Walter McGrath examines documents produced during the voyage of the convict ship the Hougoumont. The ship carried 62 Fenians including some with a literary bent. The documents examined are Denis B. Cashman's Fenian Diary and the hand-written periodical The Wild Goose: A Collection of Ocean Waifs.
McGrath provides details on some of the Wild Goose contributors, particularly the convicted Fenians John Edward 'Ned' Kelly, John Flood and J. B. O'Reilly, and the ship's chaplain Father Bernard Delaney. Some of Kelly's, Flood's and O'Reilly's Wild Goose poetry is re-published in the article.