Allowed back on deck, Agnes squinted in the sunlight and watched young sailors scramble up rope ladders forty feet in the air to the mast platforms, then to the top of the yardarms, where they swayed like tiny dolls suspended by threads. Sails unfurled, the Westmoreland cruised full speed ahead, heading west with the wind at her back.
Agnes stared long and hard at the horizon that day, watching England fall into the sea, knowing in her heart she’d never see it again. Once the ship reached the open Atlantic, it sailed quickly, soon rounding Spain and heading south off the coast of Portugal. Favorable winds carried them past the mouth of the Mediterranean toward Madeira and Cape Verde, traveling more than a thousand miles the first week. Crashing through the waves, they entered the Tropic of Cancer and its sticky weather, rendering sleep on the lowest deck nearly impossible.
Agnes listened through the steamy blackness. Like clockwork, after the surgeon retired to his berth at nine o’clock, the crew reopened the orlop’s hatch. Officers hushed the group of waiting women who had hardened themselves to the harshness of survival. The will to live trumped all matters of the heart. To be taken as a “wife” by a sailor sometimes offered protection from rape by the other men.
The laws of land dissolved at sea. While the Westmoreland stayed within sight of England, the crew maintained some degree of decorum. Once the shore dropped out of sight, new rules took hold. Each transport ship became a society unto itself. A few, particularly those that carried clergymen, functioned with relative harmony and order. They were the exception. Most captains permitted free rein over how the sailors treated their female cargo. None of this was new to Agnes and Janet, who had seen it all in Glasgow’s alleyways.
Days turned to weeks, and the blues of sky and ocean merged into what seemed an infinite horizon. Time seemed to warp and come unhinged in the floating society. On September 11, 1836, Agnes turned sixteen somewhere off the west coast of Africa. It was a world away from Goosedubbs Street; she’d been at sea for nearly a month. Older women often adopted the younger transports, offering motherly protection against ever-eager advances from the crew. The streetwise girls were well accustomed to propositions from stinky old men who offered gin in return for sexual favors. Still, each proposition carried danger and disgust.
In their time aboard ship, Agnes and Janet witnessed things few people see in a lifetime. The Transportation Policy, in its haste to develop Australia, indiscriminately rounded up prisoners who were violent criminals, alcoholics, mentally ill, and mothers with infants. It also accepted outcasts from higher society—children born of scandal—including the rumored illegitimate daughter of a prime minister.
The long trip to Van Diemen’s Land had the curious effect of landing Agnes and Janet in a second season of summer. They cast off in August, at the height of London’s summertime heat, and arrived in December, again at summer’s peak in the Southern Hemisphere. Chasing the ships across the tropics and down to the bottom of the world, the sun unleashed merciless, unrelenting heat, day in and day out. The atmosphere dripped with humidity. As the girls baked in the stifling heat and were suffocated by the ship’s lack of ventilation, the compounded stench of decay and disease hit them like a blunt instrument. Belowdecks, the reek of vomit followed Agnes everywhere. The ship’s privies and bilges coalesced in noxious vapors from which there was no escape. Of course, there was no actual bathing because fresh water was at a premium.
At least when the weather was fair, most everyone found relief on deck, watching the horizon rise and fall into endless shades of green and blue. Topside for a luxurious breath of fresh air, Agnes startled and nearly jumped over the rail as the sound of gunfire thundered through the ship. Sailors fired pistols belowdecks, believing that gunpowder purged infectious vapors from the air. The lower decks were also fumigated by burning brimstone (sulfur) and sprinkling everything that didn’t breathe with chloride of lime. The bleaching powder covered Agnes’s bedding, her clothing, and her light brown hair.
In order to reach Australia, the Westmoreland had to sail a long way west to round Africa’s coast. As the ship crossed the tropics, Captain Brigstock watched the sky for weather that changed in a flash. Schooners fell into the path of many a rising hurricane blowing off the Sahara and Serengeti. Like Agnes, most of the female prisoners had never been on a boat before, even under the best of conditions. During storms, the wet pitching deck turned into a rolling death trap. Everyone on board, except the most experienced crew, became violently seasick as the heaving waves rose in angry chaos. The screaming wind drowned out any sound save the most frantic orders shouted through a megaphone.
