The Exile Breed

by Charles Egan

  Again and again the priest repeated the blessing, as Luke and the families dropped to their knees.

  ‘Per istam sanctam Unctionem…’

  ‘How many dead now?’ the priest asked him.

  ‘Seven.’

  Next day.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Ten.’

  Day after day.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Twenty two.’

  Then there were no more shrouds. For some days, he was able to use old sails, which he had cut up to use as shrouds, but these too, ran out. Bodies were stripped of clothes by the families, or those nearby, and the victims were dispatched to the sea stark-naked.

  The clothes were sold by auction. Clothes were valuable. Sometimes fights broke out at these ‘auctions’, and then it fell to Luke to supervise them, sometimes taking the bidding himself. He had no interest in buying clothes himself, knowing well the risk of fever.

  And still the fever spread. He spent hours picking the lice out of his clothes and blanket, fearful that they were carrying fever. He knew the only way to kill them properly was to boil the clothes, but there was little chance of that. Sometimes, he wondered whether the lice were the real cause of the fever, or just a superstition he had picked up in the mountains in County Mayo. But who else would understand the reason for boiling clothes, far less dispose of them without selling them?

  They hit a second storm, but after two days, it too had calmed.

  Then the third storm came. This one lasted longer and was far more violent. For some time, Luke stood at the stern, watching the lightning flashing from horizon to horizon. It became continuous and the thunder roll went on without a break. Then the rain came, pouring down in a torrent of water. The wind rose and the waves became mountainous. Still Luke stayed above, drenched to the skin, but almost exultant. It brought to mind the Big Wind of 1839. He knew he was in danger, but the sheer power of the storm overawed him.

  ‘Luke, in the name of God what are you doing?’ Tyler grasped him by the shoulder and pulled him back sharply.

  ‘Go down to the hold, now. That’s an order. We’ve got to get the bilge pump working.’

  ‘It’s not working?’

  ‘The sailors have refused. They won’t go downside – they know there’s fever. They say the passengers should be doing it. Damned bastards, but I just can’t shift them. Get the passengers working. Do it now.’

  Luke went to do as he was ordered, but when they came to the hatch he had to help Tyler to open it. He scrambled in as Tyler shut the hatch after him with a crash.

  The women and children were screaming, convinced they were to die. Quickly, Luke selected some of the healthier men and ordered them down the ladder to the pump.

  ‘But we’re paying passengers,’ one man protested.

  ‘Aye, and you’ll be dying passengers if the ship sinks.’

  They were not strong, but they set to, two to a handle, working until they were exhausted. Then Luke had them replaced, sometimes after only half an hour, and sent them back to the decks to find more men. When he was convinced the pump was working well, he climbed back up. For fear of fever, some of the sick had been deserted by their families. Abandoned or not, there was no way of cleaning them in the darkness, and the water between the bunks swilled their filth throughout the deck,

  The air was already fetid, and became worse. The stench was unbearable, but it had to be endured. By the third day, Luke was finding it difficult to breath, gasping and inhaling deeply to gain sufficient air for his lungs. Now he had four men working each handle on the pump. He wondered how much longer he could keep the pump going.

  The fever patients, already weakened, no longer had the strength to breath. More died during those days, but the hatches remained locked, and the stinking bodies lay where they were, putrid with gangrene.

  On the fourth day the hatches were opened, and they were let out – men, women and children clambering onto the open deck, staggering and falling as the ship pitched violently. Some made their way to the rail, holding tightly as others grasped them from behind. Many lay where they were on deck, breathing the fresh sea air,

  The storm died down, and as the waves died away, the ship steadied.

  More funerals.

  ‘How many dead now, Luke?’

  ‘Thirty one.’

  Next day.

  ‘Forty.’

  Next day.

  ‘Forty six.’

  One morning, as he was stuffing oakum into cracks, Tyler called him to the rail.

  ‘Still alive, I see.’

  ‘Just about, Mr. Tyler.’

