Prison ships have forever been associated with the worst excesses of English injustice. On the eve of Waterloo, Napoleon stiffened the resolve of his troops by demanding: “Soldiers, let those among you who have been prisoners of the English describe to you the hulks, and detail the most frightful miseries which they endured!”
A search back through the archives of the Guardian and the Observer sees the phrase invariably used as a shorthand for draconian horrors. One advert from 1896 invited visitors to come and experience “Manchester’s latest and best sensation: a prison hulk 100 years old”, shown “as when full of prisoners” with “high class wax models”.
