Dr anna lois mckay


Historian of prisoners in the British Maritime World


  • Biography
  • Research Projects
  • MEDIA
  • selected activities
  • Research Trips
  • Contact
  • Twitter
  • LINKEDIN

Dr Anna Lois McKay



Dr Anna McKay researches the lives and experiences of prisoners across the British maritime world. She has written for the Financial Times, Guardian, New Statesman, BBC History Magazine, RTÉ Ireland, and Times Higher Education, and featured on BBC Sounds and HistoryExtra podcasts. In 2024 she was a finalist in the BBC/AHRC's New Generation Thinkers scheme, and can be heard on BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking.


Anna's PhD on prison hulks - battered ex-naval warships hastily converted as floating prisons - was awarded in 2020. Originally conceived as a short-term solution to a prison housing crisis, hulks were used by the British government for decades, spanning the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Their fascinating history has been largely forgotten - this is the story of empire, prisons, and society as a whole.


At the University of Liverpool, Anna is undertaking a Leverhulme Trust-funded project, ‘Prisoners’ Progress’, on war captives between 1775-1815. It’s a topic that resonates with the stories we see today of wartime displacement and refugees – ordinary people searching for freedom and safety.


If you are interested in talking to Anna regarding her research (media, historical consultancy enquiries etc.), please get in touch below.


Contact

Research Projects



GLOBAL PRISONERS OF WAR, 1775-1815



BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY, YALE UNIVERSITY June-July 2024


At the Beinecke Library, I will consult the correspondence of various French, British and American figures involved in the business of war captivity across the American, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Correspondence, maps and diaries cross oceans and help us build a picture of the impact of these global wars, from France to America, Canada to the Caribbean. At the Beinecke, I'll also access a range of cross-sectional materials that will bring the experiences of captives on the peripheries to the fore - these include women, enslaved people, passengers and ships' surgeons.



PRISONERS OF THE REVOLUTION



AMERICAN REVOLUTION INSTITUTE OF THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI, WASHINGTON D.C., April 2024


This visiting fellowship will examine the varied experiences of prisoners of war during the American Revolutionary War. Amidst the turmoil of conflict, tens of thousands of prisoners were captured across land and oceans – warfare not only affected the lives of naval and military servicemen, but also their families who sought news of their capture, the states who carved out new legislation to cope with numbers, and society at large who read of their sufferings in newspapers and narrative accounts. (2024 Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship)



Prisoner of war mobilities in the British imperial world, c.1793-1815



LEVERHULME TRUST EARLY CAREER FELLOWSHIP, UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL, December 2022-2025


War captivity in the long eighteenth century was undeniably global. Between 1793-1815, thousands of prisoners of war – combatants, enslaved people, refugees, sailors, women, and children – moved across oceans, according to political exigencies. This project provides a new historical and theoretical framework for understanding war captivity as a crucial social, political, and cultural node in histories of imperialism, warfare, and forced migration. Using historical and digital methods to track mobilities across British imperial zones, it reveals how prisoner experience differed according to place, race, and gender, and highlights the confusion and displacement of involuntary migration as by-products of war.



Global experiences of North American prisoners of war, c.1775-1815



BRITISH LIBRARY, ECCLES CENTRE VISITING FELLOWSHIP, September-October 2022.
This Eccles Centre Fellowship provides a new historical perspective on the experiences and identities of American combatants caught up in global warfare. It uses India Office records, narrative accounts, maps, and historical newspapers to examine American POWs across imperial zones, focusing on Canada and the Indian Ocean, revealing how experience differed according to place, social standing, and race. My project is strongly connected to the ‘Americans Beyond the Americas’ research strand, subverting the notion that the Americas are defined by inbound migration. Instead, we see American servicemen moving across the globe, at the mercy of state stratagem, forming new communities as they were moved across prisoner depots.



Interdisciplinary Walks Project,
Lead Research Associate



UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER, INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES,

May-July 2022


This project encouraged staff members to think outside their disciplinary silos whilst getting familiar with University of Leicester surroundings. Findings revealed that walking serves a multitude of purposes, and fell into roughly four categories: walking alone, or together, walking to focus, and walking to disconnect. By understanding our individual walking preferences, researchers can harness the potential of walking as a tool to improve mind, body, and research. Components included: staff interviews (audio material), a LIAS Working Paper, printed map booklet, Times Higher Education article.



British Prison Hulks, 1775-1875:
Wicked Noah’s Arks?



GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK, 2021-22.


Funded by the Irish Research Council, this 1-year postdoctoral fellowship will support the development of my academic monograph on prison hulks in Britain and its overseas territories between the years 1775-1875. Additions to PhD research will include case studies on Bermuda, Ireland, and Gibraltar, thus presenting the first analysis of imperial convict hulks over a protracted period of time. As a member of University College Cork's English Department, my outcomes will be both academic and public-facing, including journal articles and media work.



ALL AT SEA: PRISONERS OF WAR IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1793-1815



ALAN PEARSALL FELLOWSHIP IN NAVAL AND MARITIME HISTORY, INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH, LONDON, 2019-20.


This postdoctoral project lays the foundation for the first global history of prisoners of war (1793-1815). Procedures for housing, clothing and feeding prisoners – for example, soldiers and sailors – had been formalised by the mid-eighteenth century, but as tensions escalated between states, systems broke down and far higher numbers were detained at holding stations across the world. With case studies including the Banda Islands, Indonesia, Jamaica and the Cape of Good Hope, this project examines prisoner of war experiences in tandem with pressures faced by colonial administrators.



Prisoners of War at Melville Island, Nova Scotia during the War of 1812



CAIRD LIBRARY RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP, ROYAL MUSEUMS GREENWICH, 2019.


Melville Island, a peninsula located about 20 minutes’ drive from Halifax, Nova Scotia, has a long history as a depot. It was a quarantine station for black refugees escaping slavery, a hospital for Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine, and a training centre for soldiers during the Crimean War. This fellowship examined Melville Island’s role as a prisoner of war depot during the War of 1812, investigating the experiences of captives there, their interaction with officials, and Admiralty operations overseas.


Additional funding received from the Society for Nautical Research.



The Development and Abolition of British Prison Hulks, 1776-1857



ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL COLLABORATIVE DOCTORAL PHD, UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER AND ROYAL MUSEUMS GREENWICH, 2015-20.


This PhD compares the confinement of prisoners of war and convicts on British prison hulks in England and Bermuda, from the passing of the Criminal Law Act in 1776 to the closure of the British convict hulk establishment in England in 1857. It brings together war and peacetime perspectives, local and imperial histories, and state and non-state actors. When we examine these discourses as one, we gain a better understanding of how government systems operated during a period of immense social, economic, and cultural change. This work makes a significant contribution to the history of punishment by using historiographical frameworks that have emerged in recent years – including naval, maritime, imperial, criminal justice, social and cultural history.


Additional funding received from the Royal Historical Society, Economic History Society, University of Leicester Postgraduate Fund, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich Collaborative Student Fund.



MEDIA



Kent Maps Online:
The Convict Hulks of Kent



Your Subtitle Here



BBC (Interview): Could the East coast once again be home to detention vessels?



Your Subtitle Here



PODCAST:
Military Historians are People Too!
S3E3



Your Subtitle Here



PODCAST:
Charles Dickens: A Brain on Fire!
Hulks, Convicts & Reform



Your Subtitle Here



Times Higher Education: Walk the walk to benefit your academic research



Your Subtitle Here



RTÉ Brainstorm : 'Floating hells': life onboard 19th century Ireland's convict ships



Your Subtitle Here



Ports, Past and Present:
Fishguard and the Cunard Line



Your Subtitle Here



RTÉ Brainstorm :
The story of Irish convicts sent 3,000 miles from home to Bermuda



Your Subtitle Here



Royal Museums Greenwich:
Free and Unfree Labour:
Who built Bermuda’s Dockyards?



Your Subtitle Here



Carceral Archipelago Project: A Day in the Life: Convicts on board Prison Hulks



Your Subtitle Here



Royal Museums Greenwich:
British and French Prisoners of War,
1793-1815



Your Subtitle Here



British Library Untold Lives:
Duncan Campbell: the Private Contractor and the Prison Hulk



Your Subtitle Here



selected ACTIVITES



Profile Books Ideas Prize Longlist (March 2024)
ShipShapes: The Transformation and Afterlives of Britain’s Ships



Now in its fourth year, The Ideas Prize is an award for the best debut trade non-fiction proposal from an academic. Izzy Everington, Editorial Director at Profile Books, commented: ‘We have seen an extraordinary range and breadth of submissions this year, and the quality has been astounding. Many thanks to all who applied, and a huge congratulations to our longlisted authors: each of your submissions was filled with ambition, creativity and panache.’



