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 near his birthplace in Portsmouth on the 202nd anniversary of his birth; this was supported by the author's great-great grandsons, Ian and Gerald Dickens. Dickens was commemorated on the Series E £10 note issued by the Bank of England that circulated between 1992 and 2003. His portrait appeared on the reverse of the note accompanied by a scene from "The Pickwick Papers". The Charles Dickens School is a high school in Broadstairs, Kent. A theme park, Dickens World, standing in part on the site of the former naval dockyard where Dickens's father once worked in the Navy Pay Office, opened