On September 6, Robert Coenen in his letter opened up a Pandora's box not because of his definition of what is identical and parallel but his reminder that "Maltese share the same suffering, sacrifice and determination of those who travel on a boat in search of something better. None of the Maltese knew what the other side of the world had in store". How true!
 
I have interviewed many migrants about their voyage to Australia and the stories they told are indeed horrific. Most of the ships they travelled on could only be described as rust buckets. Some voyages took months to complete. Husbands, wives and children were placed in separate dormitories. Hygiene was primitive. Conditions were chaotic.
 
Food was so bad that at least on one voyage I know of, there was a mutiny and the Maltese took over the kitchen. Water was scarce. Babies died and the health requirements were terrible and hardly available.
 
I was so disgusted by what I recorded at the time that I had advocated that criminal charges should be brought against the persons responsible for chartering these rust buckets to transport migrants from Malta to Australia.
 
They were not crossings of few days but voyages that took up to seven or eight weeks to reach their destination. A voyage was aborted when a ship caught fire. On the Skybraun in 1958, a fire started on board, the ship sank in the shark-infested Red Sea, and the lifeboats were not seaworthy!
 
My personal experience was that of a cargo boat that took over nine weeks  to  reach  Sydney.  I  was  billeted  in  a  cargo  hole, sleeping in a