Portland, when thus fairly launched, became the starting point for the new arrangements. Other prisons were needed, and they must be built like Portland. But time pressed, and anything actually available at the moment was eagerly pressed into the service. Down at Dartmoor, on the high lands above Tavistock, was a huge building which had been empty for five-and-thirty years. Its last occupants had been the French and American prisoners of war, who were confined there until the peace of 1814. Ten thousand, some said twelve thousand, had been accommodated within the walls--surely there must be room there for several hundred convicts? Colonel Jebb, hearing that Captain Groves, from Millbank, was staying at Plymouth, begged him to run over to inspect Dartmoor. The place was like a howling wilderness; the buildings in places were without roofs; the walls were full of holes, if not in ruins. But a few repairs would soon make the place habitable, said Captain Groves, and accordingly a gang of convicts, under Mr. Morrish, was sent down to begin operations. In a short time Dartmoor prison was opened. Then other receptacles were prepared. The hulks had been pressed into the service, and were employed at the various dockyards to house the convicts, but only as a temporary measure, until proper buildings on the new plan could be erected. There were ships at Woolwich, and others at Portsmouth. At the first station the old _Warrior_, and the _Defence_, took the able-bodied, while the _Unité_ served as a hospital; at Portsmouth there were the _York_, _Briton_ and _Stirling Castle_, until 1852, when the new convict prison was occupied. Soon after this, contracts were entered into for the erection of a large prison at Chatham, which was completed in 1858, and to which all those at the Woolwich hulks were in course of time transferred. The intention at both these stations was to devote a goodly portion of the convict labour to further the dockyard extensions. At Chatham the object in view was to construct, high up the tortuous Medway, a chain of artificial basins capable of containing a fleet. Hither beaten ships might retire to refit; while new ironclads, built in the dock close by, might issue thence to retrieve disaster. From the first the work was of an arduous character. The battle was against the tide and the treacherous mud. But all of St. Mary's Island has been reclaimed, and marsh has given place to solid ground. At Portsmouth a feat has been accomplished, not exactly similar, but wonderful also in its way.