Prison ship ships at sea, claiming legal authority to do so. In 2009 the US Navy converted the main deck aboard the supply ship into a brig to hold pirates captured off the coast of Somalia until they could be transferred to Kenya for prosecution. The brig was capable of holding up to twenty-six prisoners and was operated by a detachment of Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. Charles Dickens' novel "Great Expectations" opens in 1812 with the escape of the convict Abel Magwitch from a hulk moored in the Thames Estuary. In fact, the prison ships were largely moored off
Charles Dickens single day. His favourite actor was Charles Mathews, and Dickens learnt his "monopolylogues", (farces in which Mathews played every character), by heart. Then, having learned Gurney's system of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter. A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors' Commons, and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years. This education was to inform works such as "Nicholas Nickleby", "Dombey and Son", and especially "Bleak House"—whose vivid portrayal of the machinations and bureaucracy of the legal system did much