Margaret Reilly wasn’t yet well enough to participate in these daily regimens, but Daniel was. Along with the other passengers, he was trying hard to master the unfamiliar protocol of a life at sea. In the short time they had been aboard, the passengers had come to know Captain Attridge as a benevolent force; nevertheless he had made it perfectly clear that he expected everyone on board to maintain strict codes of conduct. He mandated that all well passengers rise at 7 A.M., dress for the day, then roll up their bedding and sweep the deck. Daniel, along with the other male passengers over the age of fourteen, had also been assigned to a cleaning detail on rotation; each day, ten men were responsible for emptying the slop buckets used as privies and dry-scrubbing all floors below deck. This was no small task; with nearly two hundred individuals packed below, many of whom were suffering from severe seasickness, keeping their living quarters bearable could seem a herculean feat and took up the better part of their waking hours. To help maintain order, Attridge also deputized four of the adult male passengers, granting them the power to enforce policies and to serve as liaisons between him and the passengers.
During the day, Daniel and his son Robert ventured above deck for twenty minutes at a time—just long enough to get a sense of the massive ocean surrounding them and watch the toiling crew. It was during these intervals when families could line up to receive their daily water allocation—a mere six pints in total. When twenty or thirty passengers were in the open air at one time, the women took the opportunity to wash clothes in rainwater or use the two cooking stoves.
Few items on the Jeanie Johnston engendered as much compulsive attention as these stoves. Each morning, while the emigrants busied themselves with dressing and stowing their bedding, Gabriel Seldon, who was not normally required to stand watch and who had the enviable responsibility of overseeing the pantry and all food, lit a fire in the two small metal boxes lined with bricks that served as stoves for the two hundred passengers. While he turned his attention to making breakfast for the crew, the women made porridge for their family’s sole daily meal. That allotment of oats and rice, along with six pints of water, was the standard dietary allocation on board the Jeanie and similar famine ships.5 Each woman had one opportunity at the stove each day to use her allotted oat ration, boil water, and prepare any additional food she could afford to bring on board. All the while, the women were subjected to the conditions of the churning sea and the threat of bad weather. If conditions became too rough, Hugh Murphy and Arthur McBretney, the ship’s two young apprentices, would be ordered into the ship’s rigging, so that they could douse the fires from above, lest the flames escape their crude brick containers and set the entire vessel ablaze. The same was true for the three small safety lanterns and open hatches that served as the only illumination below deck.
Flame of any sort, though necessary on an oceangoing vessel, was as significant a threat to the safety of those on board as ship’s fever or icebergs. Each year, Lloyd’s of London reported on tragic fires aboard vessels. With hundreds or even thousands of miles of sea separating them from the safety of land or rescue vessels, the consequences for all those on board were often deadly. The same was no less true for vessels in sight of land. The same season that the Jeanie made her inaugural voyage as an immigrant ship, newspapers around the world reported on the fate of the Ocean Monarch, a massive 1,300-ton ship carrying approximately four hundred Irish emigrants that caught fire while still in sight of land. The intensity of the heat prompted many on board, including women holding their young children, to jump to their death. Dozens of others perished as the vessel, soon completely engulfed in flames, sank in the cold waters off the coast of Wales. The death toll was over two hundred.
Attridge knew all too well how easy it would be for a similar fate to befall the Jeanie. Severe weather, then, would mean an uncomfortable day with no food and next to pitch-black conditions in the berths, where all passengers would be restricted until the seas improved. Even under the best conditions, Attridge insisted on strict boundaries for passengers so that his crew could do their work without impediment or interruption.