BBC Radio 3, Free Thinking (20 February 2024)
Myths, Ships and Histories



Asked to picture a nineteenth-century ship, you might think of the HMS Victory or HMS Temeraire, symbolic of empire. Something epitomised by flag-waving and victory - Britannia rules the waves. In this edition of Free Thinking, Catherine Fletcher asks if we memorialise one aspect of our maritime past at the expense of others - she is joined by Dr Anna McKay, Dr Lloyd Belton, and Dr Oliver Finnegan.



New Generation Thinkers 2024: Finalist (Jan 2024)
BBC / Arts and Humanities Research Council



This prestigious scheme offers early career researchers the opportunity to develop programmes for the BBC. Selected as a finalist in January 2024 for my programme idea telling the untold story of the people who served time on the hulks – we’ll see how they lived and fought alongside each other, formed friendships, and plotted escapes. Looking through the prism of Empire, we’ll also ask, are we guilty of memorialising one aspect of our nation’s naval past, and not what happened next?



History and Policy (7 August 2023)
Asylum Barges in historical context: Britain’s prison hulks expose fault lines in today’s policy



This policy paper explores the parallels between the British government’s current use of barges to house asylum seekers and the historical use of prison hulks. The first part provides an introduction to the issues of asylum seekers and accommodation barges today, and shows how governments periodically turn to ships as the means to detain so-called ‘problem’ groups. The second aims to determine what lessons can be drawn from history and how this evidence should be recognised in tackling the problem of asylum accommodation today.



Financial Times (16 July 2023)
Putting asylum seekers on barges is an idea that should be consigned to history



In the 19th century, the public initially turned a blind eye to prison hulks — but not so today. In the coming weeks, the British government will accommodate asylum seekers on board a barge in Portland, Dorset. This plan was formally announced in April, but the barge is yet to arrive, delayed by protests and growing public criticism. Britain has seen this before: it’s impossible to look at the policy without making historical comparisons to prison hulks, 19th-century floating prisons etched on to public memory thanks to screen adaptations of Great Expectations.



The Guardian (8 April 2023)
Why does the Tory plan to house asylum seekers on barges sound Dickensian? Because it is



​In a move that echoes 19th-century policy, the Home Office has announced it will house 500 male asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm, a 222-bedroom accommodation barge, off the coast of Portland in Dorset. The decision is supposed to reduce pressure on the UK’s asylum system, as the cost of housing migrants in hotels amounts to more than £6m a day. Although the government claims this action brings the UK into line with countries around Europe, it also draws darker comparisons to Britain’s historical use of prison hulks, infamous “floating hells” that were used to detain criminals.



New Statesman (30 March 2023)
Robert Jenrick and the Return of Prison Hulks



The immigration minister is reopening a dark chapter in British history.

Robert Jenrick announced plans on the 29 March to house several thousand male asylum seekers in disused military bases in Essex, Lincolnshire and East Sussex. But what really caught the eye was Jenrick’s other announcement. He said that the government was exploring the possibility of housing migrants on vessels such as disused cruise ships or barges.

The New Statesman is the leading progressive political and cultural magazine in the United Kingdom, founded in 1913.



BBC Sounds Podcast: Killing Victoria (April 2023)



During the 63 year long reign of Queen Victoria, seven men took the fateful decision to try to kill her. The seven men were within seconds of changing history - each could have brought the Victorian era to a premature end, yet each has been forgotten to history.

This new podcast series narrated by Dr Bob Nicholson will look to answer the question of what led these men to try to kill the most famous and influential woman on the planet.

Anna will be talking to Bob about would-be assassin, the 'low-born Irish blackguard', bricklayer William Hamilton, and serving time on convict hulks in Episode 4.



BBC HistoryExtra Podcast (2022)
The Floating Hell of Prison Hulks



Anna McKay delves into the development, use and abolition of floating prisons - and the horrible experience of those incarcerated on board.

Convicts in Georgian and Victorian Britain experienced notoriously miserable conditions, and perhaps no inmates endured harsher deprivations than those confined on prison hulks.


HistoryExtra podcast episodes are released six times a week, featuring interviews with notable historians on topics spanning ancient history through to recent British to American events. Episodes feature history stories and perspectives on everything from crusading knights to Tudor monarchs and the D-Day landings.



