Songs about the prison hulks

Subject: Songs about the prison hulks
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Aug 23 - 12:01 PM

Now Suella Braverman has made them topical again - are there any songs about the prison hulks, dating from the era when they were most in use?

Subject: RE: Songs about the prison hulks
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 09 Aug 23 - 12:55 PM

Charles R. Thatcher, while in New Zealand, wrote "The Escaped Prisoners" to the tune of "Darling Nelly Gray." It opened "In the battered hulk that's anchored off the Waitemata shore, The Maoris used to while the time away." The same incident is also the subject of "Fall of Rangiriri," in Bailey and Roth's Shanties by the Way.

There are references to old hulks in "The Old Hulk" (in Huntington's Songs the Whalemen Sang) and Charles Dibdin's "Tom Bowling," but they aren't specifically prison hulks.

Most bushranger and transportee songs don't refer specifically to prison hulks, but the men involved often spent time there. John Mitchell of "John Mitchel" (which is pretty well known) spent time on a prison hulk. So did Richard Burgess of Neil Colquhoun's "Murderer's Rock." Hugh Anderson cited a broadside, "A New Flash Song, Made on the Noted George Barrington"; Barrington spent time on a hulk. I think Jack Donahoe spent time on a hulk, but I don't have the reference to hand.

Subject: RE: Songs about the prison hulks
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 09 Aug 23 - 03:30 PM

Peter Bellamy's "Transports" makes more than a passing mention to them but obviously not at the time they were last in use.

Subject: RE: Songs about the prison hulks
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 09 Aug 23 - 06:09 PM

Even newer: There once was a TikTok, or whatever, of herself standing alone on a balcony intercut with Hugh Jackman and the Work Song (Look down! Look down! &c) from Les Mis. Couldn't find it anywhere just now though.

Half expected the French & Italian chiourme cadences to make an appearance the maritime work song thread but, nada so far.

Subject: RE: Songs about the prison hulks
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 15 Mar 24 - 05:03 PM

No music here but a discussion & inf about prison hulks.
Myths, ships and history    feb 2025
Freethinking - BBC Radio4
,,, "prison hulks", decommissioned warships moored on docks to house criminals.
Dr Anna McKay of the University of Liverpool can tell us more about how the hulks, supposed to be a short term solution to a crisis, ended up being used for decades.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001w8h7
> skip to ~19.30   12 minutes

(rest of the programme,,,
Dr Lloyd Belton of the University of Glasgow studies the Kru - fiercely independent West African sailors who formed an alliance with the Royal Navy to rid the African coast of slavers.

And Dr Oliver Finnegan from the National Archive at Kew will tell us about the enormous historical potential of the "Prize Papers", a collection of thousands of unopened letters, legal papers and other documents from ships captured by British privateers and the Royal Navy between 1652 and 1815. )