While conditions on the government-chartered Antipodean ships were generally better than on the more unregulated Atlantic run, passengers were cooped up for a much longer period, and the death toll during a three—four-month passage could be severe. There were twelve deaths, mostly of very young children, on the Robert Burns, en route from Greenock to Port Phillip in 1841, and diarist John Mackenzie recorded the results of a post-mortem carried out on one three-year-old. It showed, he wrote, ‘the whole frame in a diseased state, the intestines all inflamed, one of the lobes of the lungs gone, and one of the kidneys quite unhealthy, the poor little thing wasted to a skeleton, dysentery carried it off ’. 38 There were nine fatalities aboard Isabella Henderson’s ship to Dunedin in 1863. Most were children, including sixteen-month-old Ewen McLachlan, a friend’s son, who died of bronchitis. Isabella recalled that ‘the sympathy of all on board was extended towards him, even the hardest heart seemed to melt … The Captain came down and assisted the sailmaker to sew him up in a canvas sheet with a bag of sand at the feet to sink him’ (12 August). On another occasion Isabella had to struggle to the ship’s hospital in the teeth of a severe storm to dress the corpse of a baby. She described the conditions vividly:
Fine fun this morning. With the rocking about we are all in bed nearly as we can do nothing. The seas that are coming in are frightful. About 6 o’clock the water came rushing down the hatch and such a scene. The place swimming with water and all the folk in a terrible plight. See them standing up on boxes all the way along with faces pale with fears. We were thinking our mess were all well off as we had a high bed and away from hatches and ventilator but about 9 o’clock a heavy sea broke on the poop and took the glass off the companions right into the cabin, and took the folks up to the waist. It came down like a thunderstorm into our bed and ere we could do anything our blankets and beds were wet through and through so that we were done out of our beds. But that was not the worst. One of the men at the wheel was washed away under it. His body was caught under the wheel. His leg was broken and the other had his arm sprained and the night being so rough they were not able to take him forward to his own bed. He was brought down our hatch the married people ’s side, and before his leg was put to rights word came down from the hospital that the baby was dead. The next thing was who was to dress the corpse. I was terrified to face up the stair, the wind was howling at such a rate and sea washing the decks every minute. But as I was out of bed and doing nothing they asked me to come and dress the corpse so I could not refuse them. Two of us went up and men with each of us. We got safely across and found them baling the water out of the hospital. I dressed the wee, wee corpse, just like a doll. 39
Cabin passengers were not immune from such tragedy. Twenty-three years before Isabella Henderson’s voyage, Jessie Campbell gave a blow-by-blow account of the decline of the youngest of her five children, one of twin girls, who became ill on 2 October 1840 and died on the 23rd:
9th October — My little darling worse, Dr. dreads congestion of the brain … Poor little Tibbie ’s head shaven and blistered tonight.
14th October Isabella much the same, her pulse rather stronger, still continues to drink the arrowroot; her father deeply distressed, gentlemen very considerate in keeping the deck quiet above our cabin, Dr. prevented the piper playing in the evening. Capt. Gray told the Dr. that in case of my little darling recovering he would keep 8 or 9 fowls for her own use.
15th October Isabella rather better, her pulse a little stronger, still very little hope of her recovery, still drinking a good deal, gets thin chicken soup occasionally; for a change she did not sleep well last night but did not seem to have any pain. Dear little lamb she likes so much to have me beside her in bed, even during the day she gives me her little hand to hold or sometimes puts it across my neck; she does not vomit, altho she does not eat she takes a good deal of nourishment in drinks, nothing seems to put her bowels right, she still passes very green stuff but has not a stool oftener than twice in the 24 hours.
Thursday 22nd October Dear little Isabella alive and that is all; she was taken very ill last night with violent pain, we thought in her bowels, Capt. C put the Dr. up, he gave her an injection which gave her immediate relief, he said the pain was caused by flatulence, she slept soundly till near morning, her hands have a slight convulsive movement today, she is laying quite quiet seemingly in a state of torpor; twice I thought she knew me, her eyes certainly followed me, her breathing quite regular, she still swallows a teaspoonful of drink at a time.
