Then, for the hundreds on board, the ordeal of seasickness began. It is safe to assume that almost none of the passengers had experienced a voyage of any length, with the overwhelming majority never having been to sea in their lives. Now, suddenly, they were subjected to the fierce waters of the Atlantic on the longest journey in the world in conditions any present-day traveller would find utterly unbearable. As another ship’s surgeon, a Dr Skirving, observed on board a similar emigrant vessel:
Unused to the sea, seasick, homesick, cold, wet, fearful and battened down, few aggregations of human wretchedness could be much greater than was to be found … in the close dark ’tween decks of an outward-bound emigrant ship.1
The unfamiliar and debilitating bouts of nausea were bad enough, but in those first few days, the realisation dawned that it was in these few pitiful square feet of space that the indignities of illness as well as the myriad other aspects of ship life were to be endured. Married couples were allotted the berth’s top bunk, measuring 6 feet long and 3 feet wide, permitting just 18 inches per person. The same dimensions were given to single women, who were likewise expected to share a bunk, with only the single men—who slept alone—given slightly more room, their bunks measuring 6 × 2 feet. Children occupied the lower bunks in the married quarters, and as two children under fourteen years constituted a single ‘statute adult’, they were expected to arrange themselves in any cramped and uncomfortable manner they could. There was no advantage to be had for married couples without children either, as their bottom bunk would be occupied by another couple, or even another couple’s children.
In all cases, the space between the bed boards of the top and bottom bunks was a claustrophobic 18 inches, slightly less with bedclothes, meaning that virtually any raising of the head was impossible. To the side, considerably less than an arm’s length away, was the neighbouring bunk, with the only privacy being provided by a flimsy board 23 inches in height, and affording no real modesty whatever. It was into these coffin-like dimensions that the Ticonderoga’s passengers were confined every night, or when rough weather arose. Then, as with that first storm just hours after leaving Birkenhead, the porous nature of a wooden sailing ship was revealed. On that occasion, as well as many more to come over the next twelve weeks, sea water would regularly seep, drip and occasionally gush in torrents into the passengers’ living areas. Even on calm days, a wave or current could spring up unexpectedly and cascade in terrifying torrents down one of the open main hatches, making a river of the main and lower decks and soaking everything from clothing and foodstuffs to the bedding, whose straw interior quickly rotted and stank.
The Ticonderoga’s flushing water closets were indeed innovative, but at night or during a storm, they were difficult if not impossible to access, particularly for women in the voluminous skirts of the day who had to contemplate often two sets of ladders in virtual darkness. Instead, utensils of any kind were used to catch urine and other waste, and these often spilled with the movement of the ship. The smell of human beings permeated the whole ship. Sweaty clothes could only be washed sporadically, and then only in seawater tanks on the upper deck, fresh water being strictly reserved for drinking and cooking. Whale oil lamps in their braces nailed to the walls gave off at least some little light, but exuded a particular pungency of their own. Added to this was the stench of the rats—impossible to eradicate even in the newest vessels—as well as the cats assigned to catch them and their many associated stinks. Then there were the babies. Dozens upon dozens of vomiting, nappy-filling infants and toddlers crawled and cried all over the Ticonderoga. Their numbers in fact would be added to during the voyage, as pregnant women who had boarded at Birkenhead contributed no less than nineteen births at sea. It was said that the Ticonderoga’s crew, upon opening the hatches every morning, reeled back at the revolting miasma rising up from the decks below.2 Later in the voyage, when the ravages of disease took hold of the ship, the stench would defy description.
