Extract taken from The Story of John Nichols - First Fleeter

by K.Purnell, S.Tuck. S. Draper, B.Coleman & J.Marden

John was found guilty and was sentenced to seven years transportation to Africa.

Exile had from earliest times been a form of punishment and an Act of parliament passed in the reign of Elizabeth I legalized a type of transportation which was seen as an alternative to capital punishment.   Parliament passed another Act in 1717 which established transportation to the North American colonies and until the American War of Independence in 1776 tens of thousands of convicts were sent there from Britain.   As the war continued and no other destination was provided for the transportees the gaols began to overflow.   An Act was passed in May 1776 for those sentenced to transportation to be put on prison hulks in the River Thames until, hopefully, they could be sent to America.   This hope died when Britain lost the war in 1781.

In 1872 an experimental transportation of 300 convicts was undertaken to Cape Coast Castle, West Africa.   It ended disastrously when over half of the convicts died.   Even so by the end of 1784 preparations were being made for transportation to Africa on a regular basis and judges were sentencing convicts specifically to that country.   This was the case with John Nichols.

Whether John was sent directly to a gaol or a prison hulk is not known but he is recorded as being aged 24 and on the prison hulk Censor (an old frigate purchased from the Admiralty in 1776) from at least 11 July 1785.   The Censor was anchored at Woolwich on the Thames and John may have been a member of a chain gang cleansing the river by raising sand, soil and gravel or building docks, quays and yards for the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich.   The hulks were overcrowded and disease-ridden; they were vermin-infested, the air was foul and the food inadequate.

The following excerpts are taken from The English Prison Hulks by William Branch Johnson and although describing life on the hulks from an earlier period to that of Johns incarceration it is doubtful conditions would have improved.     .hospitals were nothing but the forecastles of the vessels, where a few boards were nailed up to separate the healthy from the sick and where a disagreeable odor emerged.during the fine season ten hours labour was the rule; during the winter, seven.   In wet weather and on Sundays none worked; they sat about dejectedly, moped, grumbled, recounted past misdeeds to companions anxious to profit by their experience, and planned mutinies and escapes.Portholes on the river side could be opened; those to landward were blocked up, so that through ventilation was almost impossible to obtain.   In one big, unencumbered space below. Prisoners slept and fed.Many (convicts) had no shirts, some no waistcoats, some no stockings, and some no shoes.a shirt of linen check, a brown jacket and a pair of breeches were supplied.At first the prisoners had slept in two tiers of hammocks, one above the other; next in a single tier the hammocks, in either case, used to become entangled in their irons.   As the hulks grew more crowded, platforms were erected along each side of the deck; by day, when not in use as tables, they would be placed upright against the walls, and lowered at night.   Six men slept on each, with a mat beneath them and a rug covering each couple little wonder that the hulks housed vermin of every sort.   The space allotted to a sleeper was six feet (1.8 metres) in length and not more than twenty inches ( .5 metre) in width.Their diet consisted chiefly of ox-cheek either boiled or made into soup, pease, and bread or biscuit on two days in the week, known as Burgoo Days, meat was replaced by oatmeal and cheese.   The men were divided into messes of six, each mess being allowed half an ox-cheek (undressed) or two pounds of cheese, three pints of pease or oatmeal, and a quantity of bread or biscuit varying from time to time between four-and-a-half and six pounds.   Each man had a quart of small beer on four days in the week, and water, drawn from the river and filtered (though imperfectly) on the others.   Sometimes the ox-cheeks were kept too long, and stinking. However, meat in that condition was usually returned to the sub-contractor and better substituted.To provide the vegetable which all the doctors declared necessary for health, Campbell (a shipping Contractor) bought a plot of ground and employed some of his crippled prisoners as gardeners.

The Magistrate Colquhoun declared that between 1776 and 1795, 1,946 out of 5,792 convicts had died; approximately one in three.   A Coroners Report for the Censor covering the period 12 July 1785 and 25 June 1786 states thirty prisoners had died and all were recorded as natural deaths.   The cause of these natural deaths would be open to conjecture.

The hulk system was established as a temporary measure but continued for nearly one hundred years.   John did well to survive his time on the hulks...