23rd October My dear little lamb lingered in the same state all night, she expired this morning at 8 o’clock; she resigned her breath as quietly as if she were going to sleep without the slightest struggle. What would I give to be on shore with her dear little body, the idea of committing it to the deep distresses me very much, she has made a happy change from the cares and miseries of this world, it is hard to say what misfortune may await us from which she has escaped. The Doctors did not seem to understand what her complaint was, both agreed it was brought on by teething and that she would have had the same on shore. 40
Although death was a great leveller, a comparison of voyage diaries reveals an enormous disparity between conditions in the cabin and the steerage. When little Isabella Campbell first fell ill, the doctor ‘ordered her into a warm bath’, while Jane Bannerman’s family had a piano in their cabin for their entertainment. 41 Cabin passengers had their accommodation cleaned at their convenience, but steerage passengers were turfed out on deck irrespective of the weather and took turns at cleaning duties. Jessie Campbell contrasted the ‘indolence and filthy habits’ of the Highlanders aboard the Blenheim with the cleaner, more easily managed contingent of emigrants from Paisley. Captain Gray, she noted,
complains woefully of the indolence of the emigrants, he has such a work every day hunting them out of their beds and keeping them on deck, particularly towards evening that their berths may cool before they go down to sleep … [he] takes a great deal of trouble in obliging the emigrants to keep their places in order, he drives them on deck in good weather with a small cane in his hand. 42
The perspective of the steerage passengers was rather different. According to Isabella Henderson, they were ‘treated more like slaves than any other thing — ordered out of our beds at 5 o’clock in the morning, and get as much impertinence in one hour as would serve you for one twelve months … And then we are smoked out of our place with tar, and with no other shift than decks swimming with water.’ 43
There were big contrasts in food as well as in accommodation. Cabin passengers on the fast packets between Liverpool and New York enjoyed a full and varied menu, often with champagne, but transatlantic steerage passengers were either given their daily rations by the ship’s cook or steward, from barrels which were brought on to the deck or into the steerage, or they struggled to cook their own supplies on inadequate stoves on the soaking deck. Sheep, pigs and poultry killed during the voyage were fed to the passengers, with those in the steerage being given the inferior cuts. Jessie Campbell summed up the contrast:
We had for dinner today roast ducks, boiled fowls and curried fowl and pea soup and pickled pork, this is the first day we have been without beautiful cabbage for dinner since leaving Greenock, the potatoes are still very good, our having such a good cook adds much to our comfort; all the steerage passengers got flour, suet and raisins served out to them yesterday to make puddings for their dinners today, most of them did not know how to use the ingredients, they eat the raisins their children going about with them in handfuls, made scones of the flour. I do not know what they did with the suet, they likewise got pickled cabbage, a good many cannot be prevailed on to eat it and were caught throwing it overboard. 44
Whenever a sheep was killed Campbell’s Skye-born maid was employed to make haggis, although she noted that on one occasion Captain Gray became ‘very angry’ at her for refusing to prepare it on a Sunday. 45 Steerage passengers did sometimes win small victories, as on the City of Dun
edin in 1862, when a delegation persuaded the captain to revert to serving water out of iron tanks rather than wooden barrels, as some of the ‘cabin gentry’ had demanded. 46
For Robert Louis Stevenson in 1879, the main advantages afforded by a berth in the second cabin were ‘air comparatively fit to breathe, food comparatively varied, and the satisfaction of being still privately a gentleman’. His main impression of the steerage was of its overpowering squalor and stench:
If it was impossible to clean the steerage, it was no less impossible to clean the steerage passenger. All ablution below was rigorously forbidden. A man might give his hands a scour at the pump beside the galley, but that was exactly all. One fellow used to strip to his waist every morning and freshen his chest and shoulders; but I need not tell you he was no true steerage passenger. To wash outside in the sharp sea air of the morning is a step entirely foreign to the frowsy, herding, overwarm traditions of the working class; and a human body must apparently have been nurtured in some luxury, before it courts these rude shocks and surprises of temperature in which many men find health and vigour. Thus, even if the majority of passengers came clean aboard at Greenock, long ere the ten days were out or the shores of America in sight, all were reduced to a common level, all, who here stewed together in their own exhalations, were uncompromisingly unclean … To descend on an empty stomach into Steerage No. 1 was an adventure that required some nerve. The stench was atrocious; each respiration tasted in the throat like some horrible kind of cheese; and the squalid aspect of the place was aggravated by so many people worming themselves into their clothes in the twilight of the bunks. 47