Initially, though, as the Ticonderoga tracked far out into the Atlantic, a shipboard routine of sorts began to develop, with perhaps the greatest initial shock for people accustomed to the quietness of small village life being the sudden avalanche of noise on board a large and crowded sailing ship. The hundreds of voices of the passengers—talking, arguing, breaking wind, vomiting, copulating, snoring, all in alarmingly close proximity; the constant shouts and swearing of the crew and the officers; the babel of children yelling, playing, crying; then the array of sounds emanating from the ship itself. As soon as the Ticonderoga left the heads of the River Mersey, her timbers began their endless heaving, whining chorus as she began to be pulled and twisted by the elements. Even the clawing hiss of the sea seemed to be conducted upwards through every board and every beam, amplified in the limited confines of the ’tween decks. In a storm, the noise would come crashing from above in terrifying bouts, as if the ocean itself—like a monster at the door—was attempting to batter its way in. Then there was the continual jangling of chains, sails and rigging; the thumping of feet on the decks above; the wind playing its perpetual symphony through the rigging. It all combined to make the Ticonderoga’s aural landscape a blaring, multi-layered cacophony.
The one sound that governed the rhythm of people’s lives on board, however, rang out from the ship’s bell. Like the regulator on a gigantic clock, it was this brass voice that spoke the routine of life on the long journey. The bell sounded for the passengers to rise at 7 a.m., then at the other end of the day, at 10 p.m., to go to bed. It began the ship’s day, not at midnight but at midday ceremony, as the captain and mate lowered their sextants at the sun’s zenith and Boyle uttered, ‘Make it noon, first mate’, and then the response ‘Ay ay Captain’, as the bell was struck two times in quick succession. Then, the timeglass was turned for the sand to run exactly 30 minutes, at which point the bell would be struck once to sound the half hour, and the glass turned again. So this would continue, day and night, throughout the life of the voyage.
The bell also signalled religious services (of which there were many of various denominations), heralded announcements of news or decrees from the captain or the stewards, and alerted people to go below in the face of impending weather. Most of all, it drove the pulse of shipboard life: the daily meals, around which all other activities revolved.
Captain Patey and his officials at the depot had taken considerable care in appointing from the Ticonderoga’s passengers the important roles of stewards and constables, who would manage various necessary tasks, such as the messing and meal arrangements, conducting educational lessons, and to assist the ship’s surgeons in maintaining levels of hygiene and cleanliness—a concept quite alien to some (and which, in the Ticonderoga’s case, would eventually prove impossible anyway). Nurses were likewise appointed to work in the two hospitals, particularly those whose written form demonstrated some prior medical or nursing experience. Among these were John and Mary Fanning, Presbyterians from County Coleraine near Londonderry in Ireland, travelling with their daughters, Mary and Catherine, and son, Patrick. Mary was listed as a midwife, a respected position in Irish society, and one of only two female professions to be listed in church records, the other being ‘nun’.3 Mary was thus asked to work as a nurse in the women’s hospital while John was requested for the men’s. Both readily accepted. The other skill of the Fannings was their knowledge of the Scots-Irish dialect, closely related to the Gael of the Highland Scots themselves.
Recalling the voyage to a newspaper reporter in 1917, passenger Christopher McRae from Inverness, who travelled as a teenager with his family, wrote:
To carry out established rules and conditions imposed by the Captain and the Doctors, men suitable were elected to act as constables or stewards—the names of two of them I still remember—one being Andrew Dempster, a single man. The other—a young married man named Douglas Rankin. There were many others.4
Galley assistants had also been appointed to help the cooks, along with attendants for both the mal
e and the female hospitals. Then there was the important role of ship’s schoolmaster, who would provide daily lessons for the numerous children—and some of the adults—on board. This fell to 46-year-old Charles McKay who, as a professional teacher and a graduate of Aberdeen University, was one of the most educated of the Ticonderoga’s passengers, and who also happened to be fluent in the Highland tongue, Gaelic.5 Christopher McRae believed him to be one of the most important figures on board the ship.
