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. letter' caused embarrassment for their uncle, London barrister Henry Fielding Dickens, while the daughters of another uncle, Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens, gave an interview to a newspaper in Australia, where they'd been raised, to make clear that they were not seeking any part of the funds. According to Dickens biographer Claire Tomalin, Charles Walter, only son of Dickens, had already been 'disowned' by the family for marrying Ella Dare, a barmaid. Sydney Margaret went on to marry architect Thomas Bostock Whinney, while Ethel died, in 1936, of an overdose of phenobarbital after being found unconscious in her flat in Chelsea,