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 Jr. Handbook". The book was then updated and reprinted every year until the author's death, from 1880 to the final 1896 edition. His dictionaries had been picked up in 1882 by Macmillan & Co. who printed them until 1889, after which it was again published by Dickens and Evans through J. Smith. Charles Dickens Jr. Charles Culliford Boz Dickens (6 January 1837 – 20 July 1896) was the first child of the English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine. A failed businessman, he became the editor of his father's magazine "All the Year Round", and a successful writer of dictionaries.