Abandoned 'Deadman's Island' littered with human remains and coffins

Daily Mirror

07-05-2025

Deadman's Island in Kent served as a burial ground for convicts who died on 'prison ships' in the 18th and 19th centuries, and is now known for its haunting shoreline littered with human remains
One of the rare individuals to visit an abandoned island in Kent in the past two centuries has admitted the sights she witnessed will be forever etched into her memory.
Deadman's Island, resting off the north Kent coast just 40 miles from London, harbours a haunting history as the former burial site for prisoners who met their end to disease aboard 'prison ships' over 200 years ago.
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Lying where The Swale meets the River Medway and facing Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey, public access to the island is forbidden to safeguard the habitat of breeding and nesting bird species.
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The eerie remnants of Deadman's Island's past denizens are now marked by bones and decaying wooden coffins protruding from the eroded earth. Owned by Natural England and currently leased out, the BBC outlines how Deadman's Island is recognised as both a Site of Special Scientific Interest and by the international Ramsar convention.
In a special 2017 segment, BBC's Inside Out was granted exclusive entry. Presenter Natalie Graham described her visit with haunting words: "What I saw there will stay with me forever. This is a really strange sight. I would imagine there can't be anywhere on earth like this," reports Kent Live.
Meanwhile, director Sam Supple likened the setting to film: "It is like being on the set of a horror film. It looks so surreal, it's like an art department has designed it. There are open coffins and bones everywhere."
Deadman's Island, now chillingly referred to as "Coffin Bay", presents a grim shoreline spectacle with human remains and open casket fragments scattered about.
The island has spawned eerie local folklore - stories of spectral hounds with eyes like blood feasting on skulls, an oppressive aura enveloping the place, and whispers of "an island solely occupied by the dead". A BBC documentary captures locals sharing tales of "monsters that fed on the brains of people it caught" and a Queenborough resident who insists she hears a strange "howl" from the island at night.
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Yet, Deadman's Island's true history is one of sorrow. In the 1700s and 1800s, 'prison hulks', floating jails, held inmates. The forebodingly named Retribution was one such ship.
These captives, some mere children convicted for petty crimes like pickpocketing, were bound for Australia. But those too sick for the journey ended their days aboard these vessels near the Isle of Sheppey, dying in horrific conditions below deck.
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Diseases rampaged through the crowded prison ships, resulting in a harrowing mortality rate. The esteemed naval historian Professor Eric Grove revealed to a BBC documentary: "A lot of crimes carried the death penalty, but as a way of being humane and also to inhabit the colonies, it was decided it would be good to transport convicts. But you tended to find that if people were not considered healthy enough to take the voyage to Australia, they would be left in the hulks."
He explained further: "The major problem really was you had a lot of men together, or a lot of boys together, and therefore if an epidemic began to occur, then it would spread and this was particularly important in the early 1830s, when Retribution was here, because there was the cholera epidemic."
The hapless victims who perished were buried anonymously on Deadman's Island, in a bid to curb the spread of disease and protect the local community. These now-exposed resting places are visible at low tide, yet there's no knowledge of who these prisoners were.
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Specialists face quandaries when considering the reburial of these remains due to the relentless changing tides which threaten the preservation of the bones and drag them out to sea. In a related turn of events, more human remains have been discovered in Chatham.
These remains are from French prisoners held captive during the Napoleonic Wars. After dying from various diseases, they found their final resting place in the neighbouring swamps.
However, as the coastline eroded, their graves were exposed, prompting exhumation and reburial on St Mary's Island. The remains were later moved again during redevelopment, to St George's Church in Chatham Maritime.
Mr Supple noted: "There are memorials to other prisoners who died aboard hulks, such as one in Chatham, Kent, but these men have nothing."