James Veitch’s voyage to Melbourne—like that of the Ticonderoga herself—would be his first as well as his last. There is no evidence to suggest that Veitch had any intention to settle in Australia when he departed Birkenhead in August 1852, yet within weeks of his arrival he had forfeited his passage money home, travelled far from the sea to inland Victoria, and for the remainder of his long life did not set foot on board a ship again. What his father made of his son’s decision can only be guessed at. James Veitch, however, no doubt had his reasons.
James William’s father, also named James, was born in 1783 in Selkirk, Scotland, and had retired by the time his son left for Australia on his first appointment with the Board, a position he unquestionably helped his son to secure. As a young assistant, he had served at sea with distinction in the Napoleonic Wars, taking part in various engagements such as the Battle of Cape Ortegal, the final chapter of the Trafalgar Campaign of 1805, then as surgeon on several ships, and finally running naval hospitals in the British territories of the Caribbean, such as at English Harbour in Antigua.
At sea, Veitch worked in the horror of the ships’ surgeries, small rooms painted red from floor to ceiling to hide the blood. And of blood there was a great deal indeed. In naval battles, cannon balls tore off heads and limbs, or sprayed shards of wooden splinters that cut through human flesh as if it were butter. Anaesthetic was a rope clenched between the teeth and, if the screaming patient was lucky, a swig of rum. The primary instrument of surgery was the hacksaw. At the height of a battle, buckets of blood and amputated limbs were emptied over the side, to be returned and filled again. More often than not, what was left of the mangled seaman was buried at sea a short time later, or after the infection had set in.
James Veitch descended from a long line of lowland Scots of Norman extraction, ‘Veitch’ supposedly being a corruption of ‘La Vache’, French for cow, derived from one William La Vache, a minor noble of the thirteenth century whose family proceeded to own cattle for the next few centuries. There is even a Veitch crest featuring a trio of long-horned Highland bulls above the Latin Famam Extendimus Factis, ‘we spread our fame through our deeds’. There is—or rather was—a castle at Dawyck on the Scottish borders which was demolished in 1830 and replaced by a somewhat gaudy house of the early Victorian style.
As his career went on, James observed enough of the horrors of primitive amputations and the horrendous associated loss of life to begin to experiment with replacing the coarse threads traditionally used to stitch wounds and arteries with fine gut sutures. As a result, he achieved both a higher survival rate and lower incidences of infection.8 His findings were put into a book somewhat gruesomely titled, Observations on the Ligature of the Arteries, Secondary Haemorrhage, and Amputation at the Hipjoint, which was published in 1824 and changed naval surgery forever. He became surgeon to the Royal Naval Hospital at Plymouth, was admitted as a member of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh, then as Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1822, and eventually rose to ‘deputy inspector of hospitals and fleets’ before retiring to a fine house in Ovington Square, Brompton, in the heart of London’s very fashionable West End. His travels with the Royal Navy saw him publish extensively on a wide variety of medical subjects, such as his 1818 ‘Letter on the Non-contagious Nature of the Yellow Fever’, based on his observances of that disease in the West Indies, as well as some more nuanced papers like ‘Remarks on the Necessity of Attention to the Surface of the Body in the Treatment and Prevention of Several Complaints; With a Recommendation of the more General Employment of the Vapour-Bath’, in which he espouses such notions as ‘Temperature, acting on the surface of the body like opium, and wine acting on the stomach, is capable of imparting vigour to the human frame’.9
James married one Jane Booker, and their first child, James William Henry, is listed as having been born in September 1825 in the parish of Stoke Damerel, just beside the great naval depot of Portsmouth, where James would have been stationed. The young man seems to have followed his father into medicine early, being apprenticed to a surgeon from the ages of sixteen to 21, and in 1849 the census records him as having his own practice in either Commercial Road or Commercial Way, Peckham, a suburb in London’s south-west.
