In 2023 the Bibby Stockholm was moored in Portland, Dorset, as part of a government plan to house 500 asylum seekers aboard something akin to a prison hulk (Police separate rival protesters as asylum barge arrives in Portland, 18 July).
A hundred years ago, the British government purchased SS Argenta on the grounds that detaining Irish republicans on what became dubbed a “floating gulag” was less costly than what a cabinet minister termed “the luxury of internment camps”. In February 1923, the ship was moored in Belfast Lough, where 700 men were interned without trial in iron cages, until the last of them were transferred to Belfast jail in January 1924.
