DEATH BY MISADVENTURE

The English were upset, the Spaniards were winning.
So, they decided they needed to take them down,
By chasing them, with a fleet of sailboats
Around Cape Horn.
On the way there half the men died of scurvy.
Most of the boats Spanish and English,
Didn’t make it.
A smaller English boat was shipwrecked on a rocky “island”,
Some men jumped off the ship and swam for their lives,
Others helped load provisions off the ship and rowed them to shore,
Eventually, everyone re-grouped,
But no one was sure who to trust anymore.
“Whose idea was this in the first place?”
There was limited faith in the captain,
And the captain was new to it,
Unsure what to do about all these doubts.
Some tried to refer back to the rules of civilization,
Such as they were,
But it didn’t help.
They were on their own to sort out who they were,
And who they would become.
Eventually, there was talk of mutiny.
Some would go their own way,
Others would stick by their captain.
Years later,
A few of them made it home.
In tiny boats,
With help from local people
And their enemies who held them prisoner for a time.
When they got home
Their civilized country,
Decided they needed a trial to work out,
Who did what to whom.
But any way you settled the thing,
Well, it just looked bad,
For the state, the nation, the country.
Imagine.
Men behaving like this just to return home,
To their families and loved ones.
We are a decent people,
Maybe it’s best if we just leave it at that,
So we can go on believing,
We are who we say we are.