Her captain and part-owner was 30-year-old Irish-born Thomas Boyle, who installed his brother William as third mate and purser. A third Boyle, J.H. Boyle, appears to have been employed as the officer in charge of overseeing the provisions of the ship for her voyage to Australia, but his relationship to Thomas and William, if any, is unknown. One of several misconceptions regarding the Ticonderoga is the notion that she had previously served as a cattle transport. Her extra deck would appear to have been suited to the task of accommodating several hundred live beasts in hastily erected stalls, and some have even pointed to this as the source of the disease that later ravaged her. Several former passengers later mentioned this supposed episode in the ship’s history in letters and recollections, but researchers have discounted it as a rumour, its origins now forgotten in time. Perhaps cattle spreading disease was an easier notion to accept than it having been brought on board by the passengers themselves.
8
Emigrants and numbers
From a crisis to find enough able bodies to rescue the 1852 Australian wool clip, the British and colonial governments now found that there were not enough ships to carry the deluge of those who suddenly wanted to go. Everyone, it now seemed, was determined to participate in this ‘great race’ south to Victoria to make their fortune before—as they had seen happen in California—the gold started to peter out. The statistics speak for themselves. In 1850, just over 16,000 emigrants, both assisted and private, made their way to Australia from the United Kingdom. In 1851, that figure jumped to 21,532. However, 1852 saw an extraordinary increase to 87,881 people leaving for Australia, making it the highest in the 50-year period between 1830 and 1880.1
The Board, for years having done its best to spruik the benefits of Australia with limited success, now found that it was swamped with applicants, and the ships it had previously relied on to transport its assisted emigrants were no longer available. These had long departed, scattered across the world’s oceans, having filled their berths with the far more prosperous class of private passengers willing to pay their own way and delivering the shipowners a much larger profit per head.
The Board now scrambled to find new ships. In 1850, to increase passenger numbers, the relative luxury of a private cabin—for those few passengers able to afford it—was abolished, with everyone now corralled into the single class of steerage. They soon found, however, that few shipowners were interested in applying for the assisted emigrant trade when better-paying private passengers were willing to fill their berths. In Liverpool alone, shipping lines were struggling with a waiting list of over 7000 unassisted emigrants, having already shipped 6000 over the previous twelve months. Pressure came from the other side of the world too, as the Board’s agent in Melbourne now recommended that vessels of no less than 800 tons be hired to bring over much larger numbers of the kinds of people who were not likely to head straight to the goldfields as soon they set foot on the wharf. The Board therefore had little choice but to look to a class of ships previously uncontemplated: those big, fast, twin-deck ‘extreme clippers’ of America.
Poring over their dimensions and sailing records, the Board discovered, to its considerable relief, that not only did these big new ships conform to British statutory regulations regarding the movement of assisted passengers, but that the mortality rate on board was in fact slightly lower than on smaller vessels. In addition, the Americans themselves—having experienced the boom time of emigration with the California gold fever—were now keen to revisit their success in this new rush to Australia, and were preparing to expand their reach with several large and new clippers. The economics added up as well. Whereas a smaller vessel that could offer more comfortable accommodation needed a higher number of privately paying passengers to make a profit, the larger ships’ economies of scale could still make a tidy sum crowding a greater number into one large class.
When the Board’s assessors did the figures, it was realised that some of these ships were capable of carrying close to a thousand people at time. Here, however, they had reason to pause. They were experienced in transporting numbers in the hundreds, sometimes up to 500 in a single vessel, but given the ever-present hoodoo of disease at sea, how feasible would it be to transport up to double those numbers at once? Plying back and forth across the Atlantic on voyages of a couple of weeks’ duration was one thing; two or three months or more at sea travelling to the opposite side of the globe was a far more daunting prospect.
Whatever reservations the Board may have had about commissioning such large vessels, no fewer than four were nevertheless invited to tender, and all four were quickly accepted and the leases drawn up. They were the 1300-ton Wanata, virtually new from her builder’s yard in New Brunswick; the 1495-ton German-owned Borneuf; the enormous 1625-ton Marco Polo—in fact, a triple-decked ship—and, the smallest as well the last to tender, the Ticonderoga. In 1852, each of these ships would make their way, heavily laden with passengers, to Victoria.
Anticipating the rush in demand to emigrate, the imperial government passed An Act to Amend and Consolidate the Laws Relating to the Carriage of Passengers by Sea 1852, known otherwise as simply the Passengers Act, setting out specific standards of accommodation, victualling and accountability with which British passenger ships were bound to comply. The new regulations stated, among other things, that every passenger be issued three quarts of water daily; sleeping berths should be not less than 6 feet in length and 18 inches in width, and that a complete and detailed list, the Master’s List, be made of each embarking passenger.
