All Standing

by Kathryn Miles

  Death, Blennerhassett knew, was a part of his profession. But that didn’t make it any easier to bear, particularly when it claimed the life of a loved one. He could only imagine what Douglas was experiencing. Just forty days aboard a vessel was enough for the young doctor to feel forever invested in the health of his charges. In return, they felt forever connected to him. After arriving in Quebec later that month, a group of these passengers wrote an impassioned letter to James Attridge, published first in the Quebec Mercury and then reprinted in the Irish papers:

  Sir—We feel that we would appear ungrateful did we leave your ship without returning you our sincere and heartful thanks for your unremitting kindness and attention to us during the voyage.

  The character you have long since won for yourself has been well preserved since our meeting with you, and we trust that any of our friends, who wish to follow us, may be fortunate enough to meet with one possessed of as much skill and humanity. This, we have no doubt, is also the wish of our respected Medical Officer, Dr. Blennerhassett, whose unceasing attention to us shall not soon be forgotten.

  It must be a source of much gratification to you, as indeed it is to us, that neither death nor sickness have made their appearance among us, owing, we consider, under God, to the wise regulations that have been observed on board.

  Long may you continue to enjoy the high reputation you possess, and long may you live to receive the thanks and blessings of your truly grateful and obliged passengers.11

  If George Douglas read that letter, perhaps he found some solace in the notion that a fellow doctor’s good work had allowed others to live. There is no doubt that John Munn read the letter, and he must have been heartened to know that the vessel he had built with such care was being run with similar attention. Certainly Nicholas Donovan enjoyed the accolades of the passengers for their doctor. Probably Attridge and Blennerhassett himself did as well. It was proof positive of their hard work, and an unexpectedly grand gesture, extravagant even, particularly for artisans who had just spent their life savings on the passage to North America. But it wasn’t enough to dissuade the doctor from leaving the Jeanie Johnston for good. He must have made his intentions known, at least to Campion. The two men had become close during their time at sea, and though we have no record of their conversations, it appears that Blennerhassett did tell Campion that although he was leaving the Jeanie Johnston, he had no intention of leaving his role as ship’s doctor. For when the vessel returned to Ireland, he was presented with a gift even more extravagant than the Quebec Mercury letter: a collapsible marine surgical saw made of brass and ivory and engraved “From the crew of the Jeanie Johnston.”

  27

  Departures

  1853

  QUEEN VICTORIA returned for an unparalleled second visit to Ireland in September 1853. Bolstered by the success of the 1852 Cork Exhibition, Prince Albert and his supporters had helped to organize an even grander display in Dublin. Rumors of a new war in Turkey along with a sudden outbreak of the measles in the royal house delayed the visit by a month; however, Victoria and Albert were determined to participate in the event that would mark the dawn of a new technological era for Ireland. To commemorate the event, the royal couple, along with their two oldest sons, traveled again by royal yacht and were seen waving from the deck as they entered the mouth of the River Liffey.

  Victoria and her family spent three days at the exhibition, which invited innovators from around the world to participate. Colt and Singer both made the long trip from America; the former sold a disappointing forty pistols (and all to the Irish prison system) during the entirety of the one-month exhibition; the sewing machine company fared even worse. The Irish people simply had no money to attend the gala event, let alone purchase the merchandise. Those Irish firms participating did their best to impress the queen, who was particularly taken by the displays of Irish linen and whiskey.1

  The exhibition aside, the timing of her visit couldn’t have been more poignant. Just as the royal yacht was docking in Kingstown, census officials were releasing their official tallies from the 1851 count. Ireland’s population had not risen to nine million, as predicted, nor had it maintained its 1841 count of eight million. Instead the famine had reduced the population of the island to 6.5 million. It was the first conclusive and irrefutable evidence of just how catastrophic losses from the Great Hunger had been. At least half a million people had staked their future to the hold of a coffin ship; another million died before they had the opportunity to leave.

