This is an incomplete epic poem. I'd love to know how I did with what I've written. Maybe someday I'll pick it up ... I looove stories about going to sea. :)
I.
My name is James McHaggarty,
Son of Daniel, a seafaring man,
Born in the British Isles, but
Raised a proud Bostonian.
My mother fled to New England,
In hopes of living a better life;
My father never returned to us,
Tho' gossip spoke of a mistress in Fife.
My mother was staid and emotionally strong,
And raised me on her own;
And only when she took sick admitted
She could not continue alone.
To earn our keep for our small home,
I was apprenticed at age eleven;
And my master took me in the year
That my mother was called up to Heaven.
I spent three years as the printer's devil,
And at the end of my indenture
I said farewell to my surrogate father
In search of a grander adventure.
Altho' I have never met him, I
Know my father and I are alike:
I dreamt of going to sea as he did
Ever since I was just a tyke:
And when the binds of apprenticeship
Were removed from around me
I let my wand'ring spirit reign and
Longed for the sea to surround me.
So I went to port to search
With the money I had saved
For a simple trading ship on which
To make my sailor's name;
But in my boyhood naivety I was
Beguil'd by a tankard of ale--
The Royal Navy shanghaid me,
And before I woke, we had set sail.
Begrudgingly I laboured
Under Captain Billings's rule,
For little pay and little comfort,
For harsh punishment and gruel;
I toiled at the rigging till he deposed
His cabin boy, in the only proper way:
Above the fo'c'sle he was executed,
The body left collapsed on the deck all that day.
Then I was called to the captain's quarters
And told I would take the dead boy's place.
Disturbing it was how easily from this world
Any person, so young could be erased.
I served aboard the H.M.S. Mallory
For the better part of a year,
Till we reached port in France and
I could finally disappear;
There was no chance in Hell that Billings
Would find me among the bourgeoisie;
By the time he might have realised I was gone
I was in another windjammer—at sea.
??
They poured hefty amounts of kerosene
Aboard mighty Parisian's deck,
And once the wood was dampened they
Dumped below decks all the rest;
Captain and crew, they gargled below
As I looked on in pure agony--
For I was a simple cabin boy and
I could not prevent this tragedy.
Those buccaneers, they cackled as
They retreated to their ship,
No sound of horror could I utter
As they dropped a lantern lit.
The flames spread quickly over
The kerosenèd deck,
And from below issued forth cries
Of suffering I shan't forget,
As crew and captain burned, the
Skin soaked through and cooking--
I saw naught but angry flames erupt
But I could not stop from looking.
Upon the quarterdeck I stood
As Parisian burned around me;
It was no wonder I was mad,
Half-drowned before they found me.
epic , poem , sea , historical , seafaring , sailing , incomplete
Pete Hood on Mar 9, 2010, 6:59 am
It's a hell of an undertaking in these days of haiku and other ultra-short verse forms! I enjoyed reading it and thought it had the authentic flavour of those old sea ballads.