Once the owners of the Ticonderoga signed the contract, her master, Captain Boyle, informed the Board that she would indeed be capable of accepting the maximum number of 630 ‘statue adults’ legally permitted for her tonnage, at a cost to the Board of £17 each, undercutting the next nearest quote of £18, 17s and 6d. What constituted a ‘statue adult’, however, is—like tonnage—somewhat complicated. It was defined by the Passengers Act as being any passenger over fourteen years of age, or any two under fourteen. Infants less than one year old—and on the Ticonderoga there were many of those—did not count at all. This partially accounts for the uncertainty surrounding the exact number of individuals who boarded the Ticonderoga at Birkenhead. Official statistics differ. According to the Victorian Health Officer’s report written after the voyage, there were 811, whereas the British Parliamentary Papers state 797. The Ticonderoga’s own passenger records state a total of 814. Whatever the exact figure, it represented a sound profit for her owners who would receive half the per head fee on embarkation, the other half on arrival.
Deep within the bowels of the British Public Record Office in Kew, just outside London, a list of ships chartered by the Board still exists. Despite the passing of more than a century and a half, the Ticonderoga’s contract remains in excellent condition, its terms laid out in the superb steel-nib copperplate handwriting of the day:
‘Ticonderoga’: Tonnage 1280: Colony—Melbourne:
Contract Price—£17:0:0
Date to be ready—26 July (1852) Birkenhead
Date of Departure—4 August (1852), Birkenhead
Brokers—Lindsay
Surgeons—J.C. Sanger, J.W.H. Veitch2
It goes on to break down the embarking emigrants into categories: 160 married men and an equal number of married women; 106 single females but only 68 single males; 126 boys under fourteen; 147 girls under fourteen. The manifest also mentions nationality: 140 English, 643 Scots, but only a handful of Irish—just fourteen. The quoted tonnage (which as stated varies in other sources) of 1280 conforms roughly to the permitted amount of statue adults, entered in the contract as ‘630½’. Underneath this figure, however, is a small but neat pencil mark reading ‘598’, undated, and with no other reference or explanation. Perhaps an official in the Board sensed, presciently, that at 630—a figure that in fact translated to several hundred more actual living souls—the Ticonderoga would be seriously over-crowded.
9
Depar
ture
By the third day at the Birkenhead emigration depot, the anticipation brewing among the hundreds of emigrants soon due to depart on the Ticonderoga was palpable. For people used to the quiet routine of rural village life, the past few days had been a whirlwind.
However, after three days of meals delivered and eaten around their individual ‘mess’ table with fourteen or so complete strangers, then being required to scour and clean their own utensils; of every morning having to roll up their bedding and sweep out their berths; of being interviewed by the imposing Captain Patey and found to be of ‘good character’; of being medically examined and found fit to travel, they were—ready or not—about to face the great journey of many weeks at sea. The average age of the emigrants was somewhere around the mid-twenties, and at this stage the impending voyage still had the qualities of a great adventure: breathlessly anticipated, but utterly unknowable.
The depot only had space for around 400 at a time, but the Ticonderoga would be carrying twice that number, so a complicated loading timetable was drawn up lasting several days as groups of passengers underwent their processing. At this stage, the democracy of the depot began to come into question. The first to be loaded were the English, all 140 of them, mainly from Somerset and Gloucestershire, who by virtue of their birth right were given the best bunks towards the relatively stable stern of the ship. Next were loaded the Scots, then finally the Irish, who crowded into the poorer quarters in the bow.
Captain Thomas Boyle was proud of his ship, as he was of his contract to carry emigrants to Australia, and the responsibility that entailed. To prepare the Ticonderoga for the longest voyage it had undertaken as well as the largest number of people it had carried, he expended considerable effort and no small expense employing a small army of ship’s carpenters to reconfigure her interior, with a view to achieving the highest possible standards of comfort and hygiene for his passengers. To this end, a number of features had been included. First, no less than twenty newly designed flushing water-closets—toilets—for both male and female passengers were installed at strategic positions on the upper deck. At a time when such innovations were only just beginning to appear in the newest London houses, this was indeed a significant advance on the traditional ship’s ‘heads’, in which people had to position themselves over a hole in a wooden board jutting out from the side of the ship suspended precariously above the water. Instead, the Ticonderoga’s modern devices used gravity-fed seawater tanks to flush away waste, which had to be manually pumped full every day. It was undoubtedly the first time anyone on board had seen anything like them. Another was the inclusion of four lead-lined bath tubs, each measuring a generous 6 feet by 2 feet. Admittedly, they could only be filled with salt water (stores of freshwater would be strictly used only for drinking and cooking), and would be used exclusively by the ship’s male population, but they were an advancement nonetheless.
Under the forecastle, Boyle had sealed off the main deck towards the bow with a solid bulkhead, beyond which were his crew’s quarters. The remainder of the previously open deck was now divided into three sections: a men’s ablution area, a central married quarters and, aft, the area for single women. This also now incorporated two new ‘hospitals’ or sick bays, the women’s situated at the rear of the single women’s quarters and the men’s adjacent to their ablution area near the bow. At equidistant points, narrow gangways led down to the lower deck. This too had been similarly renovated with another single men’s area in the bow and a larger married quarters taking up midship and the stern. The gangways linked the ship’s two main areas for married people and their families, as well as the lower men’s area with the male ablution section. There was also a new ‘teacher’s room’ for group reading and lessons, and a ‘matron’s room’ where the young women could be given their own lessons, though these were of a somewhat different nature to the men’s.
