Hell Ship

by Michael Veitch

  Next, Ferguson turned his attention to the Ticonderoga herself. Dr Taylor had made his preliminary examination of the ship, and was visibly shaken by what he had seen. The lower decks were appalling, he said—virtually indescribable. People were so ill as to be crawling on hands and knees. How anyone could have endured a day down there, let alone three months, was utterly unfathomable. Believing—as virtually everyone at the time did—that diseases such as typhus were borne through the air by ‘foul miasma’, his immediate assessment was that it was poor ventilation that had been the root cause of the catastrophe. As Ferguson later stated, ‘Doctor Taylor will report fully as soon as he has made himself acquainted with matters on board. Want of ventilation and cleanliness appear to me to have much to do with it …’9

  Fresh provisions would be needed, and quickly. Ferguson had already arranged to draw upon his contacts in the upper echelons of Victorian colonial society, and fortunately Mr John Barker, Clerk of the Victorian Legislative Assembly and prominent landholder in the Westernport area, agreed to supply beef from his Boneo and Cape Shanck properties for five pence a pound. The lime-burner families, too, would be engaged to regularly supply eggs and fresh milk.

  Turning to Boyle, Ferguson enquired how often his ship needed pumping. Mustering a little pride, Boyle stated that the Ticonderoga was tight as a drum, one of the finest ships he had sailed, and that her pumps rarely required anything beyond normal use. After some thought, Ferguson surprised the captain by instructing him to fill the holds of his ship with seawater, then have the pumps manned continually, day and night until the water, as well as the foul air, was drawn out. However, he added in his report, ‘it was evident that to check the further spread of this disease, the people should all be landed out of the ship’.10 Everyone, declared Ferguson—the sick as well as the healthy—as well as their belongings, were getting off the ship as soon as possible. Boyle announced that he had a number of large tents on board each capable of housing ten men. Ferguson bought the lot. He reported:

  As it was evident that to check the further spread of this disease, the people should all be landed out of the ship, I urged the immediate erection of large tents on shore, and Captain Boyle having twelve for sale, each capable of holding ten men, I purchased them on account of the Government for Seven pounds each, and ordered them to be at once erected and occupied.11

  Then, he continued, the Ticonderoga would be thoroughly cleaned from top to bottom. Every bench, every locker, every inch of floor and deck would be swept, washed and disinfected with chloride of lime, then several coats of whitewash. Every remaining piece of bedding, every sheet or cloth, as well as the beds, benches and tables where the Ticonderoga’s passengers slept, ate, lived and died, would then be ripped from her insides and burned on a great and cathartic pyre or else thrown into the sea. In the end, no trace would remain of the Ticonderoga’s passengers, or the terrible disease that had literally decimated their numbers.

  The disembarkation happened agonisingly slowly, but soon the little cove began to resemble a camp city. Boxes and trunks soon littered the sand and foreshore as people re-established themselves at the cove. People in their dozens, in various stages of illness from near death to experiencing the first symptoms, were deposited wherever there was something to lie on. However, some had already circumvented Ferguson’s intentions to purge the ship and had taken their blankets and bedding from the ship, lice-ridden as they probably were, further risking the spread of the disease.

  The first to come off the Ticonderoga were the dead—two at a time, in the rowboats—but even from among the fit passengers, few could be found to bury them, terrified as they were of themselves becoming victims of the contagion. A burial area had been set aside a little way from the shore, but with no coffins, and hardly anything left that could be used as even a shroud, the dead were buried, usually by their own family members, fully clothed along with their few meagre possessions. Even sadder perhaps, is that these humble burial plots were not to last, as the ground had been sited too close to the water’s edge. In just a few years, therefore, the Ticonderoga’s victims, as well as their resting places, would be lost forever to erosion and the sea.

  Nor, it transpired, was Point Nepean’s sandy soil, with its meagre 10-foot water table, suitable for the digging of graves in any case. This too proposed a problem for the disposing of animal offal and carcasses, as well as the hastily dug toilets, all of which were liable to spreading more filth and illness with one decent rain.

