Alone on a wide wide sea - Michael Morpurgo

How far would you go to find yourself? When orphaned Arthur Hobhouse is shipped to Australia after WWII, he loses his sister, his country, everything. Over the coming years he endures mistreatment and neglect but is saved again and again by his love of the sea. But will the threads of Arthur's life come together again?

There were dozens of us on the ship, all ages, boys and girls, and we were all up on the deck for the leaving of Liverpool, gulls wheeling and crying over our heads, calling good-bye, I thought they were waving good-bye. None of us spoke. It was a grey day with drizzle in the air, the great sad cranes bowing to the ship from the docks as we steamed past. That is all I remember of England.