With the prevailing belief, before the advent of modern medicine, that sickness and disease were largely airborne, great care had been taken by Boyle to ensure the flow of fresh, ‘clean’ air throughout his ship. Lattice wooden bulkheads had therefore been installed rather than solid wood, as well as another innovation, wind sails.1 This basic air-conditioning system was similar to those found in mines, whereby vents on the open upper deck scooped up fresh air and distributed it throughout the ship’s large and complicated interior. In rough or stormy weather, however, when the passengers arguably needed fresh air the most, they would be disengaged.
As well as the gangways, which themselves aided ventilation, extra openings had also been fitted between the decks. One of them, opening the single women’s area to one of the married quarters below it, had steel bars bolted across it at 6-inch intervals to prevent any interaction between the two. Such was the morality of the times. Although believed to be imperative to good health at the time, this deliberate opening up of the ship’s internal passages would, later in the voyage, allow the free circulation of something far more sinister than simply fresh air.
To bring at least some light into the lower deck, Boyle had 10-inch diameter windows or scuttles cut through to illuminate the stern area, with more situated 12 feet apart right around the deck. To enhance what light there was, the ship’s entire interior had been covered in several coats of whitewash. By far the largest task undertaken by Boyle’s carpenters, however, was the fitting of the Ticonderoga’s system of wooden bunks, which needed to be constructed and installed in their hundreds. Like some vast, two-tiered filing system, they were hammered, bolted and dowelled, piece by piece, around the ship’s solid centre, whence they emanated like rows of wooden petals. New straw-stuffed mattresses were provided for each, as were new blankets. For hygiene, passengers were forbidden from bringing on board bedding of their own. These bunks, however, were small and narrow, and separated by just 3 feet from the next. This, in fact, was more space than the mere 2 feet of space between bunks as stipulated by the Passengers Act. A flimsy wooden wall protected modesty to some extent, and a thin curtain could be drawn across the foot of each bunk, but privacy on board the ship barely existed.
The Ticonderoga also exceeded the prescribed headspace between decks, as laid out in the Act that in 1852 had been amended by parliament but that had not come into effect by the time she sailed. A mere 6 feet of headspace between decks of emigrant ships due to sail through the tropics was all that was required by law, but the Ticonderoga exceeded this with a clearance of 7 feet, 10 inches in her main deck, and 6 feet, 11 inches in the lower.2
She was, however, still awfully dark. Despite Boyle’s renovations, it was simply not possible for light to penetrate the ship’s interior. Even on bright days, the lower deck in particular was a place of perpetual gloom, the strong but thick glass of the scuttles allowing for little more than a hazy, green-tinted illumination. In particular, those passengers allotted the lower bunk on the lower deck were destined to spend a large part of the voyage in a perpetual night. This is one of the reasons, it has been suggested, that no passenger diaries have survived from the Ticonderoga’s journey. Even among those literate enough, there was little light by which to write them.
Deeper into the ship, underneath her second deck, were the Ticonderoga’s holds, inside which her crew of 48 had been toiling for many days, loading the tremendous amount of stores that would be required to keep nearly 800 people alive for the next three months and more. This being virtually the longest voyage that any ship of the time was capable of undertaking—close to the farthest distance from one point on the globe to another, and with no scheduled stops along the way—provisions were chosen more for their qualities of long-term preservation than their nutrition. Although the Ticonderoga’s journey was expected to last between 80 and 90 days, provisions to last 120 days were taken on board; hence her holds needed to be big. Among the larger items she would carry would be:
• 520 barrels (being the equivalent of 48, 711 pounds) of navy bread—a type of hard, simple biscuit
• fifteen ti
erces of ‘India mess’ or preserved beef (‘tierce’ being an antiquated unit of measurement amounting to 42 imperial gallons), plus 47 tierces of India pork
• 50 barrels of split peas
• 53 barrels of ‘finest raw sugar’ amounting to 10,496 pounds
• 27 barrels of rice
• 120 boxes of raisins
• eight casks (580 gallons) of mustard
• five ‘puncheons’ (7418 pounds) of treacle
• nineteen casks of pickles.
Added to this list were considerable stores of tinned foods (still a relatively new and not entirely trusted innovation), such as soup and bouilli (stewed or boiled meat), raw coffee, preserved potatoes, beef suet, pepper and salt.3
On private vessels on which passengers paid their own way, the luxury of live animals could be included for fresh meat on the voyage. This was not so for the assisted emigrants of the Ticonderoga. Fresh water was also an essential item, and one notoriously difficult both to transport and preserve. The Passengers Act allowed for just over three and a half litres to be provided per passenger per day, and on the upper deck of the Ticonderoga, Captain Boyle had installed several large wooden water casks, into which he had pumped nearly 353,000 litres from the Mersey River, which he aimed to keep fresh with the addition of charcoal. Nevertheless, it would struggle to remain so on the long journey to Australia.
Hell Ship Page 6