Hulks

HULKS are today thought of in popular culture as large, green, angry people. The Incredible Hulk, famously conceptualised by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1962 for Marvel Comics, took its name from The Heap, an earlier swamp or ‘muck-monster’ which itself first appeared in an Airboy comic from 1942. The ‘true’ etymology of this word hulk has, therefore, little relation with being green – whether through radiation or swamp-based life – but much, in fact, to do with being large, unwieldy and, as we will see, if not angry, then angering.

The origin of the noun ‘hulk’ can be drawn via a number of speculative sources; an early example emerging from the Ancient Greek ὁλκάς (holkás), meaning a cargo ship, or any ship used for trading. Through this sense we see a diffusion of terms spread within Western European languages: holcho (transport ship, barge) in Old High German, hulke in Old Dutch, holk or hylke (wooden barrel) in dialectal Norwegian and hulc (light, fast ship) in Old English. A secondary sense is developed as a variation of the Middle English word holk meaning to dig up, excavate or hollow out (leading to a hulk as the resulting hole); and a third, perhaps cognate between these, from the Old English hulc, meaning a hut or hovel. This last sense can be read (as hulce) in the Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, prepared around the turn of the first millennium by Ælfric of Eynsham:

"… cwæđ đæt he wolde genealæcan his hulce gif he mihte." "… [the leper] said that he wished to reach his hut, if he could"

However, it is the initial sense of a hulc as a fast, light ship which, in Middle English swells into hulke, meaning a large ship of burden, that becomes most prevalent over the course of the 2nd millennium. As evidence of this growing size we can read how – far from its humble C11th Latin translation as liburna (meaning a kind of light boat) – in 1480, william caxton, in his Cronycles of Englond writes:

"And than the kyng heryng of many eemyes vpon the see, that is to say, grete hulkes, galeyes and shippes, that weren come to destroye his nauye…"

And, following this, a century later – in 1589 – richard hakluyt, in his Principall Navigations... of the English Nation:

"Two Hulkes of Dantzick, the one..a shippe of 400. tunnes."

These hulks appear then to grow five-fold over the course of the next century. In 1670 guillaume girard writes in his History of... the Duke of Espernon:

"One might..have call'd these prodigious Hulks (which were each of them of two thousand Tun) floating Cities, rather than Ships."

Expanding not only in size, but also in uses, during the C17th we see figurative senses of hulk develop, transferring the now bulky & unwieldy characteristics of a ‘floating city’ onto other objects and, indeed, people. In 1660, through the posthumous writing of bishop, satirist and moralist joseph hall, we can see how:

"…the hulck of a tall Brabanter, behinde whom I stood in a corner of the Street shadowed me from notice."

Similarly, during this period, alongside these vague metaphoric uses, we also see more specific nautical terms arise. For example, in the early 1630’s we can read of reference to the hulke of a ship (rather than a hulk as a ship), which means to specify the vessel’s hull; and, in a more common framing, the body of a dismantled ship – it’s husk perhaps – as its hulk. For example, sir francis drake’s galleon – which was moored as a kind of public exhibition for around 70 years – became a common sight for Londoners such as charles cotton, who in 1681 wrote:

"Of which a noble Monument we find, His Royal Chariot left, it seems, behind; Whose wheels and body moor'd up with a Chain, Like Drake's old Hulk at Deptford, still remain."

Such hulks, moor’d on the Thames and elsewhere, were used not only as monuments however, but also store-vessels, and, eventually, prisons. Along with the expansion of the British Empire throughout the C18th came the development of penal colonies and the common practice of deportation as a form of punishment. Hulks were therefore used as waiting areas for convicts before deportation to the Americas.

In 1776 however, as the American Revolution made transportation of prisoners to the colonies and plantations impossible, parliament passed the Criminal Law Act (known colloquially as the Hulks Act) which formalised such defunct ships as semi-permanent prison houses. Back to their Old English roots, the hulks became hovels once again, home to a swelling criminal population, and, despite much contestation (and such legislation being introduced on a temporary basis), were in use for 80 years after the passing of the bill. Reflecting on this period in 1887, a columnist at the Times writes:

"Prison life..was very unlike what it now is; ..the hulks were sinks of iniquity."

Indeed, both tales and realities of death, disease and despair plagued the hulks and their inhabitants – convicts who were forced into dredging the Thames during the day and shackled among rats at night.

These prisoners were considered ‘civilly dead’ – having often been sentenced to death – and were described by then-home-secretary robert peel as having “no legal rights whatever”. Today, one hears echoes of this period in the words of our present home secretary suella braverman, who in 2023 spoke of asylum seekers and migrants entering the country via ‘illegal’ crossings as possessing “heightened levels of criminality”. It follows then that she would be the one to oversee the reintroduction of disused cruise-ships, barges, and other hulks as offshore detention centres.

When faced with such Dickensian policies, where better to look for petitions than the accounts of C19th convicts? James Hardy Vaux, a prisoner aboard the Retribution in 1810 wrote of the guards who maintained these conditions as:

"…wretches devoid of feeling; ignorant in the extreme, brutal by nature, and rendered tyrannical and cruel by the consciousness of the power they posses."

One might say the same for our ministers.

---

This article was written for a monthly column – The Remainder – in the Sticky Fingers monthly mailout