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t see you as often as I would like. I have to oversee all these fellows, you know. Takes all my time when they’re up the rigging. Mr. Starkey won’t do it. He reckons it’s not his business, that’s for the Second Mate. But the real reason is a different one. I’m the only one of the officers that speaks French. All the sailors are out of Quebec, and he can’t speak a word to them. They’re devils, they are. They pretend not to understand English, even when they do. Not that they need much overseeing when they’re on the bilge pump, and they know their lives depend on it.’

  ‘No,’ said Luke. ‘But now they know they can get the passengers on the pump. Isn’t that it?’

  ‘Yes, and we may have to keep it that way. The sailors are terrified of fever if they go down. One of them has fever already. And whether you like it or not, we’re short of sailors to work this damned ship, and we can’t afford to lose any. We’ve lost enough passengers already.’

  ‘I know. Fifty eight by my count.’

  ‘Counting again?’

  ‘Yes, Mr. Tyler.’

  Tyler shook his head. ‘You’re some fellow.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. But there wouldn’t be so many dead, nor much call for a pump if the ship weren’t leaky, would there?’

  ‘There’d still be need for one, but only an hour or two a day on the better vessels, very little on a passenger ship. But this is a lumber ship, and no one gives a damn if it sinks. It would be easier for the bastards if it did. The ship’s worth damned little, the passengers even less, and all they cause is trouble when they land at Quebec, carrying fever and whinging about the way they were treated and all that have died. I’ll tell you this Luke, it wouldn’t be like this going to an American port, that’s for sure and certain.’

  ‘Why not, Mr. Tyler?’

  ‘Because the Americans inspect them all the time, that’s why. The ship-owners, they know damned well they won’t let them in with fever, so they make bloody sure that there isn’t any. Even the Mayo ships carry fever, but there’s nothing like the numbers. Do you know, just before we left Quebec the last time, we saw the Dew Drop coming in – a Westport ship. And do you know how many had died on the crossing there? None. None at all. And she didn’t even have to stay over for quarantine at Grosse Île. But you see, she wasn’t a lumber carrier. The Dew Drop was built to take passengers. That’s not to say all passenger ships are fine, some can be just as bad as this wreck. But the ones going to Boston and New York, they have to be a better class of ship altogether.’

  ‘But how?’ Luke asked. ‘How in God’s name…?

  ‘They don’t cram them in, that’s how. But Quebec will let them in, all packed like sheep for the slaughter, just waiting to die in the quarantine sheds. I’ll tell you this, they wouldn’t dare to treat men like that unless they were going to Quebec. Like I say, the shippers don’t give a damn. All they’re doing is taking you as ballast – lumber out, passengers back. Human cargo – and no-one cares. Nothing matters to them now. Big ships they are, they have to be for the tonnage they carry. And for that reason they go into the big ports – Cork, Dublin, but most of all, Liverpool. And when they get there, when they’ve got rid of their cargo, what do they have to carry back? Quebec doesn’t need that tonnage of cargo. So you crush hundreds of them in the cargo hold, doesn
’t matter how they fit them in. There’s hardly any English among them either. All Irish, that’s what they are, taking the cheapest passage to Quebec. Through Liverpool. The Liverpool ships, they’re filthy. And they’re murderous. They all are, not just this wreck. Listen, I saw it myself in Quebec. The end of May it was. The John Bolton, sailing out of Liverpool. I saw what she was like when she came into Grosse Île. Damned near the half of them died at sea, and I reckon half of the ones who survived the sea, died at Grosse Île, either on the ship, or in the fever sheds. That ship was a disgrace to humanity. And even last year, there was nothing like this in the Quebec ships.’

  ‘So you’re saying it’s only Quebec,’ Luke said. ‘And worst this year.’

  ‘Dead right, it is. God knows I’ve crossed the Atlantic many times, and I’ve never seen it like this. Back in the spring, it began. This is my third time in the Centaurus, and I wouldn’t be here if I could have gotten off it sooner. I’ll not sign with this one again, and that’s an end to it.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Damned if I know. New York, if I can. Boston maybe. But it’s not easy. Who knows, I might have to go to New Bedford, and go on a whaler. It’s a damned rough life that though.’

