“From 1850 to 1857,” their informant replied. “In the last-named year the practise of imprisonment on board of the hulks was discontinued and the convicts were put into prisons on shore. Four of the hulks were sold and broken up, and the fifth, the Success, was bought by speculators and kept for exhibition purposes. She was shown in all the ports of Australia for many years, and was at last taken to England and put on exhibition there. She was five months making the voyage from Australia to England, and at one time fears were entertained for her safety; but she reached her destination all right, and has probably reaped a harvest of money for her exhibitors. She was built in India in 1790, her hull being made of solid teak-wood. She was an East Indian trader for more than forty years, then she was an emigrant ship, and finally, in 1852, a convict hulk.
“The convicts on board these hulks, or at any rate the worst of them, were always kept in irons, but this did not deter them from jumping overboard and trying to swim to the shore. Very few of these ever succeeded in reaching the land, as they were either carried to the bottom by the weight of the irons, or were captured by the guard boats that constantly surrounded the hulks. Most of the convicts were confined in separate cells, and the ‘history’ of each convict was posted on the door of his cell.
“Nearly the whole interior of the ship was thus divided into cells, and when candles and lanterns were removed the places were in pitchy darkness. I went on board the Success one day, while she was on exhibition here, long after she had given up her old occupation, and as a matter of curiosity, I had myself shut up in one of the cells and the light removed. I told them to leave me in for ten minutes only, not longer.
“It was on the lower deck, where not a ray of light could come in, and the place where they locked me in was one of the ‘black holes’ in which prisoners were confined from one to twenty-eight days on bread and water.
“As soon as they had locked me in and went away, I regretted that I had made the suggestion. You have heard of its being so dark that you could feel the darkness; well, that was the case down there. I felt the darkness pressing upon me, and the air was very thick and heavy. I felt an overwhelming desire to light a match, and discovered that I had no matches in my pocket.
“One, two, three, and four minutes passed away, and I had had all I wanted. I kicked and hammered at the thick door, and when it was opened and I went out of the hold and up on deck, I was nearly blinded. How in the world a man could stay in one of those places for a single day, let alone twenty-eight days, without losing his reason is more than I can understand.”
Harry asked if all the prisoners were kept in solitary cells on board of these hulks.
“Most, but not all, of them were confined in this way. There is a space at the stern, and another in the center of the ship, heavily barred with iron, where those who were considered utterly irreclaimable were huddled together. It would almost seem as though the authorities deliberately put them there in order that they should kill each other, as fights among them were very frequent and not a few were murdered by their companions. They did not work, they were simply in prison, that was all.
“The punishments that the convicts received were various. They had the dark cells and bread and water of which I have told you, and then they had floggings, and plenty of them, too. They were tied up by the thumbs so that their toes just touched the deck, and they were compelled to sustain the weight of the body either on their thumbs or their toes for hours at a time. They were ‘bucked,’ ‘gagged,’ and ‘paddled,’ and ‘cold-showered,’ and treated to other brutalities which have been known in the English army and navy for a long time. In spite of their liability to punishment, many of them paid little attention to the rules, and some were continually yelling in the most horrible manner, and day and night the sound of their voices was heard.
“Over the hatchway was a wheel by which the food of the convicts was lowered into the hold at morning, noon, and night; at other times it was used for raising in an iron cage, from the lower decks, convicts who were allowed exercise, but the weight of whose irons prevented their ascending by the companionways. Many of them wore ‘punishment balls’ attached to their irons. The punishment balls and chain together weighed about eighty pounds, and frequently bowed the prisoner double.