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By Jack Joseph Smith

BECAME A SHELLBACK We must go to the ending of not joining a union THE HELL SHIP TRANGIE As we emerged with our words The huge red haired Australian First Mate Went streight to the larger New Zealand Captain "It's about the scum men sir; there up to Mutany as far as I can see" Five holes down on the bottom We stood fifteen tall But you must understand the jargon (The way of the mind When out of 4,000 dead) You arrive at the last And the sheep is still alive They had packed 22,500 on THE HELL SHIP TRANGIE Insurance would take care of those with the rot And The slow heat through the Tropic of Capricorn Had worn thin the nerves of the men From Cidney to Manzanillo, Mexico Death was the smell the whole go That's how I got on at the Manzanillo dock The ships doctor and six seamen had got off in a state of shock (I remember the 18,500. down the planks - bending into their pins) To the brutal pins not quite dismembered With the stench of the ship Steaming inches of their hides from flocks of other remains left behind While I joined the stockmen insane From what must have been American blame Hidden in my humanity goNE STrANgE Now we stood in the dung Hero's very much unsung Experiencing the pity in tragedy With that last sheep Which I called Mam Straining with pain below our helpless hands Coming back across The 4,000 carcasses Had been hauled up with cable and rope While we did our best to cope With the flies and mosquitos of disease

Original Scan

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AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker recounts a sheep ship's rot, animal deaths, crew conflict and the suffering of a sheep called Mam. A detached heading names becoming a shellback.

The speaker counts cargo and carcasses before describing helpless hands beneath one sheep, recalling stockmen, dung and disease alongside the officers' response to unrest. Unsettled marginal notes limit the reading of this revised draft.

Claude

A draft of the sheep-ship narrative. Under the detached label 'BECAME A / SHELLBACK' and the note 'We must go to the ending of / not joining a union', it tells how the First Mate reports the 'scum men' to the Captain, how the ship carried '22,500' sheep and how the speaker 'joined the stockmen insane / From what must have been American blame'. Its last section begins 'Coming back across / The 4,000 carcasses' and ends 'While we did our best to cope / With the flies and mosquitos of disease'.

The speaker frames the voyage as an initiation and as a scene of mass animal death, and fixes the pity on one survivor, 'that last sheep / Which I called Mam'. The many handwritten revisions show the poem still being worked out.