Prison Battleship ⏰

You have given hundreds of desperate, violent men access to a ship’s infrastructure. The moment the first shell hits, the guards lose control. A battleship requires discipline to fire a main gun. A prison requires coercion . Those two things cannot coexist in a combat zone.

Even the Japanese Imperial Navy experimented with the concept. After the Battle of Tsushima (1905), the ageing pre-dreadnought Shikishima was temporarily converted into a detention hulk for Russian prisoners of war before they were sent to camps in Kyushu. It was a short-lived experiment, but it proved that the prison battleship was a global phenomenon. prison battleship