  The several hundred healthy passengers who had travelled on board the Ticonderoga likewise came to regard themselves as victims of the disease—albeit by default—being equally subject to the restrictions imposed by Dr Hunt and harbourmaster Ferguson. It was not long before some began to resent the confinement of this desolate place. Many who had lost loved ones wanted to pick up the pieces of their broken lives and start again in this new country; others wanted to put it all behind them and move on. For the time being, however, none would be allowed to do so. In front of them was a bay, behind them an ocean and standing in between them and the town of Melbourne was roughly 100 kilometres of scrub and bush, making it as unreachable as the moon.

  Ferguson was aware of the potential for trouble rising out of a large number of discontented passengers. In his report to La Trobe, he added:

  As there is such a large body of people landed, I beg to recommend that a Sergeant and a small body of police be sent down overland and stationed at the Eastern boundary of the quarantine ground to maintain order, and check the insubordination which was beginning to show itself amongst the seamen and Emigrants before I left.

  Soon, a contingent of around half a dozen sergeants accompanied by six mounted constables was beating its way overland on horseback through bush to set up camp, ostensibly to protect the borders of the quarantine station, but also to prevent those who might attempt to leave it, and be ready to react to any unrest.

  On Sunday, 6 November, Ferguson returned from Point Nepean to Melbourne on board the Empire, feeling that he had aged an entire year in the few days he had spent there. He reported to an anxious Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe that the final 150 sick and 250 fit passengers had all been removed from the Ticonderoga, with some being accommodated in the requisitioned lime-burners’ cottages, while others were living in primitive and makeshift conditions on the shore. The worst cases had been transferred to the hospital ship Lysander. The epidemic was far from over, though. People were still dying daily, although the numbers were gradually starting to decline. Dr Taylor was in charge, but Ferguson privately doubted whether he was up to the task. The Ticonderoga’s principal surgeon, Joseph Sanger, was recovering and now able to resume some work, and was once again being assisted on board the Lysander by Dr Veitch, although Ferguson described both of them as being ‘in an extremely debilitated state’.12 He meanwhile approached another physician, a William Farman, surgeon superintendent of the Mobile, to quietly take over some of Taylor’s duties. Taylor, he decided, would now oversee the camp on shore, while Farman would undertake the cleaning of the Ticonderoga and work with Sanger and Veitch on board the Lysander. Supplies would still be needed—particularly tent material, blankets, bedding and mattresses, as well as the usual demands for wine and porter.

  La Trobe and Ferguson realised, however, that the tragedy unfolding at Point Nepean could not be kept quiet for long, and both men readied themselves for the storm both had seen coming long before the arrival of the Ticonderoga.

  25

  Quarantine and outrage

  To the people on the streets of Melbourne who gathered in huddles on that November Friday morning to hear the grizzly details of the Ticonderoga laid out by The Argus’s reporter under the memorable headline, ‘Terrible State of Affairs on board an Emigrant Ship at the Port Phillip Heads’, the notion of an overcrowded vessel struck down with disease was nothing new. During the latter half of 1852, the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission’s four big double-deck ships had each arrived wit
h varying amounts of sickness on board. The first of these had been the very large German ship, Borneuf, which had arrived in March with 83 of her passengers having died at sea, almost all of those being children and infants. This, though regrettable, was not seen as the catastrophe such an event would be deemed in later times. Children died frequently in the nineteenth century, particularly at sea, and in the case of the Borneuf, much of the blame was laid at the feet of the parents. In a report into the voyage, the Board concluded that ‘the high mortality rate was largely attributed to the insurmountable objection of Irish and Scots parents to seeking medical attention for their children’.1 The drinking water also failed on board this ship, with the inadequate storage facilities turning it putrid, green and undrinkable. Even so, only a handful of adults perished on board the Borneuf—a figure quite within acceptable limits—and the voyage was regarded as a success.

