Humor: To hell and back in a leaky boat and a bucket

To hell and back in a leaky boat and a bucket

"I'm innocent," I cried as the burly soldiers dragged me up the gangplank on to the convict ship.

"I didn't do it - you have to believe me. I don't want to go to the Australian colonies! Please!"

Have you ever had a dream like this?

It came about for me, I think, because that day I had been asked:
"What do you think of people who bang on about The Good Old Days, when you could leave your door open all day when you were at work but millions died in wars, black death, fog, consumption, flu and everyone lived in slums?"

Um, well, now I thought about it, the Australian colonies must have been a great place to live for a free person in the early 1800s.

Our prime minister John Howard has come in for flak for a perception that he wants to take Australia back to the halcyon days of the 1950s.
In my opinion, though, this is not far enough. Take me back to 1825 and I feel sure I would prosper.
The Australian continent was a much more wholesome place then.
We had more fresh air and a more pristine environment, and consequently fewer greenhouse gas emissions which is a thorn in the side of the government now, mighty rivers and mountain ranges were still to be discovered and conquered, thus creating job opportunities for out-of-work explorers, and we did not get so much rubbish and criticism of the government on telly and the Internet.

Yes, we had convicts but there was a flipside which I suspect Mr Howard's conservative government would have relished.

Between 1788 and 1868 we got about 161,700 convicts - and many, after serving a suitable part of their sentence, were allotted to colonists as unpaid servants.
As far as I know, there was no convicts union.
Convicts had to do what they were told to do, otherwise it was back to prison on the strength of a colonist's word.

What a life, eh?

Imagine how good free settlers felt on the voyage out here, standing on the first-class deck, sea breeze in the faces, mighty sails flapping high above as the ship ploughed through the waves on the way to a land of milk and honey and free labour?

It was about this time I went to sleep and picked up the wrong end of my dream.

I found myself in London in 1824.

I was slumped - bedraggled and bearded - in the dock at the Old Bailey.

"John Martin, you are hereby sentenced to seven years' hard labour in the British penal colony in New South Wales," bellowed the judge.

"But I'm innocent," I cried, as they hauled me down to the cells to await transportation.

When they dragged me up the gangplank of the Royal Charlotte in London on January 5, 1924, I was still protesting my innocence.

"You can't do this. I didn't vote for George W. Bush, I tell you."

(I guess it was about this time my dream got a little weird, disjointed and out of time sequence, as dreams do).

But my protests were to no avail.
I was handed over to the care, if you can call it that, of the master of the Royal Charlotte.
I was put in chains below deck, cramped in with dozens of other convicts, destined never to see England or the barmaid with the big knockers in the Crown and Anchor again.

As I said, more than 160,000 of these poor souls were transported to Australia.

Three-quarters of them came from England, Scotland and Wales. Less than a quarter came from Ireland and a few hundred more came from Canada, India and other British colonies.

Most were done for theft, though there were also a few political miscreants.

That, of course, was my alleged crime.

Our voyage took 114 miserable days.

I had never been to sea before, and I never wanted to again.

We were chained liked animals below deck, only seeing daylight on very rare occasions when we were taken above in small groups for fresh air and exercise.

Occasionally, we were taken above to be flogged for some perceived bad deed.

The master - may he burn in hell - thought that a few strokes of the cat-o-nine-tails would improve our disposition.

The ship's rats got better food than we did.

The air below was putrid.

We slept in hammocks and defecated and spewed in a bucket nearby.

No wonder we got sick.

I suppose I should not complain. We got scurvy, dysentery and typhoid and some convicts died, but not me.
My misery continued.

We must have sailed through several dozens storms on the long voyage.
I cannot say for sure because, as I said, most of the time I was chained up below decks, not knowing if it was night or day.
But the ship heaved and rolled and creaked.
Sometimes a little bit of sea water would seep through the floor and we would wonder if the ship were about to break up.
We'd surely all be drowned in our chains down there in this black, black hole.

Sometimes we'd fight among ourselves for the right to hold the bucket.

I can't believe what animals we'd become.

We sailed into Sydney Town cove on April 29, 1825.

I remember the date well because I had scratched off every day of the voyage on the wall next to my hammock. I just wanted it to be over.

I never thought I would be so happy to see the Australian colonies.

But I was.

It was land.

Dry land.

Perhaps a convict settlement didn't rock; but it didn't roll either.

I never wanted to go back to sea again, not for as long as I lived.

The day was warm, the light was bright when they they took us above deck.

I remember wishing I had remembered to bring my sunglasses with me from London (it's a dream, okay: anything's possible in a dream).

"So this is New South Wales," I said to myself as I shuffled down the gangplank, my chains rattling and my ball in my hands.

At the bottom, there was an attractive woman from the local tourist board, welcoming us to Australia and handing out brochures for various convict resorts.

But there were also two men.

I recognised the men instantly as Mr Howard (he was wearing a bushman's hat and looked quite uncomfortable) and Australian Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock.

"Sorry," Mr Howard said.

At first, I thought he was apologising. Could this be?

But then he continued, with an upraised hand: "Political prisoners are not welcome here, Prisoner No 115645, not even in Woomera. You will have to go home."

The ship's master was less happy than I was about this, which is saying something.

But Mr Howard talked him around with a lecture about duty of care and mutual obligation.

In the end, I think he was just happy to turn the ship around and get out of there.

I woke up from my dream in a cold sweat, searching for my bucket. I was glad to get out of 1825 too.

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it