The tasks for the crew were also segregated and ordered. Attridge and First Mate Thomas Campion were primarily responsible for management of the vessel and its course. Using a chronometer and sextant, the two determined the vessel’s longitude each morning. Then, at noon and with the sun directly above them, they would mark their latitude. Together this would reveal their location. Coupled with celestial navigation, the ability to mark one’s position by a fixed astronomical body, such as the North Star, the chronometer gave Attridge the reckoning he needed to locate his vessel on a chart—or at least it did when the clouds broke long enough for him to see either star or sun. Several times each watch, Campion recorded their position in the Jeanie’s logbook, which he was required to submit to his captain each day for examination and any necessary corrections. Of all the interactions between a first mate and his captain, this was one of the most important when it came to proving a mate’s worth at sea.6
Like Attridge, Campion rarely took the wheel when sailing. Under reasonable sailing conditions, that task was left to the ordinary sailors, whom Campion had divided into two watches based on their dispositions and skills. In fact the immigrants rarely saw Attridge, who was most often in his cabin or the chart room, plotting their course and always, always, always double-checking their position and the integrity of his vessel.
The course Attridge set for the Jeanie was the same one employed by nearly every other transatlantic vessel sailing that time of year: an arc reaching down from Ireland across the North Atlantic and then sweeping past Newfoundland and toward the more populated latitudes of the North American east coast. This route was known as the “great thoroughfare of commerce” to nineteenth-century sailors. It was also known as the most tempestuous part of the Atlantic Ocean.7 In his 1851 guide for sailors, M. F. Maury warned captains and their crew that the seas in the Gulf Stream “are terrific during a gale; opposite currents operate to break the direction given them by the wind, when a concussion takes place, causing them to run in all directions.”8
Even in the best conditions, these waters posed untold dangers for a sailing vessel. Unlike the growing number of steamships sharing the waterway, the Jeanie Johnston and her crew were bound by wind and current, which would often force a vessel directly into the path of danger.9 And, unlike the equally as common schooners, the Jeanie was hard-pressed to steer her way out of such peril. Ensuring that she did was the duty of Thomas Campion. Each day he stood on deck overseeing the sailors and insisting that Attridge’s orders be executed. It was Campion who would call for the sails to be raised, reefed, or stowed. And it was he who often climbed high up into the rigging to assess the condition of sailcloth and line.10
William Patterson, a twenty-six-year-old Scots Irish sailor from Down, a county in what would later become Northern Ireland, served as the Jeanie’s second mate. Patterson oversaw the second of the two watches; however, his supervisory role ended there. He was obliged to keep a foot in two camps without the benefit of belonging to either: Attridge expected him to behave with the decorum and distance of an officer, yet he was still required to toil as an ordinary seaman. This included executing commands to change sail position, tarring the side of the boat, and polishing its many brass fixtures. On watch, Patterson and the other sailors rotated through the various tasks required of them: manning the ship’s enormous wheel, housed in the aft of the vessel; maintaining Attridge’s course with the help of a magnetic compass; and readying the lines for any tack or change in course.11 Each time Attridge called for either, seven or eight men would have to set a single sail, and nearly all hands worked to tack the vessel. Up in the rigging, they climbed icy foot ropes and then snaked their way out onto equally treacherous spars, balancing nearly a hundred feet over the deck and open ocean, in order to mend or reef sails. Off watch, they spent their time splicing line, changing chaffed rigging, mending sails, and always cleaning.12 Interm
ittently they retired to their bunks in the ship’s forecastle. Located near the bow of the Jeanie, it was the roughest—and wettest—place onboard and made the Reillys’ accommodations seem first class. Indeed it took a seasoned sailor to find any rest at all between the bucking of the vessel and the constant leaking spray. Attridge did his best to mitigate their discomfort by maintaining as regular and humane a routine as the seas would allow. He himself presided over mass each Sunday, the one time that crew and passengers assembled on the deck together.13
On fair days, Gabriel Seldon began each morning by lighting the passengers’ cooking stoves and began preparing breakfast, and the first watch washed and swabbed the decks and made the rigging neat. They had breakfast around eight o’clock, usually porridge or hardtack and bacon, and then began the series of four hours on, four hours off that defined a sailor’s existence. They broke twice for meals, which included dried beef on every day except Tuesday and Friday, when they were served cured pork. They ate dried peas and rice on alternating days, always looking forward to Sundays, when Seldon would also serve them biscuits with butter. They contented themselves with lime and vinegar in their water; despite the common practice of giving sailors up to a half pint of rum a day, Attridge had decreed that no spirits would be allowed on his ship.
