Reminders of how dangerous these hazards could be were all around them. As the day broke, the crew could see a debris field covering the Gulf: floating deckhouses and empty lifeboats, jagged fragments of hull, even travel chests and dishware. A few days before the Jeanie entered the St. Lawrence, a barque called the Astoria had foundered in the bay after trying unsuccessfully to navigate the thick weather. With the wind blowing hard out of the southeast, her captain was unable to prevent the vessel from striking rock. Immediately after impact, he cut away both the fore and main masts, hoping to prevent further damage. Her crew managed a harrowing escape after the captain shot a lead line to the cliffs nearby. As the sea washed over the ship, he sent his men one by one in a basket up the line and to safety at the top of the cliff.5 A few days later, another barque was hit by an enormous cake of ice that smashed into its hull, causing significant damage. At least three additional vessels were still bound up in the ice and unable to free themselves.6
From his post on deck, Attridge could see these beleaguered vessels. He could also pick out some of the other cargo ships now sharing the channel. He recognized several from his days in Liverpool, others by reputation. The Robert Jackson, a cargo ship that left from Liverpool at the same time as the Jeanie, limped along, all but incapacitated by a splintered mast and sails torn to rags by the gale. The Dispatch and the Alert both carried emigrants from the west of Ireland. There were also two haulers from Bordeaux bringing the season’s wine to Quebec, the first the residents there had seen since the deep freeze. At long last, it seemed, the shipping season was beginning in earnest.
That was good news for the supply-starved people of British North America, but considerably less so for Attridge and other ship captains. Getting caught in a jam of other ships would undoubtedly turn this already harrowing trip into a disastrous one. The ship’s food and water were running low; his men were exhausted. Any additional vessel in this rapidly moving river was one more obstacle Attridge could only hope to avoid. He needed to beat these other ships up river, and that would take every inch of the Jeanie’s square sails.
The captain was having a far easier time maintaining his resolve than were his men, many of whom watched helplessly as several other ships foundered and sank.
Unbeknown to the Jeanie’s crew, sailors aboard John Munn’s other ships were embattled by the weather as well. The Ayrshire, laden with indentured servants on the Calcutta route, was imperiled in a storm of similar strength and now risked capsizing. The crew of the England, the Jeanie’s companion ship on her maiden voyage, were fighting for their lives as well. They had left the crowded lazarettos of Liverpool overloaded with Irish passengers and destined for New York. The same storm that besieged the Jeanie stretched down into the mid-Atlantic, where it collided with the tropical depression working its way up from the Caribbean. Even Munn’s careful construction was no match for the resulting gale: the winds sheared off the England’s mast, immobilizing the vessel and forcing the crew and passengers to await assistance from a passing vessel.
No one aboard the Jeanie Johnston would hear of these struggles until long after they landed. Nor would they learn that the Growler, captained by Attridge’s brother and also destined for New York, was beset by the same storm and had been forced to retreat to Cork.7 What they did know was that the gale off the coast of British North America raged on. Night fell; all hands remained on deck, wagering their lives on the skill of their captain and the quality of their ship.
17
Quarantine
OUT ON Grosse Île, George Douglas waited nervously for the first immigrant ship to arrive. It was anyone’s guess whether the typhus outbreak would continue, and to make matters worse, there were now rumors of a resurgence in cholera across Europe. Then again, even the best of conditions would have done little to erase the feeling of dread that pervaded the island. Last year’s catastrophic death toll had shattered any sense of hope among his surviving staff. In truth, it had killed much of the light inside Douglas as well. His hair was now prematurely gray; his face showed decades of aging contracted into a single season. On both sides of the Atlantic, officials were questioning his soundness as a doctor and an administrator; they wondered about his record keeping, his ability to manage staff, his understanding of what plagued the immigrants. They even questioned the ethics of his decision to sell vegetables to those with money to buy them.
And then there was his wife, Charlotte. She was haunted by the scene of bodies corded like firewood awaiting burial and by the workers’ insistence that the island was haunted.1 Perhaps it was. Certainly it had witnessed great suffering, and it did seem like a kind of curse had settled on the barren land. That winter, a series of nor’easters had pounded their farmstead, tearing at their house, and bullet-like hail broke windows and left pockmarks on their doors. The already despondent Charlotte had grown inconsolable. And she was right: you simply could not escape death on this island.
Had Douglas known that, a century later, the British government would deem the island unfit for anything other than top-secret biological warfare and animal pathology experimentation, he wouldn’t have been surprised. The island already seemed irrevocably corrupted by death and disease. He could see it in Charlotte’s face, the way she never left the farm, the way she walked about like a condemned prisoner. His salary was by no means grand, but it was enough to allow for savings, particularly since there was so little on which to spend it in a place like Grosse Île. There was no reason to make Charlotte suffer any more than she already had. She needed a place where she could walk freely, where she could eat wild berries without wondering what grisly death had fertilized them. So he signed a mortgage he would never be able to repay, purchasing the nearby island, Île aux Ruaux, and arranging to build a new home there.