  The significance of these new figures could scarcely be ignored. Nevertheless the queen was determined to remain positive during her visit. She reported that Ireland looked “greatly improved” since her previous visit.2 Although the famine and its aftermath had reduced many to the depths of despair, illness, and poverty, she was certain the exhibition “had raised the feelings of enterprise among the people, showing them that if they try, they can succeed.” The year 1853, she predicted, would be a watershed for Irish industry.

  It would be one for emigration as well. More landlords were capitalizing on estate acts and changing public perception concerning the relocation of tenants. By the end of the year, a whopping 10,448 emigrants would depart from Tralee alone. The Kennellys took advantage of the opportunity, taking out bigger and bigger ships and subsidizing the cost not only of conveying the emigrants but also of getting them to the docks. Twice that summer they sent out vessels capable of carrying more than three hundred ticketed passengers, including the 1,600-ton flagship Lady Russell, which the Kerry Evening Post described as “one of the finest ships ever brought into this port for immigration purposes.” She was about to depart again with 450 passengers and a new physician: Richard Blennerhassett. She and three other ships left in early August, hoping to make North America before the worst of the hurricane season. The Kennellys’ Telegraph left on August 20—already late in the season—and was assumed by many to be the last vessel to depart from Tralee that year. But Nicholas Donovan had other plans.

  These plans no doubt troubled James Attridge. Sailors are a superstitious lot, and even an optimist had to admit it looked as if the Jeanie’s luck was changing. On the first of her two North American runs that year, Attridge encountered his first and only casualty aboard the vessel. Samuel Nichols, a new cook hired from Hamburg, became visibly agitated and unruly during the voyage. After repeated reprimands, Attridge had no choice but to sequester him in the vessel’s jail. Shortly thereafter he died.

  There is no record of Nichols’s cause of death, but we do know that the British customs official in Quebec signed off on the disposal of his body and the mustering of a replacement without any suspicion or alarm. That suggests that Nichols died of what at least appeared to be natural causes. Without Blennerhassett on board, Attridge would have been hard-pressed to say for sure.

  News of Nichols’s demise quickly spread across Quebec’s busy water-front, and whether it was suspicion that his death had been caused by ill treatment or just standard superstition about filling a dead man’s shoes, no one seemed willing to take the cook’s place. Four times that month Attridge hired a cook, and each time he waited in vain for the man to arrive. These would-be deserters included a sailor named Henry Roberts, who at fifty-two would have been the oldest crew member ever to sail on the Jeanie. Perhaps his decades at sea had been enough to make him change his mind.

  Attridge had other concerns too, such as the absence of his now-legendary right-hand man, Richard Blennerhassett, and his equally essential first mate. He and Campion had made nearly twenty voyages together. Why Campion, who would never go on to serve as captain aboard a vessel, left his post with Attridge is a mystery, but contemporary historians have two theories: that Campion grew increasingly distrustful of Donovan’s decisions regarding the maintenance and management of the Jeanie Johnston, and that Campion’s life had become so entwined with Blennerhassett’s that he simply could not imagine sailing without him.

  Attridge’s primary concern, howev
er, was preserving the Jeanie’s safety record in the face of all challenges and speculation. To replace Campion, the captain chose a young sailor from the United States who boasted a résumé of multiple transatlantic crossings but was still very much an unknown entity. That was not a good attribute for the second in command on a large vessel.

  Attridge was likely alarmed by the increasingly suspect demands being placed on him by his cousin Nicholas Donovan. In the face of the Kennellys’ success, Donovan had reduced his ticket prices and encouraged all those with the funds to climb aboard. He had also contracted with the Earl of Kenmare, who was more than happy to pay the reduced fare for sixty of his tenants. When Attridge arrived at his cousin’s office to collect the passenger manifests for their upcoming voyage, he was dismayed by what he saw: despite a clearly stated occupancy of two hundred passengers, Donovan had sold 230 tickets for the journey. It didn’t matter that the earl had sworn he would take care of all clothes and provisions his tenants would need at sea. Donovan’s decision was testing Attridge’s unparalleled reputation for strict adherence to naval law. Attridge knew that even the legal limit of individuals taxed the crude berths in the Jean-ie’s hold. An additional thirty would mean more overcrowding—six or even eight people to a single bunk in some cases, not to mention the extra ton of food he would need.

