Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center
The Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center was an 800-bed jail barge used to hold inmates for the New York City Department of Corrections. The barge was anchored off the Bronx's southern shore, across from Rikers Island, near Hunts Point. It was built for $161 million at Avondale Shipyard in Louisiana, along the Mississippi River near New Orleans, and brought to New York in 1992 to reduce overcrowding in the island's land-bound buildings for a lower price. Nicknamed "The Boat" by prison staff and inmates, it was designed to handle inmates from medium- to maximum-security in 16 dormitories and 100 cells.
The jail barge seen from the East River
Vernon C. Bain barge as seen from kayaks on the East River.
Parking lot and main entrance to the center in Hunts Point, Bronx
Aerial photo of Rikers Island, seen from the North. Bain Correctional Center is seen in the bottom left corner as the docked blue and white ship.
A prison ship, often more accurately described as a prison hulk, is a current or former seagoing vessel that has been modified to become a place of substantive detention for convicts, prisoners of war or civilian internees. While many nations have deployed prison ships over time, the practice was most widespread in 18th- and 19th-century Britain, as the government sought to address the issues of overcrowded civilian jails on land and an influx of enemy detainees from the War of Jenkins' Ear, the Seven Years' War and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
The beached convict ship HMS Discovery at Deptford. Launched as a 10-gun sloop at Rotherhithe in 1789, the ship served as a convict hulk from 1818 until scrapped in February 1834.
Prison ship Success at Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
1848 Woodcut of the Royal Naval Dockyard, Ireland Island, Bermuda, showing four prison hulks
Interior of the British prison ship Jersey