  The Wanata was next. She was a ship of just over 1100 tons, arriving soon after the Borneuf. A total of 39 of her passengers had not survived the journey, but once again all but ten of those were children. Scarlatina, measles and ‘fever’ were cited as the chief complaints, and the Wanata was sent to the Red Bluff sanitary station for a period of quarantine.

  Then, on 20 September, it was the turn of the mighty Marco Polo to make its grand arrival into Port Phillip, under the command of a man who was already a global celebrity of the high seas, ‘Bully’ Forbes. At first the newspapers were so enraptured by the time he had set—a record 68 days from Liverpool to Melbourne—that their triumphant headlines ignored the fact that 51 children and two adults had died under his care.

  Slowly, however, people both in England and in the Australian colonies began to question the wisdom of crowding so many people into these Goliaths of the sea, simply to alleviate the logistical problems in which the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission had found itself. Letters to the Editor of prominent newspapers in both England and Australia began to reflect public concern, one of the earliest being from an anonymous writer in The Argus on 24 September:

  Attention should be urgently directed to the injudicious and cruel system of sending out overcrowded vessels which seems to be gaining ground just now. Within the month three striking cases have occurred. The Borneuf, Wanata and Marco Polo have arrived from Liverpool with about 800 passengers each. The consequences of such overcrowding are sure to be fatal, and accordingly, the deaths were 83, 39 and 53 respectively during the voyages. The vessels were of the largest size, it is true, but it is perfectly obvious that no vessel, whatever its size, can safely carry such large numbers of passengers on a three months’ voyage.

  In England, too, many who had a chance to inspect these large ships before they set sail were likewise shocked at what they encountered, as this long but pointed piece to a London daily on 27 September 1852 indicates:

  The overcrowding of emigrant ships

  When a body of men take it in hand to do a thing, and do not do it so much from a conviction of its being the best thing in the world they can do, but rather as a compulsory matter, they do not do it well. The juste milieu is one of those rocks ahead against which they run doggedly, and so break their pates. Now they overdo the business, as if, in a splenetic fit, they said—‘There! Take your ship; cram her full, and be off.’ Mr Osborne, the indefatigable and the zealous, gives us instance of this. He went the other day on board an emigrant ship which was just setting sail, and found that, though she was a noble vessel of her class, and that two decks (blessed are the humble in the lower deck, certainly)—were set apart for the passengers, the berths being of the proper authorized dimensions, and, as excellent arrangements were made for ventilation and other indispensable necessities as possible—still this ship (considerably under a thousand tons burthen) carried not less than eight hundred emigrants and a crew of sixty men! In addition to this, there was the stately complement of two surgeons to do battle with seasickness, fever, human miasmatic exudations. This was not a trip to Gravesend or the Naze where the heroic endurance of a few half hours of agony would be compensated for by a participation ‘in old English sports’, a polka up on the ‘gothic hill’, and a promenade ‘a la Musard’ between avenues of shrubs and ham sandwiches. It was a certain life and death affair that was to last for months—from four to eight perhaps, more or less; and here are a greater part of a thousand souls under a care of two surgeons, and a medicine chest upon the same scale as we may infer sent by the Government on such a voyage. If this be not carelessness for human life, we do not know what else to call it. We do not always know in what condition the decimated scarecrows land, but those who have voyaged across the tropics, in a crowded ship have some appreciation of the unutterable horrors men, women and children go through, or rather don’t go through. Fever and dysentery play a leading part in the ghastly drama. Want of water in calm latitudes, or under the torrid zone may be ‘better imagined than described’. Has anyone ever imagined the awful Golgotha which a plague ship becomes! If our kinsmen and our friends leave us forever to seek in a foreign land what they have failed to obtain in this, they ought not to be sent forth like felons in the hold of a convict ship or packed like the cargo of a slave vessel.

