Free Republic

Bones of 19th century prison ship inmates, which have been buried in mudbank, are not being uncovered. Human bones including skulls, teeth and vertebrae, litter the shoreline on grisly Deadman's Island off the coast of Sheppey, Kent. The uninhabited mudbank, which lies just 40 minutes from central London, was used as a mass burial ground for criminals who died on board prison ships, like those referenced in Charles Dicken's novel Great Expectations, in the 1800s.

<p>A human rights group alleges the U.S. has operated detention facilities for terror suspects aboard Naval vessels, according to a published report in a European newspaper Monday.</p> <p>A study compiled by Reprieve says the U.S. may have used as many as 17 vessels as 'prison ships' where terror detainees were subjected to interrogation as part of the acknowledged rendition program operated since 2001, The Guardian reported.</p>

<p>The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.</p> <p>Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.</p>

Death, disease and injury were the fate of thousands held at sea More Americans died in British prison ships in New York Harbor than in all the battles of the Revolutionary War. There were at least 16 of these floating prisons anchored in Wallabout Bay on the East River for most of the war, and they were sinkholes of filth, vermin, infectious disease and despair. The ships were uniformly wretched, but the most notorious was the Jersey. Following the Battle of Long Island in August, 1776, and the fall of New York City soon after, the British found thousands of...