via The Guardian:

A discovery in a lighter mood is a stash of comic verse that Kipling wrote on a ship sailing from Adelaide to Ceylon, which is believed to have been read aloud by the author to his fellow passengers. “It was a ship of the P&O / Put forth to sail the sea,” wrote Kipling, going on to mourn the slow progress of the liner across the ocean. “The children played on the rotten deck / A monthly growing band / Of sea-bred sin born innocents / That never knew the land.”