Far from being a destitute Highlander, McKay was travelling to Melbourne to take up the role of Vice Principal of the newly established boys’ school, Scotch College, and boarded the Ticonderoga with his wife Margaret and five children, the youngest aged two. According to his grandson, Frank McKay, it had not been an easy decision and in a brief history of the family, he describes ‘the many heart searchings before Charles McKay made the big decision to take his family to Australia and start a new life in a new world’.6
The shipboard lessons over which McKay presided were usually rudimentary in nature, offering basic instruction in English, reading, writing and simple arithmetic. For some of the children, however, these were of a higher standard than anything they had experienced at home, and for others it was their first taste of schooling altogether. A fair proportion of the adults, many of whom could neither read nor write themselves, likewise took advantage of McKay’s instruction, picking up vital skills such as the writing of their own name, as opposed to the leaving of just a simple mark. Also listed as a sexton of a Presbyterian church—that is, one who has responsibility for the grounds and graveyard—McKay ‘would minister to the spiritual needs of the Highland passengers by conducting services in Gaelic. This he did throughout the voyage, as well as after landing on the station’.7
At the rear of the ship were the single women’s quarters, presided over by another of Patey’s appointments, the single women’s matron. According to the descendants of passenger Janet McLellan, the Ticonderoga’s matron was 38-year-old Miss Isabella Renshaw. It was into Miss Renshaw’s care that the precious key to the single women’s quarters was entrusted, which she used on a nightly basis to lock the girls in, preventing any illicit after-hours liaisons forming between them and the single men, or the crew. In the morning, they would begin their lessons in reading, arithmetic and Bible studies. Miss Renshaw was usually assisted by some of the abler and better educated girls, such as Annie Morrison from the Isle of Mull. Needlework and shirt-making were also taught, with the girls being able to keep the garments they made on the voyage.
Free time was allowed, and the sexes could in fact mix, but only on the open upper deck under the matron’s supervisory gaze. An obsession with women’s perceived ‘virtue’, particularly among groups of young and unattached females, was a feature of Victorian society, so it was replicated at sea. More than any other group on board the ship, all aspects of the young women’s behaviour, appearance and demeanour were constantly assessed and judged by passengers and crew alike, with ‘wantonness’ suspected as the motive behind many of their actions.
One of those girls who would have been under observation was 22-year-old Janet Blair, a Presbyterian from Argyllshire whose clan, fiercely independent Protestant Covenanters, had been all but wiped out in the ‘Killing Time’ of the religious wars with England in the late seventeenth century. Thanks to a detailed account penned by her granddaughter late in her life, Janet Blair’s personal story survives.
The eighth of fifteen children, ten of whom survived, Janet grew up on a farm of 320 acres on Loch Fyne in Scotland’s west. When she was fifteen, ‘the fever’ took her father and two more of her siblings, at which point her older brother gave up the farm and moved with the rest of the family to Glasgow, where Janet became a housemaid to a wealthy family of gentlemen farmers from Argyllshire, the McPhersons. One of their three sons, Dugald, had become a successful sheep farmer in Australia and, impressed with the girl, Mrs McPherson began to encourage her to travel there herself to become Dugald’s housemaid. Wages and conditions for a girl such as she, reminded Mrs McPherson, were far better than she could ever hope to receive at home. As Dugald was unmarried, Janet declined. Her enthusiasm to travel was sparked, though, and she even managed to convince a brother, a brother-in-law and two of her sisters to make the journey with her. At the last minute, they all backed out. Undeterred, Janet continued alone, and at Glasgow was seen off on the ferry in a tearful farewell by several members of her family.
At Birkenhead, she joined many other single girls likewise seeking a new and better life, and on 28 July was one of the first to board the Ticonderoga, several days before she sailed, bringing along her prized possession, a fine three-door oak trunk with ‘Janet Blair’ painted in elegant lettering on the outside. She even brought her own cutlery, and—quite contrary to the regulations—a blanket and pillowslip, together with as much warm clothing as she could carry. The journey, she had been told, would involve heading into some cold and icy weather to the south. Just how icy would only become apparent in the weeks to come. Although travelling alone, Janet was soon to make a firm friend of Georgina McLatchie, listed as ‘Baptist’, 25, from Edinburgh. As the voyage began, the two young women could have no idea of just how much each would come to rely on the support of the other.