The scent of the sea air changed as a storm advanced. Agnes smelled the ozone in the atmosphere as lightning crackled in billowing thunder-heads and the sky thickened with charged electricity. Turbulent clouds off Africa’s west coast erupted like enraged hordes, blotting out the sun and swallowing the ship in their fury. The seas heaved, the crew tensed, and the captain screamed directions to keep the sailors focused and alive.
With little warning, a wall of wind and water approached the ship, poised to knock it over with a deadly strike. Barefooted sailors clung desperately to the rigging, frantically trying to reef the sails as thirty-foot waves submerged the ship’s bow. The beams of the Westmoreland sprang to life, creaking and wailing under the pounding surge. Mary Talbot, an Irish convict, recorded this account of a storm while aboard ship: “During every moment of its continuance we expected to perish, and were washed out of our beds between decks, while the sea-sickness and groans and shrieks of so many unhappy wretches made the situation we were in truly distressing. . . .”28
For the orlop girls, there was nothing to do but cling to one another and wait it out. The roar of howling winds, the explosion of thunder, and the crash of broken rigging assaulted the prisoners who shivered belowdecks. Bodies, Bibles, and everything else not secured flew about the cabin. Surgeon Superintendent Ellis lashed the sick to their beds with the coarse ropes used on deck. The insane cried out in agony while the intensity of the tempest swallowed all but the loudest screams. Two hundred three terrified women and children had no choice but to huddle together in the soaking darkness until the storm subsided or the ship broke asunder.
Force-five gales tore some convict ships to pieces. Passengers who were hit by a falling mast or spar died instantly. Most didn’t know how to swim and expired in panicked drowning amid the raging upheaval in the open sea. At least six convict ships sank in ocean storms, taking the lives of 246 women.29 The year before Agnes’s transport, the Neva departed Cork filled to capacity with transports. After five months at sea, it hit a reef and crashed on the rocks off King’s Island, located at the northwestern tip of Van Diemen’s Land. The wreck claimed the lives of 151 women, 55 children, and 18 crew members.30
Fortunately, the Westmoreland survived. Between episodes of frightening intensity, Agnes’s saga unfolded with monotonous regularity, marked by the maddening toll of the bells every half hour. On some days, #253 gave thanks for having a place to sleep, recalling the nights she’d spent wandering the streets of Glasgow with Janet and Helen. Every morning at sunrise, she heard the heavy hatch creak open as the Officer of the Guard unchained the locks. A burst of light in her face signaled that it was time, once again, to put her bare feet on the slippery floor.
Temperatures rose with a vengeance as the Westmoreland navigated the tropics. A month at sea, not a bed lay empty in the one-room hospital. On September 19, seventeen-year-old Jane Thompson stumbled into the infirmary, coughing up blood. Surgeon Ellis diagnosed her with hemoptysis, a severe lung infection that he treated with bloodletting or purging. The girl who had been transported for stealing a purse spent the rest of the journey wasting away in sick bay.
Within six weeks of leaving Woolwich, the Westmoreland reached the equator. It was September 24, and she was headed southeast into the Gulf of Guinea off Africa’s coast. The winds were steady and the sky beautifully clear that morning, as Janet and Agnes rose to m
uster with the banging of pots and pans. The ship had crossed the equator during the first morning watch, and now that the sun was up, the crew prepared for a special visit from King Neptune. A rambunctious din exploded on the main deck when the strong door sprung open and two sailors—dressed in grass skirts, painted in blackface, and adorned with strange sigils—enthusiastically motioned the women on deck. The fully intoxicated boys were amusing, particularly because the sun had just risen above the horizon. A much grander spectacle grabbed Agnes’s immediate attention. It was King Neptune, the ruler of all oceans, incarnated by a tattooed sailor wearing the skin of a porpoise and a crown of seaweed in his hair, and holding a trident.
