Transportable Home South Australia


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Transportable Home South Australia

Transportable Home South Australia

Transportation was used as a punishment for serious and petty crimes in Great Britain and Ireland from the 1700s into the 19th century. It was seen as a more humane alternative to execution and necessary in order to prevent Britain's gaols from overflowing. Until the American Revolution in the 1780s the majority of convicts were sent to the British colonies in North America, but after the war and the loss of the American colonies the British government was obliged to look elsewhere. In 1787 the government announced that the new place of disposal was to be Australia, and the first wave of convicts were sent to the grim environment of the Australian prison colonies.

Prison Hulks

To relieve overcrowding in the gaols, the government also decided to house those convicts waiting to be transported in old warships known as 'hulks' moored on the Thames. Prisoners remained inside the hulks until a space could be found for them on a transport ship to Australia. Conditions aboard these floating prisons were dreadful, with little sanitation or proper medical attention, and diseases such as dysentery and gaol fever spread quickly among the convicts aboard. The result was an appalling mortality rate, with around one in three convicts dying before they even began the journey to Australia.

Many of the convicts that survived the hulks took their diseases onto the transportation vessels, leading to outbreaks of such lethal diseases as typhoid and cholera. Living conditions aboard the ships heading to Australia were not so much better than the hulks, with cramped spaces for the convicts, who were required to sleep in chains, and had barely enough room to stand up. Meanwhile the officers commanding the vessels lived in roomy cabins in the stern.