Life conditions in prison hulks is also discussed in preliminary chapter of "Fatal Shore", Hughes, leading to the solution of deportation to Australia.

Another point of view is prodived by Garnier in his Memoirs "Un corsaire au bagne". Once a prisoner on prison hulk, he asserts that deeply sick or dying men were sent back to France as freed or exchanged prisoner, to downsize the mortality rate (and probably to limit risk of epidemy).