I've been waiting for this day for so long and it's finally here... Let's go to Alcatraz!!!!!!!
Woohoo....
I had to get up at 6 AM, though!
But I have to say it was worth it...
At 9:30 we boarded our boat and our adventure began!)
We arrived there and picked up some maps....
We went up to the main prison building and were given headphones for an audio tour.... This tour was offered in many languages, but for some reason, Russian wasn't among them...
All the cells are so tiny... I don't understand how anyone could stay there... Some didn't even have light...
Each prisoner sat in a separate cell, and the location of that cell depended on the severity of the crime! Some didn't even have beds..
There were 4 cell blocks in total. Cells in Block B & C (336 cells) were for the general population. The disobedient and particularly dangerous ones were placed in Block D (42 cells), which was also called the isolation ward! The blocks are separated by corridors that have their own names, like streets... I felt like one of the prisoners when I walked through those corridors... A large library (the prisoners read a lot, and they read literature that even many philosophers haven't read... A visiting room... We were told that one prisoner's wife came to visit and said, 'You don't have to come home, I told everyone you died!'
During the entire time Alcatraz existed as a prison, 36 prisoners tried to escape. In 1946, there was an escape attempt.... 2 prisoners and 3 police officers died. But no one managed to escape.... During the entire time the prison existed, only 3 managed to escape... And even then, no one knows if they managed to swim to shore, since the distance to San Francisco is quite significant, I must say.
Some say they saw them in the south of the country....
The most dangerous place was considered the dining hall... Because about 300 prisoners gathered in one place at one time, and everyone had sharp objects in their hands!!
There was heavy security on the island. Officers worked in 3 shifts of 8 hours. There were 90 people in one shift! Can you imagine that!? Many officers lived on the island with their families, and only a few lived in SF.
The average number of prisoners was 260... Max 320. A total of 1,576 prisoners served time there. The most famous of them were Al Capone & Robert "The Birdman" Stroud....
8 prisoners were killed by other prisoners, 5 committed suicide, and 15 died of natural causes due to various illnesses! Their bodies were sent to their families.
The last prisoners left Alcatraz on March 21, 1963.
