Submitted by Gabrielle Burt on Saturday 19 July 2014
This poem is the result of a writing challenge using the 'starter line' from the famous and inspirational Casabianca by Mrs Felicia Dorothea Hermans. The original poem told the story of a 12year old boy, the son of one of the ship's officers on the French flagship, L'Orient, who on 28 July 1798, at the Battle of the Nile, perished when, to the astonishment of Lord Nelson's sailors, he stayed at his post as his ship burned around him and eventually sank. My poem has a somewhat different ending.