  ‘I’d heard that. You’ve been whaling, have you?’

  ‘Indeed. I’ve whaled all over. The southern oceans, that’s where I spent my years on the whalers. Chasing the southern right whale along the Roaring Forties. All round Antarctica, and back through Cape Horn. Doubled the Horn three times, I did, Valparaiso to Rio. But it’s a young man’s game, so I shipped home to Quebec, trying to find easier work. The lumber ships, they were good work then. But then I ended up on this wreck, and it’s worse than any whaler I can tell you. Same with all the Quebec fleet. So it’s back to whaling for me, I’m thinking.’

  He nudged Luke.

  ‘So what about you? What are you planning?’

  ‘I’m trying to get out to some lads I know working the rails out in Pennsylvania. I worked with them on a gang back in England. Six years building railways in every part of the country. From what we’ve heard back in Mayo, there’s good money on the American railways, and that’s where I’m aiming to get. It was one of my friends – Martin Farrelly – that advised me to come this way. Wrote a letter from Pennsylvania saying it was impossible to get into the American ports, and advised Quebec. Some of the Irish fellows I knew on the railways have worked the forests, just like you told me. Then they crossed the border into America to work the rails with Martin. I might try the same. First the forests. Then the railways.’

  Just before dawn the following day, two corpses had been dragged up by Luke and the other men, and lay on the deck awaiting the priest. It was only when he saw the panic among the sailors, he realised they were in danger.

  The ship was running at high speed in the early dawn, driven by a strong wind behind, when out of the sea ahead of them loomed a huge mountain of ice. An iceberg – and they were heading directly for it. There was chaos as sailors ran up the rigging. More tumbled out of the boat, half dressing themselves as they did so. But they were very slow. Luke knew more of the sailors were down with fever, and wondered how strong the others were. He felt a moment of pure panic. To come all this way and die in the freezing Atlantic! He watched the sailors in the rigging, awed at the complexity of what they were doing. Tyler was hanging on one of the spars, screaming directions to the sailors as Starkey screamed directions to him from the deck. The captain was nowhere to be seen.

  Gradually, the ship reduced speed, and slowly – ever so slowly – began to change direction. Luke was sure now they would hit it broadside on, but as it grew in size he realised that the iceberg was further away than he had thought. For endless minutes he watched it approach.

  Abruptly, the danger was over, and he saw they would miss the iceberg. As they passed it, he stared at it, half bewitched by it. The size of it, the sheer overwhelming power of it.

  It was only then that he realised how he was shivering, whether from cold or fear, he could not tell. He wrapped his coat tighter around himself, thinking back on County Mayo. They were depending on his letter and the money it would bring, both to feed them through the rest of the famine and to bring Winnie to America.

  There would be no letter to Mayo if the ship had sunk.

  Chapter 3

  Mayo Constitution, July 1847:

  On the 7th instant, the Emily Marie of Skerries, a smack laden with Indian corn, was attacked near Inniskea, but the captain having applied to the commander of the Emerald Cutter, now stationed in Broadhaven, for the marines which were on board, the people made so desperate an attack that the marines resolutely defended the property under their care, and shot four of the plunderers dead, and wounded several others. It is to be hoped that this melancholy occurrence will put a stop to plunder on the Erris coast.

  Ireland. Luke had left Mayo because he had to leave. A vicious famine two years long – that was reason enough for hundreds of thousands to leave. But for Luke there were other reasons.

  Winnie knew that. And Eleanor was finding out.

  Eleanor had been surprised by Winnie. Luke had chosen his wife well, there was no doubt about that. She had perhaps been a little quieter before, though forceful enough when alone with Eleanor and the other women. She had taken intensely to Brigid, Eleanor’s grand-niece. That was no surprise. All the women were close to Brigid, projecting their hopes and aspirations on an orphaned child, not two years old.

