‘No Harbour’: From a picture to a song
A month or two back, I began the process of co-writing a song with Emma Kirkbride; someone I’ve gotten to know through the Talent is Timeless online community. We’ve never worked together before, and have quite different influences, styles and songwriting processes, so it’s been interesting to see and hear how they interact.
I suggested we might start with a picture, and I suggested the one that hangs on the wall behind me in most of the live videos on this site. It’s called ‘Scottish Harbour’ and was painted a few years ago by a young person in secure care in Scotland (who chose to remain anonymous). Emma and I chatted for a bit about what we saw in the picture (more of which later, in another post) and, given the painter’s situation, we also got talking about imprisonment.
Emma mentioned that, as a child, she used to visit a relative (I think?) who lived near Portland prison, and she sent me a link to a website that discusses the prison’s history… https://www.portlandhistory.co.uk/hm-prison-young-offender-institution-portland.html
What immediately struck me, not least given the title of the picture with which we had started (Scottish Harbour), was that the prison was founded in 1848 so that convict labour could be used to build the breakwaters required to create a ‘harbour of refuge’. The plans for the harbour were born from fears of a French invasion. So ‘convicts’ — generally perceived, I suppose, to be a threat to society — were being used to make society safer.
The website also reports that the labourers were sent to Portland before being transported to Australia. If they worked hard, they were promised a ‘ticket of leave’, meaning a greater degree of freedom in their future lives in Australia, including the right to seek work. So, I started searching the internet — initially to see if there was anything I could find about the fate of the Portland labourers, and then for other stories of transportation. I came across several stories of tragedies involving ‘convict ships’ that were shipwrecked. One was the ‘George III’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_III_(ship)) which suffered a particularly ill-fated voyage, including a fire on board and then the ship’s loss. Wikipedia reports that:
‘…the master decided to enter the torturous D'Entrecasteaux Channel between Bruny Island and the Tasmanian mainland. At about 9.15 pm that evening [12th March 1835, after almost 4 months at sea] George III hit a rock and over a period of several hours broke up in the heavy swell. The convicts were kept below to allow the women and children to be safely evacuated by the ship's boats. The guards fired their guns in order to quell rising panic; this gunfire is believed to have killed between one and three of the convicts. Many others drowned below decks, including many of the sick in their beds. In all, 133 lives were lost in the disaster, of whom 128 were convicts.’
Though there is no connection between the two stories — and though the shipwreck happened more than a decade before Portland was opened, I used some poetic licence to reverse the timelines, and to weave the two stories together in the lyrics of ‘No Harbour’. The central theme is the way that people who we condemn and stigmatise come to be used and mistreated as less than human. There is no safe harbour, no refuge for them. I suppose that makes this a kind of protest song.
Here’s how I tell the story:
Lyrics
On Portland Isle, they made us work -- two winters waiting for the ship
And this is what they promised us -- a way to climb out of the pit
If we cut the stone from rock, if we laboured hard and true
We could buy our freedom back; in the new world, far beyond the blue
On Portland Isle, we cut the stone to build their harbour safe and strong
We worked until we broke our bones; where lash and labour settled wrongs
In blisters and in bloodied skin, we overpaid the price of sin
All to buy our freedom back, in the new world, far beyond the blue
A shelter, a harbour, a haven, a home
We laboured for hope, to make safety from stone
The perfect redemption, the purchase of blood
Over the ocean, we sailed for rebirth
In eighteen-hundred and thirty-four, from Woolwich docks did we depart
More than two-hundred convict souls, more than one-hundredcrew and guards
Fourteen died along the way, and many more did curse their lives
Until we saw Van Diemen’s Land, 12th of March 1835
The Master’s haste, it cost us dear; we foundered in the heavy seas
And while the innocents were saved, the prisoners were left beneath
For we lay locked-down in the hold, and there a hundred men did drown
Still in chains they met their fate, no mercy — for the ill-renowned
No shelter, no harbour, no haven, no home
We laboured for nought, spilling blood on the stones
The promises broken in worlds old and new
Lost in the ocean, condemned to the blue
The tune suggested itself very quickly as I was playing around with my beautiful new Furch guitar :))) (which features in the video). You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBkPZVkPZHs or stream it on Soundcloud if you prefer: https://soundcloud.com/user-57337486/no-harbour
P.S. You might by now be wondering whatever happened to the co-write with Emma? Well, rest assured, it’s still in development. I hope we can share it in due course…