There was, he insisted, little time for drinking, or anything other than work. The exception was the dog watch, that time just after dinner when the vessel was truly their own. This was the time each day when the cooking stove fires had been extinguished by Murphy and McBretney and the emigrants had retired to the dim light of an emergency lantern below deck. Up above, all hands had a brief reprieve to smoke, play cards, or tell stories. Attridge could be seen at his place on the quarterdeck, sometimes with Campion nearby. Seldon finished washing dishes in the galley and made the last tea for the night. And then, every evening at eight o’clock, bells were sounded and the first of the two evening watches began, as the Jeanie eased her way across the North Atlantic.14
16
Dead Reckoning
AS THE Jeanie continued to push across the Atlantic, she encountered unrelenting squalls. Four weeks into their trip, these conditions only intensified. The already heavy seas became more violent as large, swelling waves pushed from the southwest. Behind the building clouds, the sky took on an ominous copper color. The barque’s barometer plummeted, and then the winds began to gather. Somewhere, just over the horizon, a storm many mariners described as a hurricane was building in strength as it skimmed across North Carolina’s Outer Banks, sinking over a dozen vessels along the way. Then, without notice, the storm turned northeastward and set a collision course for the Jeanie Johnston.1
James Attridge had been at sea long enough to know the telltale signs of the storm’s approach. Without delay, he ordered the fires extinguished and the hatches sealed tight, leaving the Reillys and the ship’s other 196 passengers to toss about in pitch darkness. Robert howled in fright while Margaret lay with Nicholas clutched tightly to her breast. Daniel struggled to take care of all three.
Amid the moans and shrieks of the other passengers and the scream of the barque’s hull and sails, Daniel could hear other, fainter noises as well: the shouts of Attridge and Campion as they summoned the men, the crew toiling in the midship area to keep the vessel on course and bring in the tattered sails. For those on deck, life became a blur of wake up, work, eat, pump, nap, with nothing to differentiate one day from the next. Personal hygiene was abandoned, and the crew felt painful salt water boils where their oilskins chafed at sensitive skin. Exhausted from lack of sleep and worn down by days in wet, cold clothes, they grumbled and railed against their lot.2
As the storm raged on, Attridge was unable to do much more than guess at the ship’s location; his chronometer and sextant were useless without the sun to mark noon, and celestial navigation, of course, required the stars. It was days before he could take a clear sighting. When he did, he could see that their troubles were just beginning. Just as he feared, the Jeanie was now in a veritable minefield of icebergs.
This stretch of the Atlantic was the same one infamously attempted by the Titanic some sixty years later. The Jeanie Johnston had neither the ocean liner’s technology nor its steel hull to protect it from these massive ice formations, which can travel more than fifteen hundred miles at a rate of one nautical mile per hour. Dodging these obstacles even in calm conditions takes an experienced captain and a nimble crew. In a gale, it also requires luck, if not Divine Providence. Attridge knew he would need both as the Jeanie rounded Newfoundland and the Grand Banks, a famous fishing ground just south of Newfoundland’s east coast.
When approaching the Banks, Attridge and his crew should have encountered a swarm of Boston schooners. The end of May was the start of their prime fishing season, and these slim fore-and-aft-rigged ships were capable of slicing through wind and wave quickly enough to bring a fresh catch back to Massachusetts. Yet the Jeanie Johnston encountered not a one. Attridge knew it took a lot to keep those schooner fishers away.
This sparseness of traffic persisted as the Jeanie neared the mouth of the St. Lawrence, where the captain and his crew quickly discovered the reason behind it: the Gulf of the St. Lawrence seemed to be entirely filled with ice.3 In fact, unbeknown to Attridge, only two cargo vessels had made it to port the entire season.4
Attridge calculated that it would be weeks before he neared the city. His brief weather reprieve was coming to an end, and he watched as the persistent northwesterly wind that had followed the hurricane suddenly swung and became easterly. It screamed through the rigging, threatening to tear his sails to tatters. As it did, the seas became formidable swells moving into shore and sending icy spray across the Jeanie’s deck.
