Tales of the Riverbank – Tiny Buttons

                                                 Thames Police Button

When I took over the role of administering the Thames Police Museum at Wapping some 23 years ago, one of my first communications was with Chriss Addams and Mike Davis, two marine archaeologists who had been granted the rights to explore and excavate the wreck site of the British Prison Ship DROMEDARY which lay in the waters of the old Naval Dockyard, Ireland Island, Bermuda.

At that time I was aware that Britain had offloaded many of it’s unwanted convicts to locations such as Botany Bay and Tasmania, but I was unaware that Britain also shipped prisoners to work pretty much as slave labour in Bermuda to build the new naval dockyard.

DROMEDARY (Formerly HMS HOWE) had been converted firstly into a store ship (presumably that explains why it was renamed after a beast of burden?) and then it became a ship for transporting convicts to Australia and New Zealand. In 1826, following a refit at Woolwich, it set sail again with 100 convicts on board bound for Bermuda.

On arrival in Bermuda it seems that the vessel became home for some 400 prisoners while they worked out their hard labour on the island.

It appears that in 1830 DROMEDARY left Bermuda for some time before finally returning to the island and it then became a permanently moored fixture in the dockyard.

By 1851 permanent barracks had finally been constructed and DROMEDARY then became a kitchen for prisoners and guards alike….It remained in that use until 1864 when it was sold to be broken up….And there the remains of the vessel stayed becoming increasingly more derelict over the decades until in 1989 the Bermuda Government gave permission for the site of the DROMEDARY wreck to become the subject of a marine archaeological excavation…..And that’s where Chris and Mike enter the story.

My knowledge of marine archaeology was limited to what I’d seen on TV….I was aware that the main tool used in the underwater ‘digging’ was a suction device that would recover whatever was left buried under the years of accumulated muck, sand and silt…..What the archaeologists uncovered was a treasure trove of social history.

Hand made objects that would reveal the true story of a prisoners life on Bermuda during the early to mid nineteenth century…..Many of these fascinating and often poignant finds together with the full story can be viewed online on the their web page

http://www.bermudahulks.com/

All very interesting, you may be saying….But why were Chris and Mike contacting me at Wapping?….It seems that one tiny button that was sucked up during the excavation was marked Thames Police. Chris and Mike’s questions were very simple.1) “Is this button in this photo, a uniform button that would have been part of a Thames Police Uniform?”

My answer was “Yes, your button is identical with another button that was discovered on the foreshore at Wapping by one of my predecessors in the museum, Joz Joslin in 1967. The button will probably date from between 1800 to 1839 when the Thames Police became Thames Division of the Metropolitan Police”.

Question 2) was rather more difficult to answer “How might this button have found it’s way onto a prison hulk in Bermuda”?

I’m afraid that question 2 defeated even my inventive imagination….Perhaps an early Thames officer was persuaded to leave the cold climes of Wapping in favour of the warmth of Bermuda and he took his old tunic with him?…..Perhaps some Thames officers may have gone aboard the convict ship when it sailed in 1826 and lost the button in a struggle?….Who knows what the real truth of the matter was?……What was now certain is that “OUR” Thames Police button in the museum now had a “Double” on Bermuda.

Some years later, when I started to visit Australia to see my family in Sydney, I happened by chance to come across an exhibition of articles found on the wreck site of DROMEDARY and there was the“Other” button, proudly on display……And there the story might have ended…..Except that in June this year, during lock down, I was contacted by the Met. Police Heritage Dept who had received an enquiry from a man who had found some buttons during his Mudlarking expeditions near Wapping….And one of those buttons was marked Thames Police…..So, now we know that our ‘Twins’ are at least ‘Triplets’ and how many more Thames Police buttons are out there, just waiting to be discovered?