  Through the growing horror of fever and famine, Winnie’s character seemed to only grow stronger. She was determined that the Ryans at least would survive. She had been devastated by Luke’s emigration, but she, like Eleanor, knew that there was no other way. Winnie was determined not to show how distressed she was, though there were times she could not hide it.

  She had become protective of her mother-in-law. Whenever corn had to be bought, Winnie would take it upon herself to go up to Kilduff and join the scramble outside Dillon’s shop. Eleanor knew that this carried a risk from fever, but Winnie would not allow Eleanor to leave the farm unless it was necessary. For fear of fever, they no longer even went to Mass.

  Not that that was necessary to understand what was happening. Eleanor always insisted on Winnie telling her what she had seen and heard. Rat-eaten bodies in the streets, people lying in the open with horrific signs of fever, the people outside the shop showing the late signs of starvation. Mud cabins beside the road pulled down over dead families with no burial at all. There were stories of bodies buried in turf banks, rumours of new evictions to come, and much more. Always, Winnie would talk of these things in a flat voice. Trying to hide her own sense of shock, perhaps? Eleanor did not know. But still, behind it all, there was the brutal resolve that the Ryan family would not suffer such horror. But could they avoid it?

  Always, Eleanor felt a dull, grey fear.

  Yes, the potato crop was looking good, but it had been the same last year. Then the blight had struck again, and destroyed most of the crop – even those that had already been dug. Now desperate people were convincing themselves that the blight was gone, but Eleanor was not so sure. The next weeks would tell much. What if the blight returned a third time? What would that mean? That the potato was finished forever as food? What then?

  Yes, they had survived the past two years. During the worst of it, Michael had been working the quarry, but more important their two sons were working, Luke as a ganger on the Famine Relief Works in the mountains, and Pat as a clerk at Knockanure Workhouse. So they had had enough cash for corn, right through the devastating potato failure. Now they would have no money from Luke until he reached America. But Pat had been kept on as a clerk in the Workhouse, and he had become the family’s sole source of money. They could still pay the rent and buy corn.

  At times, Eleanor felt guilty about this, and she suspected Winnie did too. Many families had no income at all, and very few could pay the rent and have enough left for food. It was not that the
Ryans were well-off. They had never been that, and over the past two years, Eleanor had slowly been cutting back on what the family was eating. Michael had become thin, Eleanor even thinner. Still, they were not suffering the vicious agony of outright starvation. Michael had come close to dying of fever, but after weeks of cruel pain and wild nightmares, he had survived, and she was not a widow.

  The two women started to prepare the dinner. It was mostly cabbage with very little turnip, only one old potato each, and no meat. When had they last tasted meat, even chicken?

  ‘You’re looking worried,’ Eleanor said. ‘What’s on your mind?’

  ‘A letter.’

  ‘It’ll be a long time before we see that.’

  ‘Ach, I know, I know, but still.’

  ‘Still what?’

  ‘Three months married and he went…’

  ‘I know it’s hard on you. But…’

  ‘But yes, I couldn’t have asked for better. You treat me as your own daughter, you do, yourself and Michael.’

  ‘That’s easy enough. You’re great company for an old woman. We’ll miss you when you go.’

  ‘No more than I’ll miss you. And you’re not old, so don’t be saying it.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that. And stop your fretting – you’ll have Luke waiting for you in America. You know that.’

  Winnie put down the turnip she had been peeling.

  ‘If he gets there.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. He’ll be there.’

  ‘But what if gets fever?

  ‘He won’t. He’s been close to fever enough many times in the mountains. If he was going to get it, he'd have had it by now. But it's your baby we'll have to worry about. If your baby catches the fever, it will surely die.’

  Winnie sat, patting her stomach.

  ‘Well, that's far enough away yet.’

  Eleanor sat at the table across from her. She reached across, placing her hand on Winnie's arm.

  ‘Now you're to stop worrying about it all, child. Luke will write again soon enough. You've got the baby to think about, and sure we've both got Brigid to look after too. Time will pass quick enough. Come this time next year, Luke and yourself and the new baby will be together in America.’