Conditions such as these could easily knock down or dismast a vessel, so, once again, Attridge was forced to call all hands on deck, this time to help brace the sails and yards. Meanwhile he took the wheel and struggled to turn the vessel so that the wind was pushing aft. This kept the Jeanie from sinking, but it made it more difficult to keep her on course. It also worsened conditions on board, as the waves struck against the bow of the vessel, sending it—and all those below—rolling precipitously from side to side. Richard Blennerhassett could only imagine the misery his charges were experiencing below deck. It was up to Attridge to keep them all alive. This new gale was driving the ship directly into the St. Lawrence and the river’s jagged mouth of ice. To avoid this, he would have to keep the headsails up and intact and his crew alert.
Below deck, even the hardiest passengers were worried. The Jeanie Johnston had been at sea for five weeks, and although Donovan had insisted on regulations to preserve the cleanliness of his vessel, conditions in steerage were deteriorating. Quickly. The hatches remained sealed, and Blennerhassett’s strict hygiene protocols had been aborted. Even in ideal conditions, the hold of a sailing ship reeks of moldy bilge water. But these were far from ideal times, and the cumulative effect of weeks of sick passengers had made the stench nearly unbearable. Most of the passengers still wore the same clothes they had on when they came aboard, which were now stained with soot and grime and evidence of seasickness. The strain of a limited diet was also showing; even had the conditions not been so precarious, few would have had the energy for anything other than the necessary chores to keep their quarters habitable. Most simply stayed in their bunks, hoping to wait out the voyage.
Attridge was visibly nervous. He paced the oak deck and scrutinized the unsettled water in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. The collision of currents from the powerful river and the equally vigorous North Atlantic broke and smashed before him, hurling up plumes of foam spiked with errant logs and other forest debris. Enormous chunks of green river ice—some almost as large as his ship—surged through these same waves, threatening to smash even the sturdiest hull. In all his sailing days, Attridge had never experienced conditions as dangerous as these. He took a deep breath, finally admitting what he had been trying to deny for days: the Je
anie Johnston was in serious trouble.
By the time they neared the mouth of the St. Lawrence, this unexpected ice was everywhere and moving at dangerous speeds. Even the most seasoned sailors agreed that it was an awful time to be on these waters. More than that, Attridge would later admit, it was downright deadly.
Attridge was doing his best to reach their mandatory quarantine stop at Grosse Île, but this final leg of the trip was proving to be the most trying. By the time night fell on the last day of May, the storm had intensified around the ship, threatening to blow a gale. As the ship groaned against the storm, Attridge called on his entire crew, already exhausted from extra watches and diminishing food, to shorten sail. Even Gabriel Seldon was told to remain all standing.
Like Attridge, Seldon and his mates had learned to trust in the Jeanie during the arduous North Atlantic crossing, but that didn’t make battling this newest storm any easier. Swells from the storm crashed into the beam of the vessel, sending violent eruptions of seawater up and over the deck. Freezing rain stung the sailors’ faces. It saturated then froze their clothing, making it difficult to move. Their palms, calloused from years of handling hemp line, tore and bled as they struggled to bring in the royal sails and topgallants. The only canvas left unfurled was reefed against the wind. Attridge ordered those deckhands not hauling sail to climb high up into the topmasts. Others lashed themselves to the barque’s long bowsprit to scan for icebergs, rocks, and other ships; their shouts would be the only warning the captain would have in advance of an impending collision. To preserve their night vision and reduce the risk of fire on board Attridge prohibited any illumination on the deck. As the last bit of dull storm light was extinguished by the encroaching night, the men on deck were forced to work wholly by feel, counting the number of lines and memorizing their position on the ship’s pinrails. More than a test of the crew’s mastery of the rigging that controlled their ship, these inky conditions were crucial for ensuring that the men could spot any encroaching hazards on the horizon.
All Standing Page 12