Blindfolded and stripped to the waist, two cabin boys and one young mate, Neptune’s pollywogs, stood ready to be initiated into this ancient mariners’ tradition. This was their first venture across the equator. Once initiated, they were allowed to pierce their ears and call themselves sailors of the Seven Seas. First, one of the “old salts” shaved their heads. Then the boys were ordered to kneel on deck and kiss Neptune’s belly, conveniently covered with a combination of grease and bilge residue. As a final insult, the initiates were forced to drink from Neptune’s cup, a disgusting concoction prepared by the crew and laced with the surgeon’s strongest laxatives. The tribute to the ruler of all oceans unfolded with elaborate and exaggerated pomp and circumstance, much to the prisoners’ shock and delight. As children of the streets, the girls found humor in the most unlikely places. Appreciating such absurdity, Agnes enjoyed it to the fullest. It felt good to giggle, arm in arm with Janet, laughing at the hapless initiates, releasing tension, and feeling for a moment like a carefree young girl.
Some captains banned the King Neptune ritual altogether, fearing a breakdown in discipline among the crew. Fortunately, Captain Brigstock maintained a fairly tight ship. He tolerated drunkenness to a point but had a hand ready to take up the lash if necessary. The captain stood at the helm, observing the festivities with detached amusement, taking advantage of the good weather, and allowing the crew and the women some levity before the final stretch of their transit.
By now, everything and everyone was for sale. When fresh food ran low, cooks sometimes sold precious remnants to the highest bidder, trading a piece of maggot-free beef for sexual favors in the galley. At this point in the journey, Agnes and her shipmates had fallen into biological synchrony and began sharing the same menstrual cycle. Everyone knew when a woman had missed her period. This was the time when pregnancies, begot by the crew, were discovered and seasickness merged into morning sickness. Birth control was primitive at best. Women douched with their daily allowance of dirty water. Some found protection using a cup made of beeswax. Even back in England, only the wealthy could afford “British overcoats,” a condom made from sheep membranes. Crew members made many promises to their shipboard “wives,” but even if they wanted to marry the mother of their child, the captain rarely allowed them to leave his service. Their sons and daughters would be delivered under different skies and different stars in another hemisphere.
The ship continued south, and even the night skies began to change. No longer could Agnes see the North Star that shone above Glasgow. A new constellation, the Southern Cross, began to rise above the horizon as the heat remained oppressive. Seasickness assaulted all but a very few as raging seas pounded the ship. Passage through the tropics continued into early October, while “inflammatory fever,” dysentery, and pleurisy swept through the lowest deck. Elevating the girls’ misery to a new plateau, common symptoms for dysentery were described as follows: “Violent griping and purging, great pain in the abdomen with great thirst, stools consist almost entirely of blood and are very offensive; tongue is coated with a brown fur.”31
Now nearly two months at sea, Surgeon Ellis had treated 160 of the 185 prisoners, many requiring multiple infirmary stays. Two women presented the classic symptoms for scurvy—bleeding gums and bleeding under the skin—and were promptly administered extra doses of lime juice and sugar. Women who were pregnant when they boarded ship began to require medical treatment. On October 6, the day the Westmoreland entered the Tropic of Capricorn, Sarah Slow was admitted to sick bay for disability and pregnancy. The thirty-one-year-old fresh-faced governess had received a life sentence for forgery.
In the ninth week at sea, on strong steady winds, the ship finally headed due east again, recrossing the Greenwich meridian just west of the Cape of Good Hope. The irony of passing the Cape of Good Hope was not lost on the women. The voyage lapsed into an eternity. As they crossed the opposite side of the earth, propelled by the powerful winds along the Roaring Forties, the waters of the Atlantic merged into the Indian Ocean. The brutal sun, nearing its zenith, chased them all the way around the globe. Temperatures belowdecks often exceeded 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Tempers erupted in the stinky, cramped quarters. The nonstop use of two water closets provoked daily fights. There was no singing belowdecks, not even for Agnes.