BBC History Magazine (October, 2022)
The Floating Hell of Prison Hulks



Early one misty morning in 1855, Henry Mayhew and John Binny stepped aboard a dilapidated ship moored on the Thames. Its large wooden hull was studded with barred portholes instead of flags, a rudimentary washing line hung between the ship’s masts. The overall impression was one of oppression and decay. The Defence struck a curious contrast to the gleaming steamboats and sailboats streaming past: for one thing, rather than carrying passengers, it housed convicts. Formerly a naval man-of-war, it was now a prison ship, also known as a hulk. Mayhew and Binny, both journalists and social reformers, had previously toured the prisons of London. They had inspected the solitary cells at Millbank, the exercise yards in Pentonville, and the female workrooms in Brixton. But the hulk system was unlike any other prison they had encountered.


“We Bought a Guillotine Neatly Done in Bone”: Illicit Industries on Board Prison Hulks, 1775–1815
Small Things in the Eighteenth Century,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2022).



Prisoner-made objects held immense monetary, national, and emotional value for their makers and consumers. In Britain and its colonies, partially dismantled wooden warships known as hulks were employed to ease prison overcrowding. Between 1775 and 1815, they housed both prisoners of war and convicts, often in neighboring ships. Although operating under different systems of administration, both types of prisoner crafted objects from whatever materials could be stolen, scavenged or bartered, and they concealed, smuggled, and hid them from authorities.



Interdisciplinary Walks: Investigating the benefits of walking for research
LIAS Working Paper, Vol 9 (2022)



This working paper discusses the Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies 'Interdisciplinary Walks' project, and reflects upon the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary research and the value of walking and thinking as viewed by academic researchers. Consultations with University of Leicester staff members recognised the importance of access to parks and green spaces, and identified four key walking behaviours: walking alone, together, to disconnect, and to focus. This paper argues that by understanding individual preferences, researchers can harness the potential of walking as a tool to improve mind, body, and research.



Royal Historical Society, Alexander Prize 2022



The Alexander Prize is awarded for an essay or article based on original historical research, by a doctoral candidate or those recently awarded their doctorate, published in a journal or an edited collection of essays.

My article, ‘”Allowed to Die?” Prison Hulks, Convict Corpses and the Enquiry of 1847’ — which appears in Cultural and Social History (May 2021) — was described as: Compelling and historically rigorous, challenging, shocking and deeply moving … offering a penetrating insight into how marginalised individuals were regarded in life and death.



Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship, Seal of Excellence, 2022



The MSCA Seal of Excellence is a quality label awarded to applicants for MSCA Individual Fellowships who scored 85% or higher in the assessment. The Seal of Excellence is a guarantee of the outstanding value of the research project, recognized by a comprehensive and thorough assessment process. Beneficiaries can use this award to obtain alternative funding for their research.

Proposal supported by University College Cork, Ireland and University of Lancaster, UK, National Museum of Bermuda.



Open Access Journal Article: ‘Allowed to die’? Prison Hulks, Convict Corpses and the Inquiry of 1847, Cultural and Social History, 18:2 (2021)



The 1847 Inquiry into General Treatment of Convicts in Hulks at Woolwich publicly exposed the prison hulk system as one that used, mistreated, and trafficked convict corpses. By focusing on the treatment of deceased convicts on board British prison hulks, this article enhances our understanding of how both the hulk system and anatomy inspectorate were administered in the years that followed the passing of the Anatomy Act.



Bermuda learning resource,
convict voyages



As an Affiliate Researcher on the ESRC-funded Carceral Archipelago Project (2015-18), I co-authored an online learning resource on Bermuda’s penal station with Professor Clare Anderson and Dr Kristy Warren. The guide is designed to speak to three different levels of educational progression. These are: Level 1 – Early Secondary (roughly ages 12-16) Level 2 - Upper Secondary (roughly ages 16-18) and Level 3 - Undergraduate.


Research trips



NELSON'S DOCKYARD, ANTIGUA



BETTY'S HOPE PLANTATION, ANTIGUA



BROOKLYN NAVY YARD, NEW YORK



PRISON SHIP MARTYRS MONUMENT, FORT GREENE PARK, BROOKLYN, N.Y.C.



THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, UK



NATIONAL MUSEUM OF BERMUDA



BERMUDA NATIONAL TRUST



PORT ARTHUR, TASMANIA



STATE LIBRARY OF NEW SOUTH WALES



NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA



NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH



PUBLIC ARCHIVES OF NOVA SCOTIA



LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA, OTTAWA



DEADMAN'S ISLAND, NOVA SCOTIA




BACK TO TOP