You can’t cheat Fate. A six-part limerick…
Adrift in the Bramidae Sea
Astoker, a ship escapee
Knew life would be brief
For on Pomfret Reef
He soon would be human debris
Astoker escaped from the ship
Before it was in the storm’s grip
But most of the slaves
Confronted the waves
In hopes of surviving the trip
The Borgo was fragile, in fact…
The high waves impacted, then cracked
The hull of the ship
With watery whip
And left little time to react
A handful of slaves braved the sea
(Their feet were unshackled and free)
And in the sea found
(Since all but one drowned)
That Fate is a hard thing to flee
Astoker, though, managed to live
By slipping through Fate’s mortal sieve
But soon he’d be borne
By waves to be torn
To shreds on a Bramidae shiv
The reef, like a razor, would halt
His drifting; in jagged basalt
His body would thresh
About till his flesh
Succumbed to Fate’s final assault
© 2014 David E. Miller
millerswindmill 
It works very well in this format David, and was very pleasing indeed. I had thought previously that he was a stoker, as in he stoked the boiler. Your explanation put me right, so I now ‘get it’.
Best wishes as always, Pete.
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Actually, I gave the stoker idea some thought, but settled on a mythological setting, in a world that includes the Isle of Smelt (located in the Osmeridae Sea).
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I’m not going to grapple with the meaning too much, but I will now find out what a stoker is if not a chap with shovel. I was hoping he’d make it, paddle or not.
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The lead-in note (“You can’t cheat Fate.”) was probably a giveaway, but I’m sure Astoker appreciates your sentiments. I don’t recall how I came up with his name. Oftentimes, my names do have significance, but this one may have just been chosen because it sounded epic or mythological.
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