  In Australia, meanwhile, one of those starting to add his doubt to the wisdom of commissioning very large vessels was Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe himself. Starting to sense the public mood, La Trobe, on 21 October when the Ticonderoga was still at sea, issued Dispatch Number 142 to his superior in London, Sir John Pakington, Secretary of State for the Colonies. In it he begged to direct ‘the serious attention of Her Majesty’s Government to the evils of disadvantages attendant upon the chartering of vessels of heavy burthen for the conveyance of large numbers of Emigrants to the colony’.2 The full text of that exchange has been lost, but if La Trobe’s fears were raised in this way in October, the November arrival of the Ticonderoga saw them horribly realised. In a dispatch of 9 November, he states:

  I regret to be under the necessity of furnishing another example in proof of the propriety of the question being raised. On the 4th Inst. I received intimation through the Health Officer of the arrival of the Emigrant Ship ‘Ticonderoga’ from Liverpool, with 800 Government Immigrants, at the Port Phillip Heads, having lost 102 by death during her voyage from typhus and scarlet fever; and having an equal number of sick on board of the same disease; the Surgeon Superintendent also sick and the vessel in want of medicines and Medical comforts … I have appointed another Medical gentleman provided with every necessary in the way of medicines and medical comforts. Every effort will at once be made to cleanse the Ticonderoga.3

  News of the plague ship spread fast. The same dramatic article announcing the Ticonderoga’s dreadful arrival in the Friday Argus was deemed important enough to be reprinted in the Geelong Advertiser the following day. With equal concern, the readers in the busy port town read of the drama unfolding even closer to their doorstep:

  the authorities in Williamstown immediately furnished the government schooner Empire with the necessary supplies of live stock, beef, mutton, mild, vegetables, porter, wine spirits, and a medicine chest, and Dr Taylor, of the Ottillia, a gentleman of much practical experience, went down in her to the Ticonderoga, yesterday, to take charge, accompanied by Captain Ferguson, the Harbour Master. The Lysander ship, has also been taken up by the Government as a Quarantine Hulk, and proceeds to her destination at the Heads this day, having on board stores sufficient for all hands for three months, when further arrangements will be made which, we trust, will ameliorate the fearful state of things on board …

  As dire as the situation was at Point Nepean, La Trobe was at least thankful that a full-blown crisis in busy Port Phillip had been averted due to the quick thinking of the pilot, Henry Draper, whose action to divert the Ticonderoga to the nascent sanitary station he later described as having been ‘judiciously made’.4 Captain Boyle too, fortunately, had had the wherewithal to begin offloading his passengers under his own volition without waiting for instruction. Had he
made it to Melbourne, the outcry resulting from a full-blown typhus epidemic being unleashed on the under-policed and under-resourced colony in the grip of gold madness could scarcely be imagined. La Trobe could not, however, continue to count on the quick thinking of others, particularly as the newspapers were beginning to give full voice to the concerns of the public. Newspaper reporters now began to fall upon every scrap of news of the hapless vessel that they could find. On Tuesday, 9 November, The Argus published:

  We have been kindly furnished with the following particulars relative to this unfortunate vessel by Charles Ferguson Esq., the Harbour Master at Williamstown, who has been down to the Heads in the Empire schooner, and returned on Sunday. It appears there were, on Friday about 714 emigrants on board; 100 deaths and nineteen births had occurred on the passage, seven of the former since the ship anchored at the Heads. There are at present 300 cases of sickness … tents have been erected with sails, spas, &c. of the ship on Point Nepean where a quarantine ground has been marked out … the Lysander ship, too, now at the Heads, will be fitted up as a hospital for the worst cases … both the surgeon and the assistant, belonging to the Ticonderoga, being in an extremely debilitated state. It is to be hoped the liberal measures being taken by the authorities in this case will counteract the further spread of the disease, which it is but natural to expect, when fresh air, exercise and liberal diet, are brought into operation.