Excerpt from The Romance of a Transport I was in my twenty-fourth year when I underwent the tragic and amazing experiences which, with the help of a friend, I propose to relate in these pages. I am now seventy-seven but I am in good health and enjoy all my faculties, saving my hearing; my memory is brisk and my friends find it very faithful, and what is here set down you may accept as the truth. It is long ago since the last convict Ship sailed away from these shores with her horrid burden of guilt and grief and passions of a hundred devilish sorts I don't know how long it is since the last of the convict ships passed down Channel on her way to colonies which were like to become a sort of shambles - for they were hanging half a Score of men a day for murder in those times - if this horrid commerce in felons had not ended when that ship weighed and sailed she passed away to return no more as a prison craft. When she faded out of sight she was a vanished type, and when she climbed, moon-like, above the horizon under full breasts of shining can vas, she was an honest ship again, never more to be debauched by Opportunities to tender for the transport of criminals. Before I lift the curtain upon my ship, the Convict Ship in which I sailed, I must hold you in talk concerning some matters which go before the sailing of the vessel for I have to explain how it came about that I, a woman, was on board of a convict ship full of male malefactors. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.