A century-and-a-half ago prison ships, or hulks, were moored on the Thames. CLARE CRAWFORD reports ...

The Thames at Woolwich has a bleak atmosphere. The river is dirty, wide and slow. Its shore is lined with the decaying remnants of past years' industry.

It seems a fitting place to have housed prison hulks until 150 years ago.

There is only one known photograph of the hulks at Woolwich, taken from Bell Water Gate now the road between the Waterfront Leisure Centre and its car park.

It shows the last hulk, the Defence and part of the hospital ship, the Unite, in eerie sepia, shortly before they were destroyed by a fire in 1857.

The ships are unmasted and no convicts can be seen on board, giving them a Marie Celeste atmosphere.

Even on a sunny day, standing next to the boarded-up Crown and Cushion pub, it is not hard to imagine the boats are still out there, beyond the car park.

Most people outside Woolwich who have heard of the hulks have done so through reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. This includes a wonderfully macabre description of the hulks: "By the light of the torches we saw the black hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the shore, like a wicked Noah's ark.

"Cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty chains, the prison ship seemed in my eyes to be ironed like the prisoners."

Pip's foray across the gloomy marshland would have been easier to envisage at Woolwich 150 years ago.

On the opposite bank to where the hulks were moored, where 1960s' tower blocks now stand, there would have lain the Essex Marshes.

A little further down river, where you can see the bend containing the Thamesmead development, was Plumstead Marshes, an empty, scrubby place where you could catch Plumstead Ague a form of malaria.

Here, it is said, many convicts were buried in unconsecrated ground, red dead nettle growing on the newly-turned earth of their graves. Ironically, Belmarsh prison now stands on the site.

Life on board was horrific, leading to an inquiry in 1847 into the unsanitary conditions.

This, combined with the hard physical work the convicts had to do every day, must have made escape tempting.

WT Stead's Records of the Woolwich District notes a fascinating case: "1832: November. On Saturday, as a gang of 24 convicts employed in the Arsenal were going to work, 12 of their number escaped by jumping over a very high hedge, which divides the marshes from the high road.

"The sentinel immediately fired, bringing back eight of their number, the other four continuing their flight toward Plumstead Common.

"The artillery on duty at the Arsenal, accompanied by a number of villagers, went in pursuit and found two of the fugitives concealed in a hedge in a secluded spot behind the mill on Plumstead Common.

"The other two were found behind a haystack between Wickham and Welling."