Deadman's Island

Deadman’s Island lies in the wide estuary where the River Medway meets The Swale in Kent. A low, muddy rise only about 1 200 metres long and 200 metres wide, it sits among shifting sandbanks south of the mainland marshes. A narrow creek called Shepherd’s Creek separates it from Chetney Marshes, while the town of Queenborough lies a little over a kilometre to the east. Several narrow tidal channels cut across the island, turning it into several smaller islets when the tide rises. At low tide the whole flat surface appears, a maze of wet mud and shallow pools. The island is owned by Natural England and leased to two keepers, yet it has no houses or roads. It is protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest because it shelters nesting and breeding birds on its marshy edges. In 2016 more than two hundred human remains were uncovered on the surface. They are thought to belong to men and boys who died of disease aboard prison hulks anchored nearby in the 19th century. Buried under almost two metres of mud, the graves have been exposed by coastal erosion and rising sea levels at low tide. Visitors find a stark, open landscape of grey mud and shallow water channels. Wooden posts stand across the island, put there to mark the boundary and slow further erosion rather than to mark graves. The air carries the scent of salt and wet earth, and seabirds wheel overhead. From the island the wide Medway stretches northwards while The Swale flows east, a shifting scene of water and sky.