Lost at sea: internment on the Argenta prison ship 1922-5

This microhistory reveals the experience of a 22-year-old Fermanagh man, Henry McCauley, who was interned on the British Prison Ship, the Argenta, which was moored on Belfast Lough (1922-1925). The Argenta was a decommissioned WWI vessel that was repurposed by the British government to detain (without trial) those suspected of opposing the 1921 Partition of Ireland. There was little ventilation on board and, in the damp and cold, internees ate their measly food provisions on the floor, near to overflowing toilets. The following analysis details the circumstances of Henry’s disappearance from his parents’ farm in Fermanagh, shortly after the Partition. I briefly outline the wider political context of his arrest, before theorising the bureaucratic processes that accompanied the compilation and editing of prisoner lists by the British forces. Finally, I turn to explore the inhumane conditions Henry suffered on board the ship, prior to his release in 1924. Exactly one hundred years after his incarceration, the experience of the Argenta internees is a timely reminder of the cruelty of detainment ships. In light of the UK government’s recent decision to detain asylum seekers on ships anchored off the coast of England while their cases are ‘processed’, this paper recalls a forgotten part of Belfast’s ship history as a warning from the past.