‘Raising Sand,Soil and Gravel’ Pardon Refusers On-Board Prison Hulks (1776–1815)

For a short period of time at the end of the eighteenth-century and the beginning of the nineteenth-century a small number of convicted felons refused the offer of a royal pardon. Drawing heavily on evidence from The National Archives this article considers the possible and actual fate of fifty convicted felons on-board prison hulks at the turn of the nineteenth-century who declined the offer of pardons on condition of serving in the army abroad. Who were these convicts and why did they refuse the offer of a pardon? What were the choices they faced and how successful a strategy was refusal in terms of survival, freedom and a return to friends and family? This article bridges the gap in literature that exists between work on discretion (King, Gatrell, Hay et al.); prison hulks (Branch-Johnson and Campbell) and transportation (Bateson, Hughes, Morgan and Rushton) while challenging and developing the understanding of the motivations of the pardon refuser, set out by Devereaux and MacKay, but within the context of the forgotten prison hulks.