A few miles south of Sheerness, where the Medway pours out into the North Sea, Chetney Marshes is an eerily beautiful place. This misty landscape of boggy grassland, ponds, pools, and tidal flats may well be unforgiving for human visitors, but for wildlife, it's prime real estate.
All through the year, large numbers of waders and seabirds make either temporary homes as migrants or permanent residences here. Most striking of these feathered occupants are the Pied Avocets, strange-looking waders with upturned beaks. These birds vanished from our shores in the 19th century before making a slow and steady comeback, as the population gradually built from the 1940s.
Time seems to stand still in this marshy environment. Anything unfortunate to wind up here begins to blend in with the landscape of greys and greens, as moisture, salt, and silt all take their toll. Amongst the channels and footpaths are the slowly rotting hulks of boats long abandoned in a place just the wrong side of habitation called Bedlam's Bottom.
Opinions of how and why these boats got here and what they were for are split. Maps will tell you they are Prisoner Transport Ships. As if to back up this claim, cast your eyes northwards on a map and you'll find the evocatively named 'Dead Man's Island'.
This rather gruesomely named island would have been the last resting place for those who died on prison boats or isolation barges. Their bodies were taken ashore and buried in shallow graves in the marsh. Conditions on these boats would have been truly terrible, with overcrowding and dysentery the norm; thankfully, their use was eventually outlawed.
But it's unlikely the boats at Bedlam's Bottom were these. If not those kinds of prison ships, some evidence suggests that these boats were used to transport prisoners to the colonies. All throughout the marshes, there are abandoned boats; as they reached the end of their lives, vessels were dumped here, including German U-boats from the First World War. Some were dragged here as this is out of the way of human view; others were deliberately placed to secure the banks from erosion.
Although it is possible the Bedlam's Bottom boats were for prisoners, it is more likely that they were marked on the maps as Prisoner Transport Ships in error. Given their size and shape, what is more likely is that these were transport barges used to move construction materials up and down the waterways through Kent and perhaps into London.
There is no real parking close to the boat hulks, so it is best to approach them along the Saxon Shore Way long-distance footpath. If travelling by public transport, walk north, under the Kingsferry Bridge, from Wale Station. You have more options if you drive, parking in Upchurch, Iwade, or Lower Halstow, and again follow the Saxon Shore Way.
Top image: The wrecks of three barges in Shepherds Creek, Chetney Marshes, Kent, 2024. Creator: Damian Grady. (Photo by Historic England Archive/Heritage Images via Getty Images)
