Hulk (ship type)

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For the early European coastal craft, see Hulk (medieval ship type).
Not to be confused with scow or barge.
A hulk moored in Toulon harbour.



More recently, ships have been hulked when they become obsolete or when they become uneconomical to operate.

Sheer hulk[edit]

Sheer hulk at Sheerness Dockyard positioned to make a lift

A sheer hulk (or shear hulk) was used in shipbuilding and repair as a floating crane in the days of sailing ships, primarily to place the lower masts of a ship under construction or repair. Booms known as sheers were attached to the base of a hulk's lower masts or beam, supported from the top of those masts. Blocks & tackle were then used in such tasks as placing or removing the lower masts of vessel under construction or repair.

These lower masts were the largest and most massive single timbers aboard a ship, and erecting them without the assistance of either a sheer hulk or land-based masting sheer was extremely difficult.

Accommodation hulk[edit]

Main article: Barracks ship
French ship Mars, barracks for marines


Receiving hulk[edit]


A receiving ship is a ship that is used in harbor to house newly recruited sailors before they are assigned to a ship's crew.[1]



Receiving ships often served as floating hospitals as many were assigned in locations without shore-based station hospitals. Often the afloat surgeon would take up station on the receiving ship.[citation needed]

Prison hulk[edit]

Main article: Prison ship


Powder hulk[edit]


Salvage pontoon[edit]



Floating storage and offloading units[edit]


Coal hulks[edit]

Service as a coal hulk was usually, but not always, a ship's last.





Other services[edit]

Her front line days over, HMS Temeraire served as a prison hulk, receiving ship, victualing depot, and finally a guard ship before being paid off and sold to the breakers.

A vessel's hulking may not be its final use. Scuttling as a blockship, breakwater, artificial reef, or recreational dive site may await. Some are repurposed, for example as a gambling ship; others are restored and put to new uses, such as a museum ship. Some even return revitalized to sea.


One vessel rescued from this ignominious end was the barque Polly Woodside, now a museum ship in Melbourne, Australia. Another is the James Craig, rescued from Recherche Bay in Tasmania, now restored and regularly sailing from Sydney, Australia.

See also[edit]


  3. ^ Brown, Henry Collins (1919). "The Clipper Ships of Old New York". Valentine's Manual of Old New York (New York: Valentine's Manual) 3: 94–95. Retrieved May 2, 2010. 
  4. ^ Information on the wreck "Johanna Smith" Check |url= scheme (help). California Wreck Divers. Retrieved 2010-02-27.