Description Amity
1845
A hundred and forty-two tons of Black Birch,
Hackmatack, rope and copper, three times long
As wide; named Amity, for an end to war.
Thirty years afloat; no time at all to breech
Her hull on sand, her sails and spars all flung
Into the wind. Her last and fatal shore.
1824
Leg irons, handcuffs, convicts make good ballast,
Deep in the hold, where only bilge and rust
Destroy, the timbers moaning when she yaws,
Her cargo scheming escapes, nursing blisters,
Welts from floggings, wanting only rest:
Cutpurses, bread-stealers, children, whores.
1826
A city afloat in a wooden womb
Seasick, berthed in swinging hammocks, heaving,
Clinging in the darkness, as she claws
Her way through contrary winds. Shores loom
Like monsters, bare skulled, skulking.
A boat launched. Albany straining at the oars.
Poem by Giles Watson, 2011. The Brig Amity was constructed in Canada just after the end of the Napoleonic and American wars. Her youth was spent sailing the Atlantic, but in 1824, she began a new life in New Holland, as Australia was then known. There, she was used as a convict transport between Sydney and Hobart Town, and in 1826, she sailed for King George?s Sound, carrying the cargo of convicts and military men who were to become the founders of present day Albany. She was wrecked on a sandbank at Shoaly Bay, south-east of Flinders? Island, in 1845. A full-scale reconstruction of the ship was built in 1976, and stands in dry-dock on Albany Harbour to this day.
