punishment. With the loss of the American colonies after the American Revolution, Britain looked elsewhere to send convicts, most notably Australia. By 1822, the Home Secretary, Robert Peel, suggested combining hard labor with the punishment known as transportation.
An Act was passed by the British Parliament, authorizing the transport of convicts to any of the British colonies, for the purpose of being utilized as laborers on any public works for the improvement of such colonies. The Act was passed on July 4, 1823, and formally entitled “An Act for Authorizing the Employment at Labor, in the Colonies, of Male Convicts under Sentence of Transportation.”
As a result of the “Male Convicts Act,” Bermuda became a British convict destination for the first time in 1824, principally for the purpose of building its Royal Naval Dockyard and naval engineering works.
After the Napoleonic Wars and War of 1812, the British Colony of Bermuda was given the status of an Imperial Fortress. To secure the Royal Navy’s strategic control of the Western North Atlantic, the British government invested heavily in a soundly defended naval base and dockyard at Bermuda, where squadrons could dock for repairs and supplies.
On January 5, 1824, the HMS Antelope set sail from Spithead, England, carrying a human cargo of convicts. Three hundred British and Irish men, selected for their youth and strength, were sent from England to Bermuda. The Antelope arrived in Bermuda on February 8 and the first convicts were put to work.
Far from home, they were to provide the labor for one of the largest public works projects in Bermuda. Over the next 40 years, convicts quarried stone and constructed various structures including housing, ordnance depots, naval storehouses, workshops, administrative buildings, roads, and wharves.
The island was suffering from a labor shortage due to a yellow fever epidemic in 1818 and 1819. The convicts brought in from England to serve as manual laborers included many Irishmen, especially participants in the Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848.
John Mitchel
Notable among the Young Ireland convicts was journalist and nationalist politician John Mitchel. As you might expect conditions for the convicts were terrible and discipline was most often applied by flogging.
When the first 300 men arrived in Bermuda, there were no barracks or prisons on the island large enough to house them. Instead, the Antelope was converted into a floating prison, commonly known as a hulk.
Cannons and guns were removed from the hulks, mess halls and sleeping quarters were built below decks, and often a roof covered the top deck. In addition, the masts were often removed. Moored close to the Dockyard on Ireland Island, it held around 230 convicts.
As the number of prisoners grew over the next forty years, the Antelope was joined by seven other decommissioned hulks. The prisoners were rowed to shore to work. They wore straw hats and white uniforms. Their prisoner numbers and the name of their assigned hulk were stamped on the fabric.
As you might expect, working in Bermuda was different from home; the sub-tropical climate, with its mild winters and warm summers, and hurricanes, were a stark contrast to England and Ireland. Sunstroke was a very common ailment.
Moon Blind
Working in the quarries, reflected glare from the white stone and sunlight made some men “moon blind.” A hospital ship was provided. Prisoners who died at the “hospital” often had their bodies sold to medical schools for dissection.
Disciplinary action was carried out for offences such as drunkenness, refusing to work or gambling. Punishments included having rations reduced, being put into solitary confinement, or losing a pardon for release.
For more serious offences, such as attempting escape by stealing small boats or attempting to bribe their passage on a passing ship, men were often flogged. Tropical diseases were common among the prisoners, particularly malaria and tuberculosis.
During the famine years, a huge influx of Irish convicts were sent to the Island. During the years of the Great Hunger, thousands of men, women, and children, many driven to crime by poverty, were sentenced to be transported overseas.
For some Irish male convicts, their destination was Bermuda. Most crimes involved petty theft, with people stealing food or livestock to survive.
Vagrancy Act
The introduction of the Vagrancy Act in 1847 criminalized homelessness, meaning that many who had been evicted from their homes became new targets of transportation. Many Irish arrivals already half-starved before transportation suffered from scurvy. Many did not survive the voyage.
In total, around 9,000 convicts were sent to Bermuda over the 40-year period from 1824 until 1864. In Sandy’s Parish, across the road from the Naval Cemetery, is a quiet graveyard. Here, only nine gravestones represent approximately 2,000 convicts who are believed to have died on the Island during their incarceration. Bermuda’s prisoners are part of a larger, global story of incarceration and empire.
During the American Revolution, poet Philip Morin Freneau (1752-1832) documented his time aboard a British prison ship. While he was not in Bermuda, it does provide insight into the terrible conditions aboard England’s prison hulks.
Freneau offers this criticism of the British: “Ungenerous Britons, you conspire to murder those you can’t subdue.” The complete poem can be found at: https://poets.org/poem/british-prison-ship
Read more of Mike’s Illuminations Columns HERE
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Mike Finn
*J. Michael Finn is the Ohio State Historian for the Ancient Order of Hibernians and Division Historian for the Patrick Pearse Division in Columbus, Ohio. He is also past Chairman and Life Member of the Catholic Record Society for the Diocese of Columbus, Ohio. He writes on Irish and Irish-American history; Ohio history and Ohio Catholic history. You may contact him at [email protected]
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