Then he turned his attention back to the St. Lawrence, once known, somewhat lyrically, as mélange des eaux, the mixing of the waters, or the place where salt and fresh water meet, now known perhaps more appropriately as Le cimetière du fleuve, the cemetery river. There the season’s first coffin ships were making their last tacks against the impossible tides and toward the waiting island.
The first to arrive at Grosse Île that year was John Munn’s Fame, making land with her full complement of Irish refugees, despite the miserable conditions on board. A week later the Orinoco, which left Ireland the same day as the Jeanie Johnston, delivered her human cargo. So began the season of immigrant deliveries.
They were not without casualty. Two vessels destined for Grosse Île, the Governor from Limerick and the St. John from Galway, were already reporting significant losses during their crossing, with forty-nine and twenty-six emigrants dying on board, respectively. Seven had died aboard the John Hall. Four hundred fifty immigrants had passed through quarantine and were now cleared to make the final leg of their journey, from the island to Quebec, aboard a large steamer named the John Munn in honor of the philanthropist and shipbuilder. An additional thousand immigrants who had passed Douglas’s medical screening were awaiting passage the next day. The rest—many dangerously thin, some showing signs of infection—remained closed off in the island’s fever sheds. Once again the death count began to rise, and with it officials again looked for someone to blame.
The season’s first dispatch from Henry Grey’s office sought to allay fears about another typhus epidemic. People were dying, wrote the earl, but they “were almost exclusively Irish of the lowest class & . . . , like those who proceeded from that country to Canada during the past year, they had been in a state of extreme destitution before they embarked . . . they carried with them on board ship the seeds of the diseases which were subsequently so fatal to them.”2
Douglas could see that, to at least some degree, officials were right. There was infection among these immigrants, but he knew that while even the halest patient was often helpless in a battle against a disease like typhus or influenza, a weak and undernourished one would stand no chance. Before the season was barely under way, he sa
t down to write another letter, this time asking that the immigrants be given enough food to survive the ravages of ocean travel and disease.3 He used what remained in his meager budget to ensure that starvation did not occur on his watch, paying farmers on nearby islands for weekly deliveries of milk. It was a treat not seen in over a month for the immigrants. For those who came from the poorer regions of Ireland, it was an altogether foreign substance.
Douglas’s outlay was not enough to stem the number of casualties, however. Nor was it sufficient to keep typhus from sneaking onto the mainland. June brought with it the promise of a glorious summer season, but also brought hundreds of new patients to the city’s fever sheds, where crudely made wooden beds were tucked so tightly together that nurses could barely pass between. They were again filled to capacity, sometimes with two people lying head to toe and looking, as one attending nun said, “as if they were in their coffins.”4
Their condition sent Canadian officials scurrying to reinforce their quarantine standards. Within twenty-four hours, the army was again dispatched to man the cannons flanking the center of Grosse Île. The son of a Methodist minister, George Douglas had never been comfortable with the use of force, militaristic or otherwise. But as the influx of immigrants increased, he had to admit he was relieved to have the armed soldiers encamped on the island. If nothing else, they made a clear delineation of right and wrong in a place that seemed otherwise mired in ambiguity.
News of the soldiers’ arrival was the last that would reach either side of the Atlantic that year. Within a week, Canada’s executive government forbade the transmission of all news from the island to anywhere other than its own headquarters. Presumably this decision was made to combat the poor press received by the island during the catastrophic shipping season the year before. Whether or not such measures were warranted, the press was outraged, accusing the government—as only Victorian reporters could—of enforcing a restriction “as arbitrary as it is absurd and mischievous.”5
18
Passing Customs
SEVEN IMMIGRANT vessels arrived at Grosse Île on June 8, 1848. It was a tumultuous day for everyone: the night before, a stiff northward wind had swept down into Quebec, bringing with it an unexpected hard frost. Early potato and corn seedlings were killed; blossoms froze and dropped from the region’s fruit trees.1 Throughout the city, people reverted to their winter habits, donning warm hats and lighting coal fires both inside and out. From downtown, those hearty enough to brave the elements could see that the surrounding mountains were capped in snow. Later that day, a “terrific thunderstorm” passed over Quebec and down the St. Lawrence, bringing hail, torrential rain, and reports of multiple lightning strikes.
Still sequestered in the hold of the Jeanie Johnston, Margaret Reilly could feel first the bitter cold and then the violent thunder. This was her first real exposure to the climate of her new continent, and it was far from the temperate weather they had been promised. Even the blustery coast back home offered more warmth and regularity than this. What had already seemed an uncertain future now became an increasingly illomened one.
As the thunderstorm swept out to sea, Daniel Reilly joined some of the other men on deck. He caught his first glimpse of Grosse Île rising sharply out of the water, a dramatic combination of dark stone and dense stands of oak, birch, and maple, all wearing the pale green of early season foliage. Pine trees rose high above them, blanketing the island in shade. Below the tree line, Daniel could see the chapels, bakery, barracks, and housing for the medical staff. Separated from them by the army barracks were the hospital and twelve fever sheds. Armed guards stood watch on the thin neck of the island separating the sick from the well; only a horse-drawn ambulance and the official medical staff were allowed to move from one side of the island to the other.2 Out of sight but still very much on everyone’s mind were the mass graves containing the five thousand victims of the 1847 season; with their wide hummocked topography and whisper of new vegetation, they looked very much like the potato beds in Ireland, an irony lost on few who passed by.
