Steren – Entry 15

Dearest Mumma

These seas are peculiar – I feel like I’m in a crib, being rocked to and fro. I miss you Mumma, do you miss me? Are you forgetting what I look like?

Of course not, I know you will remember me until you cannot remember yourself.

I’m sending you this letter once we arrive in Otago. The sooner we make land, the better. There are some peculiar goings on between some of the crew. Certain people keep getting caught up in some delirium. One keeps rambling about a woman named Julia, and that the captain must help him on some mission.

I hope to not be caught up in some wild goose chase – I fear the idea of naval history has gone to their heads. Men like me just seek for a chance to be out on the open water, I do not seek fame and glory, for often glory comes with gore.

Every night, before I go to sleep, I recite that poem that you used to read to me as a child.

                    No man is an island entire of itself; every man

                    is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

                    if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

                    is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

                    well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

                    own were; any man's death diminishes me,

                    because I am involved in mankind.

                    And therefore never send to know for whom

                    the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

It is something of a litany for me now.

I do wish you well, Mumma. It is nearly Christmas, alas this will be the first Christmas Day that we will not be celebrating together. I promise to bring you something from Otago, so as to make up for my absence.

All my love, forever 

Your little Tommy

P.S. I told you not all ships sink!

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By Joe Clarke-Skinner