This poem is about deportation during the latter part of the
eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century
some readers can also relate modern times with boat people.
Out there is a great big world, in past and present I hope
they found peace with the land they made their home.
Crammed in like cattle on a diet of biscuits and water.
Straight out of Newgate, like lambs being led to slaughter.
Sentenced to deportation for stealing a loaf of bread, but
truthfully they would have been better off dead.
If the sea did not get them then the journey would, the reason
they stole was for their livelihood.
Sea sickness, fever and on rolled the waves in a great wide ocean
and to some it became their graves.
Not one of them knowing what the journey would unfold.
Now a child convict and they had to do what they were told.
This a journey that took months if not a year and in all that time living in
constant fear.
A fear of being birched and left with marks, then at the end of it all was
the question of sharks.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, just constantly sick as the ship rolled from
side to side.Waves so high almost touching the sky, then what came next
just do or die.
The Mother Land seemed so far way but in their hearts they knew they would
return someday.
A far distant shore and a convict branded but that never bothered the few that
had landed. A strange land, a baron land and no one there to lend a hand.
They done the crime so they had to do their time, from six in the morning until
way past nine
Treated like slaves on a far distant shore, I am sure God forgave them for breaking
the law.