For the duration of the voyage, the ship became a temporary village, with ships’ newspapers being a particularly common feature of the Antipodean passage. But all emigrant ships were communities, a microcosm on life on land. Births and marriages were celebrated, as well as deaths mourned, schools were organized for the children and Sunday — sometimes daily — worship was an integral part of the voyage. There were six steerage births aboard the Robert Burns, on which John Mackenzie sailed cabin from Greenock to Port Phillip in 1841, as well as a school for sixty children. Jessie Campbell’s disparagement of the Skye emigrants on the Blenheim a year earlier extended to one of six women who gave birth in the steerage:
A woman delivered of a son last night, this makes the sixth child born on board and all very fine, thriving children; this woman with all her former confinements had long and difficult labours, yesterday evening she did not feel herself very well, the Dr. desired her to go into the hospital, she thought she would have plenty of time to remove after she was taken ill, however matters came so quick upon her that the child was born before she could be removed; Dr. C. was very angry at her and no wonder, think how unpleasant for him going about her before so many women and married men who sleep in the same place; to crown all not one stitch had she prepared for the child, it was rolled in an old petticoat of the mother’s. She is a carpenter’s wife from Skye. All the other women had their baby things so neat and tidy, particularly the low country women; they come up on Sundays so clean and dressed some of them with white frocks and nice little hoods. 48
The preservation of Christian ordinances was the priority of William Hamilton and his six fellow ministers who were sent out to Hobart and Sydney by the Church of Scotland aboard the North Briton in 1837. Soon after embarking they distributed tracts and arranged thrice-weekly religious instruction classes among the crew, as well as morning worship with the twelve steerage passengers. Public worship was also a vital component of life for the Highlanders aboard the Blenheim. Jessie Campbell recorded that while the emigrants ‘had prayers and portion of the Bible read to them in Gaelic, we had the same in English by a very respectable steerage passenger of the name of Sinclair from Stirling’. 49 Public worship was conducted twice daily aboard the Philip Laing en route to Otago in 1847, but sixteen years later Isabella Henderson bemoaned the ‘mimicry of God’s worship’ on her voyage to Dunedin: ‘The preacher plays cards and drinks brandy all the week through, and then takes the place of minister on the Sabbath.’ 50 Jane Findlayson also complained initially about the lack of Sabbath observance aboard the Oamaru in 1876, although she sang the praises of the minister, William Bannerman. She later reported that over 300 attended public worship, excluding several Roman Catholic passengers: ‘We are amused and astonished at their mode of prayers; they are on their knees for nearly an hour saying their rosary and counting their beads.’ 51 Bannerman, a native of Fife, had been twenty-three years minister in Dunedin and was married to our diarist, Jane, daughter of the Otago pioneer Thomas Burns. Religious services were also conducted on transatlantic ships. Alexander Muir, one of two cabin passengers on the Lord Seaton from Aberdeen to Quebec in 1845, noted that all seventy-one passengers and crew attended divine worship, and he himself organized a Sunday school for the thirty-one children on board. 52
At the end of his journal John Anderson, who went to Otago with his wife and baby daughter in 1862, wrote to its unnamed recipient: ‘You wanted me to keep a diary I have given you every day as near as I could but I think you will soon tire of it as it is always the same thing every day but you can form an idea what like your passage was by it.’ As Anderson implied, the predominant sentiment of most diarists was of an increasingly tedious routine, and the recurring characteristic of most diaries was a constant preoccupation with weather and sea conditions. But various strategies were adopted for passing the time and alleviating the boredom. Transatlantic passengers looked out for icebergs, Antipodean ones for colourful flying fish. On all routes there were daily sweepstakes or competitions to guess the latitude and longitude, many diarists recorded the mileage covered each day, dancing was a popular pastime, and letters were written to those at home for delivery — if possible — to homeward-bound ships. When the weather was good passengers gathered on deck to play dominoes, draughts or cards, rain water was collected to wash bodies and clothes, and occasional lectures were given on the ship’s destination. The long passage to the southern hemisphere was enlivened by the traditional celebrations on crossing the Equator, except on the North Briton in 1837, where, according to the Reverend Tait, ‘There were none of the usual barbarous ceremonies allowed on board, our Captain being too sober and steady to permit such fooleries.’ 53 John Anderson, however, who had a relatively pleasant and uneventful passage, described the ceremony on crossing the line. ‘Neptune and his wife ’ were pulled along the deck on a gun carriage, and several members of the crew were shaved, before being thrown into a sail filled with water. Celebrations continued well into the night:
after tea we went on deck again and had a regular spree there was a great deal of drinking going on in the foscel [sic] the sailors had full liberty and we had dancing and drinking and fiddling till all hours some or [sic] them were well on there legs the cabin passengers were all singing in the cabin I went below about half past ten and found a lot of the men holding a concert with the young women we sang down below till near twelve o clock when the mate came down and ordered the men up. 54
Jane Findlayson’s description of the ceremony was very similar, but discipline on the Oamaru seems to have been generally tighter than on Anderson’s City of Dunedin:
We have plenty of good music, we have no communication with the young men so its only a female dance. They are in the fore part of the ship we in the after part and the married quarters between, its a married man who gets up beside us to play the fiddle. Agnes and I were thinking that we had often heard of young women getting acquainted with young men on board ship and afterwards getting married after landing but that sort of work is utterly impossible here, we only see them at a distance, and those who have brothers on board have to get permission from the Doctor to meet half way along the deck and have a chat, if we had had male friends on board we would have thought this rather hard but as it is we don’t care although we don’t see a single man. 55
Discipline was also strict on the Crusader, which
took William Shennan to Melbourne in 1870, with the single girls being debarred from the deck in the evening and forbidden to speak to the young men or even the married couples. 56
As in any community, shipboard life was not always harmonious, and tensions and disputes were regularly reflected in passengers’ diaries. The twenty-eight cabin passengers aboard the North Briton in 1837 were, according to William Hamilton, composed of ‘clergymen of different classes and adventurers of different ranks and characters’, some of whom ‘seek amusement in disgusting ribaldry’. Hamilton, who enjoyed the voyage, criticized those who complained about the quality of the food or who frittered away the time in ‘idle talk’ rather than in ‘reading and patient application to study’. Even his colleagues did not escape censure. One in particular, Mr Lillie, was too worldly for Hamilton’s liking, while the wife of another, Mrs Clow, was adjudged by Hamilton to be ‘less amiable ’ than her husband, and by fellow cabin passenger Mr Tait to be ‘a coarse vulgar looking woman … [whose] mind somewhat resembles her outward appearance. She talks too much and seems to love to rail.’ 57 When John Sceales of Edinburgh and his wife travelled to Sydney in the steerage of the North Briton a year later, there were twenty-two cabin and eighteen steerage passengers, although one of the former fell overboard en route. Sceales complained about the proximity of the ship’s pigs to their living quarters, about an abusive and imperious first mate who on one occasion ordered his mess to extinguish all lights at nine p.m., and about a demanding fellow passenger who expected Mrs Sceales to dance attendance on his wife and newborn child. 58 Aboard the Blenheim in 1840, Jessie Campbell quarrelled with the steward about allegedly inadequate water rations, with one of her maids for insolence, and with her fellow cabin passengers, who, she claimed, were idle, of ‘disagreeable temper’ or had indisciplined children. One of the two doctors, Dr Sutherland, was small and plain, a well-educated Caithness gentleman’s son with two brothers in the East India Company’s service, ‘but not by any means I should think a clever youth’; his colleague, the obliging Dr Campbell, ‘may be a good doctor but you would never think so from his manner, he speaks with such a Highland accent and expresses himself so ill you would think he had not spoken English till he was at least twenty’. 59 John Chalmers, who sailed to India in 1855, entertained a very low opinion of three Baptist missionaries on his ship. ‘I pity the poor heathens they go to convert,’ he wrote to his parents in Aberdeen, after the missionaries had refused to contribute to a whip-round for the crew following the crossing of the Equator and berated the captain for allowing such a ‘sinful upholding of superstition and the worship of a heathen god’. 60
Adventurers And Exiles_The Great Scottish Exodus Page 30