  September was already well upon them. There was a chill in the air and frost in the mountains. The shipping season had all but closed, and for good reason. Any departure that late in the year would send a vessel and her occupants directly into the epicenter of the North Atlantic’s storm season. Each autumn, massive storm cells, some more than a thousand miles wide, often spun off from tropical hurricanes as they collected energy from the cold waters of the North Atlantic. The result could easily include hurricane-force winds, dangerous thunderstorms, and even blizzard-like conditions. Square-riggers like the Jeanie Johnston were not built to hold a steady course close against these types of winds. The only chart point Attridge could fetch would be the one dictated by the winds. That meant, at best, long delays in their trip. At worst, they would never reach their destination.

  As Attridge prepared for this late launch, the season’s first real storm pushed in hard from the Atlantic, funneling wind into the unprotected bay. It halted construction on the new lighthouse for days and delayed the arrival of packet schooners from the north and west. But that didn’t matter to Donovan, who watched as a stream of small cargo boats battled their way to the Jeanie, carrying the bulky construction equipment Attridge and his crew would need to build extra bunks and storage. The voyage could still come off without a hitch—of that Donovan felt certain.

  But the North Atlantic had other plans. Autumn’s infamous storms soon began to burgeon, traveling miles from the Caribbean and picking up force as they did. The first major storm occurred a thousand nautical miles off the coast of Ireland and soon grew to hurricane strength. It broke masts and capsized vessels. Ships still within reach put back into various ports in Britain, where their captains hoped to save both vessels and lives.

  The Jeanie Johnston departed Tralee on Saturday, September 17, with 248 souls aboard. As Attridge steered his northern course, he could see evidence around him of the vessels that had failed to reach safety during the most recent storm; spars and splintered masts floated by, as did beacons and lifeboats. There were sheared sections of bows and crushed wheelhouses. Timber, casks of wine, and other cargo bobbed among them, silent testimony to the vessels that once carried them and now lay somewhere deep below on the ocean floor. As he pushed through the debris, the seas became heavy, rolling upon a northwestern gale. Reports of casualties began to grow: the Annie Jane, an emigrant vessel, was lost completely; the name board of the Mary & Elizabeth was found, with no trace of the rest of the ship or its passengers. Then there were those anonymous casualties for which it was known only that a vessel had foundered: three nearly submerged here, four bottom up there.

  But there were also survivors. The Kennellys received word that the Sophia Elizabeth, a Dutch barque on her way from New York, had made contact with their immigrant vessel the Lesmahagow and that all was well. John Munn was delighted to hear that the England pushed through the brunt of the storm and arrived, somewhat miraculously, at the same docks from which she and the Jeanie were sold. But on both sides of the Atlantic, people searched in vain for news of the Jeanie Johnston. Would her great luck hold?

  It would be months before Donovan would hear word. In the meantime, Attridge was battling for the life of everyone on board.

  28

  Storm Season

  ATTRIDGE AND his crew managed to steer the Jeanie Johnston through the dregs of the deadly hurricane that claimed so many vessels that season. But on the other side of the massive cell, the captain confronted a series of gales just off the coast of North America. The first tore across the Maritimes on September 29, wrecking vessels across Halifax’s harbor before pushing out to sea. Along the way, it prompted casualties as strange as they were tragic: all the horses aboard the Eudocia had perished in the storm; a cook and his cookhouse from another vessel were washed to sea, while the rest of the ship, and those aboard, remained unharmed.

  That same storm met up with the Jeanie Johnston less than a week later, having lost little of its punch along the way. The storm bore down hard, heralded by a dramatic front line and followed by ominous clouds and a wind-chopped sea. Within an hour, the winds had collected and were hammering the Jeanie against angry black waves that had grown to twice the height of a man. To save his vessel from sinking, Attridge was forced to stall it directly into the wind, where she would continue to be rocked by waves but at least would remain stable.