While in London, James William was admitted into the prestigious Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, an institution devoted to the compounding and dispensing of medicines and a precursor to present-day pharmacy. With a lineage reaching back to the early seventeenth century, it still operates from a magnificent baroque hall built immediately after the Great Fire of London in 1666. Fully qualified as an apothecary, and with his father’s influence, James William then gained a position near his parents in Portsmouth as one of the physicians at the large Portsea Island Union workhouse, a substantial institution whose large infrastructure had been thoroughly rebuilt and upgraded by 1846. Several hundred impoverished inmates were housed in its large and intimidating rows of red-brick dormitories, with one section being designated as a workhouse asylum. An 1844 report paints a typically unsympathetic nineteenth-century assessment of its unfortunate inmates:
26 Lunatics; 15 Females and 11 Males. 7 were Epileptics and 2 Idiots. Many of the Patients, although not strictly speaking, imbecile persons, were individuals of weak intellect. Some of them, however, were decidedly Insane, and occasionally violent and unmanageable unless restrained, and some of them were labouring under delusions.10
It is unknown in exactly what section of the Portsea Island Union the young Dr Veitch worked, but it was here that he would face his first test as a physician in an outbreak of one of the most brutal and least understood diseases of the time. In July 1849, a series of inmates began to exhibit certain symptoms that sent a deep chill through the doctors of the Portsea Island Union workhouse. One after another, both men and women began to experience nausea, then vomiting, quickly followed by terrible diarrhoea and drastic fluid loss. Every sign pointed to the dreaded cholera morbus, the unstoppable disease that fifteen years previously had swept Britain in a pandemic lasting two years and killing more than 50,000 people.
First noted among the troops in Bengal in the early nineteenth century, cholera spread across India, Asia and Europe before arriving in the north of England by boat. It spread quickly across the British Isles—believed, like many other ailments, to be spread by airborne miasma, due to its terrible associated stench. It was not until the discovery of germs in 1864 that its true nature as a water-borne disease was understood.
By the time of the next outbreak in 1849, some improvements in sanitation had occurred, even though another 50,000 would again perish across England and Wales, exacerbated by the arrival of already weak and under-nourished Irish fleeing the effects of the recent potato famine.
Portsmouth at the time was lamented as having some of the most dire poverty and poorest sanitation conditions in the country, due in part to it being a walled and fortified island town with a compressed network of dank and narrow streets compounding any illness that took hold. Set a little way back from the fine high street along which the wealthy wives of senior naval officers would regularly promenade, Portsmouth’s poorer houses were badly built, allowing damp to permeate into badly clothed human bodies through broken windows and dilapidated cellars. Rates of poverty and malnutrition were high, with mortality rates—particularly for children under five—being well above the national average. Out in the harbour, rotting convict hulks housed their own cargo of human misery.
In just two months, the epidemic tore through the Portsmouth area, taking 676 victims. The confined spaces of the Portsea Island Union were not immune, but the resident doctors did their utmost to limit the impact on their inmates. In the crisis, James Veitch proved himself a resourceful and capable physician, his tireless efforts in reinforcing cleanliness and seeing—to the best of his abilities—to the comfort of his patients at great personal risk coming to the notice of the medical authorities. Letters praising the young Veitch were written, the most effusi
ve being that of the district medical officer, countersigned by six other prominent members of the medical establishment of the day:
We the Committee of Public Health in the Portsea Island Union, do hereby certify, that Mr James William Henry Veitch, Surgeon, was engaged by us as an additional medical assistant in consequence of the prevalence of Cholera in the union in the months of July, August and September last, and that during the whole period of his engagement he shewed very considerable skill and was most attentive in the performance of his duties; and we accord to him our best thanks. Dated the first day of October, 1849, JT Pratt, Chairman11
The commendation, as well as his prestigious name, brought Veitch to the attention of the Board. In particular, his proven ability in the face of an epidemic led them to conclude that he was the perfect candidate to assist one of their most respected surgeons, Joseph Sanger. In the middle of 1852, an offer was made to the young Veitch and, to the delight of the Board, it was accepted immediately. Should this first appointment go well, he was told, there would be many more such appointments, as competent and reliable physicians were highly sought after. For this initial journey, the fee would be limited to not more than £80, but—the Board was at pains to point out—this could escalate quickly.
