On the 13th May 1787 a fleet of eleven tiny ships which had assembled in the port of Portsmouth, Hampshire, set sail bound for Botany Bay in far off Australia. On board was a human cargo of convicts. This page relates the events leading up to this historic voyage and its impact on late 18th century Portsmouth.

Prisons in Britain were becoming overcrowded during the 18th century and this was mainly due to the severe laws that governed the land and protected private property.

At this time Britain did not have an official police force and those that chose to break the law were arrested by parish constables and watchmen. But many of these 'officials' were reputed to be as lazy and corrupt as the felons they arrested. Pay for the constables and watchmen were met by local authorities at this time.

Another way that criminals were brought to justice was by 'thief-takers' who once had been criminals themselves. The government at the time offered generous rewards to them for their work and they would quite often sell tickets to the public for the privilege of attending the execution of someone they had sought out and apprehended.

One of the most notorious of these was JONATHAN WILD, who operated earlier in the 1700's and shown here is one of his tickets which he sold to the public.

The inscription states:
"To all the Thieves,
Whores,Pick-pockets,
Family Fellons & c.
on Great Britain & Ireland,
Gentlemen & Ladies
You are hereby desir'd to
accompany yr worthy friend ye
Pious Mr. I - W -d from his
Seat at Whittingtons Colledge
to ye Tripple Tree, where he's
to make his last Exit
on..................., and his
Corps to be Carry'd from thence
to be decently interr'd amongst his Ancestors.

Pray bring this Ticket with you.

A need for a reform of the judicial system was long overdue, but it was thought better to keep the tried and trusted methods of the paid informer, the hangman and the Transportation ship. Many prisoners who were brought before the courts were found to be filthy and diseased and they were quite a contrast to the well dressed judges and people who came as spectators to the courts. The accused was quite often given a type of frock to wear so as to hide their unkempt appearance and also it was thought to prevent any disease they had from spreading to others in the courtrooms.

The conditions in the prisons were disgusting and the prisoners rarely had enough to eat, unless they had been fairly well off before entering and were able to bribe the wardens. As often as not the only food they had came from local charitable organisations or stale or unfit food from local markets. Frequently due to the small amount of food available it was apt to fall into the hands of corrupt prison officers and was sold at a high price to the prisoners.

Sometimes prisoners were chained together and marched through the streets to beg for their food and fights were frequently breaking out in the filthy smelly dungeons for small scraps of rotten food, and the local rats ate as well as the convicts themselves. Death was a common thing, usually caused by starvation or perhaps 'gaol fever' brought on by the poisonous foetid atmosphere of the dungeons. Few people visited the prisoners as they could not breathe without becoming sick, a favourite trick was to carry a vinegar soaked handkerchief to hold to the nose. The dungeons or wards as they were called were usually a long room with a platform about four feet high from the ground along its length where the prisoners slept, both on the platform and on the floor. Sometimes a type of hammock was hung from the ceiling . Imagine a long corridor about 12ft wide and 90ft long with prisoners sleeping on both sides and a small alleyway down the centre. No sanitation and very small windows about 15 ft from the ground letting the only light in. The hammocks were pretty useless as in most cases the convicts had their chains or irons on to stop them escaping.

The number of crimes punishable by death was near to 200 by the 1780's. There were the usual ones such as murder, treason and in those days arson;

Cutting down a tree in any avenue
Appearing armed and disguised in a field where deer are kept.
Impersonation of a Chelsea pensioner
Making a false entry in the books of the Bank of England

These are just a small sample of the crimes which carried the death penalty in those hard times.

But the strange thing was that the number of guilty to these offences in no way corresponded to the number of actual executions. But public hanging was nevertheless extremely common. About 100 hangings a year in London in the 1780's, and one eye witness claimed to have seen 40 people hanged in the same day!!

PRISON SHIPS
By the early 1770's an attempt was made to try and alleviate the pressure put on the prisons and the use of 'hulks' was introduced as a cheap alternative to building more prisons on land.

Hulks were ships which were no longer sea worthy and commonly had their masts shortened. Moored in harbours around the country they survived as a means of housing prisoners until the late 1880's. They were first used on the Thames in London, but Portsmouth soon had some of its own moored in Langstone and Portsmouth Harbours. In 1783 there were four in Portsmouth, the "Lion" moored off Gosport, the "Fortuée" a captured French frigate and the "Ceres" along with a hospital ship moored in Langestone harbour. On these hulks could be found boys of only 10 years of age.

The conditions on board the hulks was appalling, dark, smelly and unhealthy with terrible overcrowding. Convicts were only allowed one deck which was barely high enough to stand up in. Little or no ventilation and in winter it was even worse. The few air vents that did exist were often closed to stop the cold from creeping in. Windows on the landward side were boarded over as a deterrent against escape.

FOOD AND CLOTHING
At the time the government made what was called reasonable quantities of food available for the prisoners but it was so badly distributed that the poor convicts were often given far less that they were supposed to get. Officers were given the responsibility of distribution of the food but either through incompetence or dishonesty frequently failed in their duties to see that the prisoners were fed reasonably. As often as not they sold it to local traders or kept it for themselves.

The convicts official diet was;

OX CHEEK either boiled or made into soup
PEAS
BREAD or BISCUIT
For two days a week the meat was replaced by OATMEAL and CHEESE in a kind of PORRIDGE known as burgoo which was a common meal in the Navy..

As the prisoners were expected to do manual construction work (it was a common site to see them in working parties around the town from time to time), and meals were supposed to be adequate..The labour of the convicts was used in the renovation of Fort Cumberland and for the levelling of Southsea Common. And later they built new sections of the dockyard wall between Unicorn Gate (now Main Gate) and Flathouse. Around the middle of the 19th century they helped form Whale Island by transporting tons of mud taken from a new built basin in the dockyard and dumping it on the site.

Prisoners were divided into groups of six known as messes for meals, and each group was given the following per day:

½ pound of Ox Cheek (undressed, which means untrimmed with all teeth, eyes and skin left on!) OR 2 pounds of Cheese.
3 Pints of Peas or Oatmeal
4½ to 6 pounds of Bread.
Each man also had a quart of beer on four days a week with water on the other three! In London where the hulks were moored on the Thames the convicts were given river water to drink which was badly filtered and tasted of mud, salt and anything else that had been thrown into the river!!

The meat was often in a very poor state, often green and stinking but served up just the same. It was often thrown into the water by the disgruntled convicts as it was being loaded. The official quantity of food allowed to them was one third LESS than for navy personnel. They were supposed to wash once a week and to have a change of shirt each Sunday but this was extremely difficult to enforce and some undressed to get into bed while others did not, many had no shirts, waistcoats, stockings and in some cases no footwear.

When the convicts first arrived on the hulks their clothes were pulled off and thrown overboard and then were issued with a "shirt of linen check, a brown jacket and a pair of breeches". But these soon wore out or sold to others and often exchanged for favours....or just stolen.

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