The hulk they imprison me on called Justitia and when I climb up the rope ladder to get on board, Lord, what a welcome I get. Have to strip off all me clothes. Get prodded into a big tub of water full up with washing soap and a guard scrub me with a big, heavy brush like me some kind of animal. After that is the hair-cutting business, but by then enough is enough with all the pushing and prodding and poking. I start to struggle but it make no difference, the guards knock me bout, hold me down good, while the ship barber chop all me hair off. Then him pick up a straight razor, use it to shave right to the skull till you can see the skin gleaming through. Later, I come to understand is a good thing. Make it easier to pick off the lice that live and breed all over the ship.

I think this arrival business is over, but then me sent to the blacksmith to get ‘ironed’. Put a chain round me ankle, hammer the bolt shut. But the chain attached to a big heavy iron ball that you must drag round with you wherever you go. If is work backra want from us, maybe them should think bout getting rid of that ball and chain.

Every morning, I must wake when the morning watch ring three bells, take up me bed, hurry to the washing troughs. Troop down to the kitchen to get some grub. Not much to speak of, just a cup of cocoa, a piece of dry bread. Then is time for muster. Line up in a gang of ten to get rowed out to shore in a longboat. Only old and lame convicts kept back to clean the decks, the rest of us rowed a short distance to work in the dockyards. Is a sight to behold. Men working on wooden skeletons, huge, like ribs and backbones, on them way to becoming ships for the navy.

In the centre of the dockyard is the clock tower, must be where all the orders coming from. To unload timber, ballast from ships, to saw and chop wood, clean cannonballs. Most times, though, me sent off to shovel mud. Backra building a wharf wall trying to hold back the river, to widen the dockyard. When the day finish, me covered in sludge from head to foot. Mud and sludge that make you slip, make you fall, make you sick with fever. Cause you skin to break out in weeping sores. Day in day out, is the same thing. Unless bad weather come up. Then we stay locked inside the hulk. I don’t know which is worse, working in the mud or suffering the damp, the cold, the stink, the lice, the rats. Sometimes, a beating.