John Mitchel - Deportation and The Jail Journal

Deportation and The Jail Journal

He was transported to Ireland Island, Bermuda, where the Royal Navy was notoriously using convict labour to carve out a dockyard and naval base. Bermuda had long been used as a penal colony. In the 17th century, numerous Irish Prisoners-of-War (POW) and civilians were sent to Bermuda and sold into servitude following Cromwell's invasion of Ireland. (Bermuda would be used as late as the Second Boer War as a place to which Boer POWs were removed). In the 19th century, owing to a lack of manual labourers in Bermuda, the Royal Navy had begun using convicts from British and Irish prisons to build its dockyard. These men were housed in prison hulks, where many succumbed to disease, particularly yellow fever. Convicts were treated harshly, and worked hard. Conditions were severe enough to lead to prison revolts, and the executions of rioters. Surviving his time in Bermuda, Mitchel was then sent to the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania, Australia). It was during this journey he wrote his Jail Journal, in which he repudiated British policy in Ireland and advocated a more radical brand of nationalism.