Although many of the appointed steward positions were officially voluntary, a small gratuity was nevertheless usually forthcoming. It is not known what the Ticonderoga’s coffers offered, but a similar voyage taken a few years later on the emigrant vessel Atalanta, the schoolmaster and the matron were each paid £5, as were the galley assistants.
Perhaps the most important decision made about the Ticonderoga’s nearly 800 passengers was their arrangement into the 125 or so ‘messes’ of around six people each, in whose company they would share the experiences and travails of the voyage. An initial division had taken place onshore while still at the depot, but the process was refined during the first few days at sea by the stewards in consultation with the surgeons and the captain. Where possible, the bunks of the respective members of each mess were situated close by one another, as was their allotted ‘desk’, a 5-feet-wide oak table with raised edges to prevent plates and other utensils falling to the floor with the roll of the ship.8 Space being what it was, several messes would in fact share the one desk, but it was within one’s mess that the passengers tended to mix, ‘as though each mess formed its own little village on board’, according to historian Mary Kruithof.9
The object of the messing system was to encourage shipboard harmony; hence people of the same town, village or county were, where possible, placed together. Particular care was also taken to avoid potential flashpoints arising from those eternal sources of discord, religion and politics. The long voyage would provide more than enough idle hours for arguments to fester and ideologies to erupt, and religion—ever a sore point throughout Europe—was particularly inflammatory in the context of Scotland and its recent brutal history with England. With an emigrant’s region and religion both stated on their form, those from opposing faiths, or people who had been observed to clash or squabble at the depot, were berthed as far from each other as possible. However, some may have been closer to their fellow passengers than they thought, travelling alongside distant members of their own large, clan-based families. There were, for example, three families each carrying the names Campbell, Herd, McKay and McPherson, four Camerons and no less than five separate families named McDonald. The names Bruce, Fraser, Morrison and several others were also represented multiple times among the Ticonderoga’s passenger list.
Indeed, genuine bonds and friendships—even romances—did form on the journey, to eventually form part of the emigrants’ new life in Australia. There are at least two recorded cases of marriage between passengers, even though one of those—between a Cameron and a McRae—occurred much later in their lives, as the two were only young children at the time of the journey.
Much of the bonding between passengers inevitably occurred at mealtimes.
Twice a day, in an exercise of mutual cooperation, the provisions for each meal were carefully doled out from the ship’s stores by the stewards and the ship’s third mate, who between them decided the daily menu, which in fact varied hardly at all. The ingredients were taken to the desk in a baking dish or lidded pot, where the ‘mess captain’—elected by the members of the mess but rotated somewhat—was responsible for bringing them to the galley to be prepared by the ship’s cooks as well as the passengers themselves. A chit would be received and, when ready, the cooks bawled out the number, and the meal was collected and then doled out to the mess on the tin plates and cups each person had been issued, and for which they were responsible.
The ‘menu’ varied only slightly from day to day and can hardly be described as exciting, or even particularly nutritious in the modern sense, but given the restrictions of the era prior to the advent of refrigeration, it was at least sustaining. Most main meals, taken in sittings from mid-afternoon, consisted of salted pork or beef (which would be all but inedible to a contemporary palate), supplemented by a pudding of suet (animal fat), flour and raisins. Other meat was dried and reconstituted into a sort of stew, as were some other starchy foods such as rice and potatoes.
Sailing to Melbourne from England at exactly the same time as the Ticonderoga in a smaller vessel, the Emily, Frenchman Antoine Fauchery, who would later set up a world-famous photographic studio in Melbourne, remembered the monotony of the shipboard meals somewhat sardonically:
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