Veitch was told he would be travelling on board the Ticonderoga, a fast American double-decker clipper, one of four such vessels hired by the Board to sail to Port Phillip this year, each carrying close to 800 passengers to cope with the acute demand for travel to the Australian colonies due to the discovery of gold.
The regulations regarding the amount of children, it was explained, had recently been relaxed, so there would be a large number of youngsters on board and the risk of disease would be high. The ship, however, had been meticulously fitted out with many new innovations to ensure the highest standards of cleanliness and hygiene, and her master, Captain Boyle, was as capable and as conscientious a master mariner as could be found anywhere. Only when pressed, James Veitch said that he indeed felt himself qualified for the role, and the men of the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission wholeheartedly agreed.
Eight hundred people did, however, seem rather a lot for one ship.
16
The first cases
‘Captain, I believe we have a case of typhus on board,’ said Dr Sanger to Captain Boyle, bringing him out of earshot of a group of passengers standing nearby on the upper deck. Boyle’s blood ran cold at the news, but he maintained his demeanour, not wishing the passengers to observe his unease. After all, everyone seemed to be enjoying the party.
In the first week of September, at latitude 3 degrees 19’ north; longitude 20 degrees 24’ west, the ship’s company of the Ticonderoga was in a festive mood, preparing in the next day or so to cross ‘the line’ of the equator—a significant moment on any sea voyage. Despite the heat of the tropics and at times enervating humidity to which no one was accustomed, the mood of the passengers was high. The day before, the first of the monthly scheduled changes of clothes had taken place, and the crew, assisted by many of the single men, had hauled up some of the hundreds of colourful boxes and trunks to allow people to reacquaint themselves with their possessions, transforming the Ticonderoga’s normally functional upper deck into something resembling a lively and colourful market. For many, handling again something that was personal and familiar seemed like a brief but blessed return to normality.
Meanwhile, some of the sailors were busy preparing their costumes for the time-honoured ceremony of the line crossing. In reality, these amounted to little more than bits of whatever scraps and flotsam that could be found around the ship, but the stage was soon set to welcome the King of the Deep, Neptune, his ‘wife’, Amphitrite, and several of their cohort, who would be ushered aboard and, with great flourish, interrogate the captain. ‘Where are you from?’ the sea god would ask rhetorically. ‘How long have you been out? For where are you bound?’ The captain would also be asked how many ‘children’ he had on board in need of a ‘baptising’ to mark the occasion of their first crossing. The assembled passengers, enjoying this moment of levity, ooh-ed and aah-ed at all the appropriate moments, as if watching a music hall show.
Then there was an announcement from the top of the wheelhouse through a loud hailer that those who had never before crossed the line would now be sought out and should prepare themselves for the ‘ceremony’. In the case of the Ticonderoga, this was almost everyone, so the practicalities of performing the often revolting ‘initiation’ of being shaved, covered in tar or other filth or, for the ladies, simply soaked to the skin were quietly abandoned in favour of a good deal of noise, cheering and parading around the upper deck as the equatorial sun blazed high overhead. For good theatrical measure, a few first-timers were rounded up and locked into the forecastle for a while.
Dr Sanger’s urgent words, delivered to Captain Boyle as he too was preparing to enjoy the colour of King Neptune’s antics, were met with a dread. ‘Typhus?’ he could only repeat. ‘Not scarlatina?’ But Dr Sanger was certain. The scourge of typhus had come to the Ticonderoga.
A day or so later, his grim prognosis was borne out when 28-year-old Jane Gardiner joined her daughter, Eliza, the Ticonderoga’s second victim, who had perished three weeks earlier at just four years of age. She left behind her husband, Alexander, and their sole remaining child, Robert, five. One of the Ticonderoga’s English families, the Gardiners had left their home in Northumberland full of hope for a better life. Now, barely a month later, only a shattered widower and his son remained.
