Credits: Social Media
Chilling mass burial ground on Deadman’s Island is slowly revealing itself
Welcome to Deadmans Island, home to what is colloquially named Coffin Bay, and, depending on the season, breeding birds. Completely out of bounds to the public and described by one YouTuber, who appears to have ignored the ban and overnighted on the island this summer, as the worlds most infected island, the Southeast English islet is host to numerous corpses the interred population of yesteryear, killed to death by diarrhea and dehydration. Oo-er.
Since the early 19th century, coastal erosion and rising sea levels have slowly been eating away at the island. As a result, wooden coffins and skeletal remains are emerging from the mud and quicksand. No archaeological surveys of the area have been made public, suggesting that it has failed to attract the attention of the academy at large. Alternatively, there are secrets worth keeping…
Where is Deadmans Island and why are there so many coffins?
First, the word island is something of a misnomer. The chunk of land were referring to as Deadmans Island is more like an extension of the mainland, but overrun by ripples of water channels.
Its in Southeast England, about 40 miles from London. From the British capital, the Thames flows eastwards into the North Sea. The nearby River Medway runs alongside the Thames, to its south, past Chatham in Kent, and contains several small islands. The Swale is a tidal channel that meets the estuaries of the Thames and Medway and separates the substantial Isle of Sheppey from the rest of mainland Kent.
Sandwiched between the Swale (to the east) and the Medway (to the west) is a stretch of marshes and interlocking waterways. Medway Estuary and Marshes is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest, home to rare oak-leaved goosefoot (that’s a plant) and black-tailed godwits (they’re birds).
One particular area of the marshy wetlands is also known as Deadmans Island. Its an uninhabited mudbank owned by Natural England. All over it, there are the remains of men and boys who died of contagious diseases like cholera on board floating prisons called “prison hulks”.
The prisons were moored off the Isle of Sheppey more than 200 years ago. Whenever disease broke out, those manning the ships would exile the ill, and move the bodies of the dead, to Deadmans Island to contain the outbreak. They were buried in wooden coffins in shallow graves.
Overnight on the worlds most infected island
YouTuber Dara Tah recently uploaded a video in which he claims to have spent a night on Deadmans Island, which he affectionately dubs the worlds most infected island.
His claim that the island is infected is rooted in the fact that the people who died there died of infectious diseases �not that it is actively infectious to humans.
People are forbidden from visiting the island, but this is because it is a protected nature reserve and breeding zone for several species of birds, not because visiting carries any risk of catching an infectious disease.
Dara Tah claims in the videos caption that the island is home to possibly thousands of skeletons infected with the Black Plague, which is likely untrue.�
In 2017, the BBC spoke to naval historian Eric Groves for a TV investigation into the island. In a video posted on the BBCs website, he attributes the bodies to prison ships like Retribution, whose populations suffered a cholera epidemic in the 1830s. The most famous bubonic plague epidemic, the Black Death, ravaged populations in Asia, Europe, and Africa in the mid-1300s. Another plague struck London in the 1660s.�In other words, the people whose bodies are scattered over the “island” probably didn’t die of the bubonic (aka “black”) plague.
However, Dara does appear to find several coffins, numerous human bones, and a few glass bottles. In a moment that almost achieves dramatic tension, his Wellington boot gets momentarily stuck in the mud. Together, he says his cache serves as physical proof that our time is limited”.
