Does any one know any information about the prison hulks that were used in the victorian times?
Actually you need to go back a bit further in time; hulks used as prision ships were more germane in fact endemic to the era between 1750 to approximately 1870 // one of your best sources is a fiction writer whose true name is Douglass Reeman but who writes nautical fiction as Alexander Kent, whose hero Richard Bolitho has many an adventire from the 1770’s on to the War of 1812. Many history books about The American Revolution touch on the Prison Hulks the British used to hold ‘rebels,’ in particular three hulks moored off of New York which were appalling, resulting in hundreds perhaps thousands of deaths. Most prison hulks were simply worn out ships. Often an Indiaman/ a fair sized cargo ship or occassionally a ship of the line, a coupkle hundred tons and orginally carrying from 24 to 76 fair sized cannons, rarely any ship smaller than a frigate, a frigate being able to house about three hundred souls, more if one were to ‘pack the hold,’ but overall most prison hulks were ships which