  Once the seas began to calm, Attridge wasted little time in ordering the sails raised and the Jeanie back on course. Nothing stayed tranquil for long on the North Atlantic at that time of year, and he would need to clear Newfoundland before the next storm if they were to make it to Quebec without incident.

  Somehow the weather held. The Jeanie made her way past Labrador and approached the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. Cape Breton was visible from the top of the observation deck, but so too were the rolling clouds of the next frontal system. The winds began to mount, more severely this time. By nightfall they had reached hurricane proportion and would remain that intense for the next fifteen hours—enough time to wreck seven vessels within striking distance of the Jeanie. Visibility had been so reduced that Attridge could not see those vessels or the detritus they left. All that existed, it seemed, was the unrelenting face of those leaden waves. Attridge and his crew tried repeatedly to beat the Jeanie to windward, listening as the strain of the wind threatened to tear their shrouds and rigging from the deck. The waves continued to pound hard against the deck, forcing apart her seams and sending sprays of icy water onto the terrified passengers below. Still the storm showed no sign of relenting. If anything, it seemed to build as Attridge tried to force the Jeanie into the St. Lawrence. There the wind and waves were funneled by the surrounding land, concentrating the punch of the storm directly onto his vessel.

  Attridge doubted the ship could withstand the strain much longer. Pushing forward would mean enduring even greater force. It was too great a risk. He called in the Jeanie’s mighty sails and allowed the gale to blow him back out to sea.

  No doubt his decision saved the lives of many if not all of those on board. But it also meant that they would again have to attempt the dangerous rounding into the St. Lawrence. It was now the end of October, and the Gulf’s stormiest month was about to arrive. Still, the crew agreed with their captain’s decision. It was a testament to Attridge’s leadership that they were willing to try again. Not far from the Jeanie, the crew of the Eliza mutinied when their captain suggested they do the same.

  In the early days of November, another erratic and volatile storm approached, sending barometers and weatherglasses spinning into chaos. Sailors and the weather-wise were utterly baffled by the unsettled conditions—but not for l
ong. Soon the storm regulated itself into a single, persistent fury greater than even the oldest residents of New Brunswick had ever witnessed. Again Attridge attempted to knuckle through it. Again he was beaten back amid the wreckage of dozens of less fortunate vessels.

  By now the Jeanie’s passengers had been aboard the vessel for two solid months. They had been jostled, sickened, and bruised. They had spent days in a dark and stifling hold. They were terrified. Above deck, Attridge assessed the situation. The storms had torn through two entire sets of sails. Delays and repairs meant that most of the food and water supply had been consumed. Even if they made it back into the Gulf, there was no assurance they would arrive in Quebec; this late in the season, Canadian ports iced over, sending all traffic to ports along the Maine coast. The Jeanie would never make it that far.

  For the first time since taking command of the Jeanie Johnston, Attridge was forced to admit defeat. He limped his vessel around the thumb of Nova Scotia, taking refuge in the protected Bay of Fundy. A day later, he laid anchor at St. Andrews, New Brunswick, a small coastal town just across the Maine border. There Thomas Jones, the town’s resident customs official, received them. He was visibly incredulous—and more than a little relieved—to see that everyone aboard this strange vessel was safe. What to do with these late-season arrivals, however, was a conundrum. Even if Attridge had been able to procure the food and repairs needed to make another attempt at Quebec, the onset of winter had long since made reaching the port by sea an impossibility. He couldn’t take the emigrants back to Tralee; legally he was bound to deliver them to the destination printed on their ticket, so long as that was where they desired to go. Jones could help arrange steamer passage to Portland, Maine, where they could then catch a train for Quebec. All but fifty-seven of the passengers chose this option. For the rest, the prospect of yet another voyage—and one so soon after their terrifying experience—was more than they could bear. What, Attridge asked, would become of them? Jones didn’t know. But he did know that St. Andrews already had a large Irish population and that many of them worked on the railroad. Railroad officials were delighted at the prospect of more labor and hired the men on the Jeanie Johnston who wished to remain in St. Andrews.