Conditions on the convict ships

After undertaking a period of separate confinement at Millbank or Pentonville, convicts were put on an embarkation list for the next convict ship to leave England; they were usually sent to one of the prison hulks while awaiting deportation. Before the voyage they had to pass a medical and have a certificate signed by a medical officer from the shore authorities. This was necessary because the prisons and hulks in which the convicts were incarcerated were hotbeds for disease, especially fever; only those medically fit to survive the long journey were supposed to be passed for embarkation. However, countless surgeons’ journals record instances of convicts concealing illness or injury because they feared that they would be left to rot in prison or on the hulks.

On embarkation day convicts were fettered together in irons to board the ship, and were only freed from their manacles after open water had been reached. Convicts bound for Australia faced a long and difficult journey taking four to five months, generally via Tenerife, the Cape Verde Islands, Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town, finally arriving at Hobart or Sydney.

The clothing provided was rarely adequate to combat the severe cold of the high southern latitudes. As late as the 1840s spare clothing was not supplied to replace worn-out items or those that were lost overboard during squalls. And although the convict ships could be damp and dank, when they reached the tropics the heat made the vessels stifling and oppressive. The convicts spent a large amount of time locked in their cells, with four of them sharing each wooden sleeping berth. However, conditions gradually improved and from 1844 convicts had a sleeping berth to themselves.