There had already been a regular procession of death on board the Ticonderoga. Besides Anna Maria Hando, the infant son of Alexander and Ellen Mercer, Andrew, had been buried at sea, as had one-year-old Mary Ann Ross, Christina Jenkins, also one year of age, and tiny Margaret McJames. In at least two cases, the children’s grief-stricken mothers had thrown themselves overboard as well. As ghastly a toll as this appears to a modern reader, it was still not regarded as very much out of the ordinary in this age of prevalent disease and short life expectancies.
The three other double-decked ships hired by the Board in 1852 to make the run to Australia had also experienced a high loss of life. In the case of the large 1495-ton Borneuf, which was in fact still on its way to Geelong as the Ticonderoga set sail, 88 of the 754 passengers had not survived the voyage. All but four of these were children—mainly Scots—and all under the age of seven, with the average age being much younger. Most of these deaths were attributed to the typical wasting diseases of the poorer classes of the day: marasmus, scarlatina, measles, diarrhoea and chicken pox. Despite this, the Borneuf’s journey was regarded as a success.
The death of an adult, however, was another matter, and the passing of Jane Gardiner—an ostensibly healthy woman in her twenties—represented a grim turning point in the Ticonderoga’s voyage. Drs Sanger and Veitch had watched, helpless, as over a few days the terrible symptoms had worked their damage on the young mother: first the rash that spread from her chest then across her entire body, sparing only the palms of her hands; the temperature that raged through her constitution at up to 105ºF; the nausea, exhaustion and vomiting; the terrible aches in limbs and joints. Then, almost unbearable for her husband and child to watch, the delirium. As the fever set in, the woman’s mind became unhinged in a verbal rampage that terrified those around her in the lower deck’s claustrophobic quarters, then in the ship’s hospital. After this, she fell into a coma. Attempts to both cool her down or administer any kind of medicine were fruitless. The awful smell then led the Ticonderoga’s doctors to realise exactly what they were dealing with. It could only be typhus, and they were powerless to stop it.
* * * *
For centuries typhus had been one of the great scourges of Europe. Entire armies had been laid waste by the disease. During the wars against the Moors in 1489, it is estimated to have wiped out 17,000 Spanish soldiers during the siege of Granada. In Napoleonic times, it accounted for more French troops than did the Russians
during the retreat from Moscow in 1812. In the 1830s, 100,000 Irish died in a series of severe outbreaks and during the Crimean War of the 1850s, war wounds accounted for no more than one in six soldiers’ deaths, the rest being attributed to a variety of diseases, principally typhus.
Even as late as World War I, 3 million deaths were attributed to typhus, and despite the advances of medicine at the dawn of the twentieth century, no one had any idea how it was transmitted. It was, however, observed to act upon large amounts of people living in close, often unsanitary conditions, and hence became known by many descriptive names, including prison fever and camp fever.1 It could tear through the populations of army barracks, slums, prisons, hospitals and particularly overcrowded ships such as the Ticonderoga.
The closest anyone could come to explaining the spread of typhus was via the generally accepted ‘miasmatic theory’, by which greatly feared diseases such as cholera, the Black Death and even chlamydia were spread not by infection and contact with germs, but rather by the foul air that seemed to accompany the rapidly expanding cities of the Industrial Revolution, and that appeared to emanate in rotting organic matter. Until the advent of powerful microscopes in the late nineteenth century, the contagion vs. miasma theories competed with one another for years, with even such luminaries as Florence Nightingale believing fervently that diseases she herself witnessed wreaking death and destruction on troops in the Crimea had nothing to do with proximity to others carrying the infection, but instead were carried on the breeze. It was an enduring theory, and it accounted for the notion that fresh, clean air was the key to health in crowded situations like hospitals and ships. In such a light, the Ticonderoga’s canvas air vents were seen as a most forward-thinking innovation. Towards the 1880s, the miasma theory would gradually be overtaken by weight of evidence of germs and bacteria, but the exact causes of some diseases, including typhus, remained a mystery.
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