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.
My great-uncle Joseph Keown was one of 98 from County Down imprisoned on the Argenta. The flyleaf of his Catholic school hymn book is inscribed “Cage P3 SS Argenta” and dated 8 August 1923. On the back-board of the hymnal there is a pen sketch of the iron-studded door of Cage P3.
He was never charged or found guilty of any crime; indeed, he must have been discharged, as the endpaper of the book details his address in November 1923 as Mill Hill, Castlewellan, County Down.
The Argenta’s role is now widely regarded as a stain on the British judicial system. How will the Bibby Stockholm be regarded in 100 years’ time?
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire
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