The Jeanie’s arrival at the island was dictated not by its captain but by the pilot who had boarded his vessel several days earlier. Nautical law—not to mention common sense—dictated that Attridge welcome a local navigator delivered by skiff for the express purpose of sailing the large cargo ship around the topographic perils of the river. We don’t know the name of this pilot, but we do know quite a lot about his qualifications and expertise. A certified pilot was the one individual to whom a captain would cede control of his ship, and in no place was such a decision more warranted than the St. Lawrence—a river notorious around the world not only for its dramatic tides but also for its deadly shoals and deceptively narrow channels separated by innumerable bony islands. A lifetime in these waters, along with years of apprenticeship, ensured that a pilot knew this topography better than anyone on the planet, as well as how to utilize the tides and currents to the advantage of a vessel that had only wind and sail to power it. Most pilots were French Canadian; many maintained island farms during the off months; all were between thirty and sixty-five years old.
They were also adroit followers of British law, a necessity in a region still marred by the traumatic deaths of the previous year. Regardless of how rigorous Attridge had been in enforcing order on board, no matter how stringent Blennerhassett had been about hygiene, the Jeanie Johnston was still a coffin ship. And that made her a potential threat to the well-being of those already living in North America. The pilot brought with him a pamphlet from Dr. Douglas detailing what would happen in quarantine and at the anchorage ground surrounding Grosse Île. The Jeanie and her passengers would have one chance to prove their fitness to the quarantine doctor, and Blennerhassett was determined they would all pass inspection.
It wasn’t just his and Attridge’s reputations at stake. After the disasters of the previous season, Parliament had implemented a new fine of 2 shillings for every three days an immigrant remained on Grosse Île. It would do little to mitigate sickness, but at least the cost of that sickness would be the ship owner’s responsibility. On some vessels, paying that fine rested squarely on the shoulders of captains and doctors.
There wasn’t much time to prepare. Blennerhassett directed the controlled chaos needed to prepare the vessel for inspection: soiled beds and straw were tossed overboard, privy pails were emptied, and the floor of the immigrants’ area was cleaned. He asked the crew to fill buckets with the remaining water on board and then supervised the bathing of each passenger.
Meanwhile the pilot and Attridge worked to angle the Jeanie toward Grosse Île’s main promontory. There a solitary privy stood directly in front of a large rock outcropping. Marking the shortest line to deep water, it also indicated the eventual docking target for the barque. So dramatic are the tides around Grosse Île that the Jeanie Johnston, which drew about fifteen feet, still nearly bottomed out at low tide. Jockeying for position were the six other vessels—and their twelve hundred passengers—hoping to make landfall that day. The largest of them was the Miltiades, which arrived from Belfast with 315 passengers on board. A fully rigged ship, the Miltiades was also faster than the Jeanie Johnston. She made her way to the mandatory anchorage before the Jeanie and quickly raised a flag signaling to Douglas that they were ready for inspection. Most of the passengers on board were cottiers sent out by their landlords. Attridge and Blennerhassett could see from their condition that clearing them for landing on the quarantine island would take some time.
To occupy his men, Attridge ordered them to douse the barque’s immense sails and ready her deck for inspection. They used a noxious combination of lime, sulfuric acid, and hot tar—the only mixture thought strong enough to kill the odors causing ship’s fever. They also prepared the mandatory whitewash that would paint over weeks of suffering in the hold.
Blennerhassett continued to organize the passengers. After forty days at sea, they were enfeebled, weary, and impossibly grimy despite his best efforts. T
hey were all alive, though. Some presented with severe dehydration as a result of dysentery and seasickness; others were marked by bed sores and bruises. Their time in steerage showed; still, the Jeanie’s passengers had fewer of these maladies than most. After conferring with Blennerhassett, Attridge raised the white flag, indicating that all on board were healthy. Yet the doctor wondered if some of his charges could stand long enough to be examined by Douglas.
It seemed an eternity before the medical superintendent, flanked by two of his assistants, slowly rowed from the Miltiades to the Jeanie Johnston. As he neared, the nervous tension aboard increased. Douglas had the power to determine their lives in North America—to decide who could enter and who would be detained, to separate mothers and children, husbands and wives. It was not a role he relished, but he performed it with a curt professionalism that some passengers saw as gruff. The last thing a newly arrived coffin ship needed was an emotional outpouring, and Douglas was determined to keep order as best he could. His assistants strung a long rope across the deck of the Jeanie Johnston and ordered the passengers to approach one by one.
Daniel and Margaret Reilly watched nervously as Douglas ordered each person before him to stick out their tongue. Based on this—and this alone—the doctor decided on which side of the rope they would stand. Those nearest the gangway would soon be taken to the fever sheds, where they would spend weeks or even longer. Those deemed healthy were sent to the other side of the rope and would soon be on their way to Quebec City and their new lives in North America.
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