The prisoners in the dock stood with heads downcast, fearing the worst as the judge, sitting at the Lent Assizes of 1823 in Winchester, prepared to hand down the dreaded sentence of the court.

William Barnett, guilty of forging a cheque for £2 10s (£2.50). Sentence: Transportation for Life.

William Blandford, guilt of stealing a bay horse. Sentence: Transportation for Life.

James Godden, guilty of maliciously setting fire to hay ricks. Sentence: Transportation for Life.

Charles Breaker and Daniel, guilty of stealing a quantity of wearing apparel. Sentence: Transportation for Life.

Peter Coombs, guilty of stealing five sheep. Sentence: Transportation for 14 years.

And so the list of convicts, each receiving the harsh, unforgiving sentence of transportation to the penal colonies on the other side of the world, continues, reading like a litany of despair.

Within the tightly packed columns of small print published in The Southampton Herald and Isle of Wight Gazette, an early forerunner of the Daily Echo, the fate of these men warranted only the briefest of mentions in the newspaper.

A major Internet website, www.ancestry.co.uk, has, for the first time, brought together online the historic Convict Transportation Registers of 1788 to 1868.

Regional data taken from these archives shows a total of 2,040 convicts, some as young as 15, from in and around Winchester and Southampton, felt the full weight of the penal code of the British Empire.

It is estimated that only two per cent of the convicts who were transported to Australia had committed serious crimes such as murder or rape while the vast majority destined to live out their years in penal servitude had been found guilty of crimes that today would be considered almost laughable but for the severity of the sentences.

Records show a woman was deported for stealing five handkerchiefs, another female was ordered to be transported for the theft of three pairs of stockings while a man who had illegally taken a calf was also consigned to the eight month long voyage by convict ship to Australia.

Deportation was nothing new as earlier in the 1770s Winchester Assizes judges regular committed prisoners to be shipped out to "His Majesty's Colonies and Plantations'' in America.

The start of the American War of Independence signalled the end of transportation across the Atlantic but if law-breakers thought the court sentences were to be any more lenient, they were badly mistaken.

Hampshire history books show that in the nine years between 1771 and 1780, transportation was replaced by up to 15 years' hard labour together with the prisoner being "branded, or burnt in the hand; or to be publicly whipped".

The branding took place immediately after sentence, and the irons were heated in a fire which was close by the court.

With founding of settlements in Australia, the passing of the Transportation Act of 1784 resulted in thousands upon thousands of convicted felons being sentenced to deportation in the most terrible of conditions.

Initially, on this new run, a dead convict was more profitable than a live one since the shipping contractor received £17. 7s 6d (£17.37p) either way.

Disease often swept through the cramped decks where the convicts were chained-up and sometimes behind bars, only rarely being allowed out on the open deck.

The first fleet in 1787 was made up of six convict ships, carrying 584 men and 192 women, three supply vessels and three warships.

In the years that followed, the death rate among the convicts during the long voyage to the southern hemisphere reached alarming levels. On one occasion 267 prisoners died at sea and another 150 succumbed soon after arrival in Australia.

Altogether, between 1787 and 1868 a total of 852 shiploads of prisoners were sent to Australia and 160,023 male and female convicts were landed.

An unusual postscript to this dark period in the British justice system took place in Southampton during August, 1896 when the docks played host to a visit by the former convict ship, Success, which was at the time open for the public to tour the decks.

The visit by Success was recalled when workmen repairing a quay at Southampton's Outer Dock in 1948 found inside a hollow bollard a handful of circulars advertising the arrival of the vessel which was then described, rather enthusiastically, as "the world's most remarkable vessel.'' It seems the Hampshire Independent newspaper sent one of its journalists to the docks to take a tour of the old convict ship.

"At a time when the great Australian ocean liners are the finest on the sea it comes as a curious contrast that an antiquated convict ship should visit Southampton as a curiosity,'' reported the newspaper.

"She is 106 years old, and her heavy and artistic carvings are covered with a plentiful covering of barnacles since her long submersion in Botany Bay, from which she was raised.'' The ship was an old East Indiaman, originally teak built, high bulwarked and particularly bluff at the bow. Her timbers were said to be 2ft 6in thick at the bilge, and although she had not been under canvas for more than 40 years she sailed successfully from Adelaide to Southampton without assistance from tugs or any other vessels.

The Hampshire Independent went on: "A visit to this vessel gives a better idea of the conditions of the unfortunate prisoners in those days than all the books ever written on the subject.

"The effect on board this old-time prison is now made more realistic by the introduction of high-class wax models representing convicts in every attitude behind their bars, while uniformed warders with their flint lock rifles parade the different decks.

"An interesting museum of disciplinary contrivances and leg-irons, punishment balls and bands, several cat-of-nine-tails from different early Australian convict settlements, and a valuable historical collection of state documents proclaiming prisoners to have gained free pardons or tickets-to-leave, are also exhibited."