Somewhere mid-ocean, after weeks of suffering from seasickness and constipation, Agnes lost her humor and good spirits, turning rambunctious and angry. Surgeon Ellis recorded #253’s behavior in a word: “Bad.”32 Janet, on the other hand, he described as “orderly.”33 Agnes was lucky to hang on to her hair as she walked a fine line trying the patience of the surgeon, the man responsible for disciplining the prisoners. Thankfully, Mr. Ellis was progressive for his time and disputed the effectiveness of head shaving. Many women dreaded losing their hair more than any other punishment, but there would be no shearing on his watch. In 1833, Ellis wrote: “when this is once done, in place of bringing about a better conduct it renders them still more incorrigible, fancying as they do, that they have suffered the last and worse degradation. . . .”34
On some transport ships, the surgeon superintendent flogged misbehaving girls with pieces of rope whipped across their arms and the backs of their legs. Others locked offenders inside a narrow box on the upper deck. Although this punishment generally quieted male convicts, “women wailed so loudly, and used their tongues so freely, that it was found necessary to place a cistern of water on top of the box.”35 A fiery diatribe from inside the box was quenched immediately by this soaking punishment.
The Westmoreland was a world unto itself, where lives began and ended between the masts. As the ship made her way through the Indian Ocean, Sarah Robinson gave birth in a water closet to her second child. The twenty-six-year-old had stolen clothing and received a sentence of seven years’ transport. She had attempted to conceal her pregnancy, although her berth mates knew the truth and kept a close eye on her condition. About midnight on October 18, another prisoner heard the cries of an infant. Surgeon Superintendent Ellis recorded what happened next: “The woman who had suspected her state immediately ran to the closet and actually drew out of the pan a female child apparently arrived at the full period. The miserable mother was found in a state from which she was, with difficulty, aroused. On the removal of the placenta which it was found necessary to do by the introduction of the hands, hemorrhage followed and for two days to an alarming extent, but which was eventually controlled.36
Dawn broke and the Westmoreland rocked the newborn and her exhausted mother in its oaken arms. Sarah and her namesake baby were safe and alive for today, but Elizabeth Booth became the first casualty of the journey. The forty-year-old died from apoplexy the day after little Sarah was born.
Burial at sea was one of the few traditions in British society that class did not govern. Captain Brigstock commanded Surgeon Superintendent Ellis, the entire crew, and every able prisoner onto the upper deck for a somber ceremony. In life, the British captors treated their chattel like animals. In death, they extended dignity. The crew carried Elizabeth Booth on a plank, inside a plain sack weighted with ballast and covered by the Union Jack. The captain read from the standard burial service: “We . . . commit her body to the deep, to be surrendered into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up her dead.
”37 The plank was lifted, and Elizabeth’s body slipped from beneath the flag into the sea, where it quickly vanished from sight. The ship never stopped moving, not even for the dead. Agnes looked over the railing at the retreating wake and felt the closeness of death. Sharks began following the Westmoreland, waiting for more corpses to be dropped overboard.
The strange land was still a long way away, but at least the heat abated when the ship left the tropics. On the twenty-seventh of October, Surgeon Ellis made this entry in his log: “We soon began to experience a more congenial climate, the temperature had much downwards [sic], the weather was moderate and clear, and its beneficial effects were soon observable in the increased activity and improved looks of the prisoners.”38
Tranquility, however, was short-lived. On November 11, twenty-one-year-old Anne Sergeantson went into labor. The redhead from Hull gave birth to a baby girl in the infirmary, delivered about one month prematurely. Six days later, the infant passed away after suffering from diarrhea and convulsions.39 Once again, Captain Brigstock mustered the women and crew on deck. The baby girl, wrapped in white muslin from the surgeon’s supplies, lay on the lee gangway until her mother pressed a final kiss and witnessed her quick descent into a watery grave.
The Tin Ticket: The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women Page 13
