Star of the Sea

by Joseph O'Connor

  Last night four of the steerage passengers died: Peter Foley of Lahinch (forty-seven yrs, land labourer); Michael Festus Gleeson of Ennis (age unknown, but very aged, a purblind); Hannah Doherty of Belturbet (sixty-one yrs, a onetime domestic) and Daniel Adams of Clare (nineteen yrs; evicted tenant farmer). Their mortal remains were committed to the sea. God Almighty have mercy upon their souls and receive them unto that anchorage where reigns His peace.

  The total of those who have died since this voyage commenced is eighteen. Five are in the hold this night, suspected of Typhus. Two, it is certain, will not see the morning.

  I have given orders for burials to be conducted from the stern from now on and held at dawn or after dark. It is a habit of many of the women of steerage to indulge in ‘keening’ at such sad moments; a peculiar variety of wailing ululation where they rend their garments and pull at their hair. Some of the First-Class passengers were complaining about the disturbance. Lady Kingscourt, in particular, was a little concerned that her children might be distressed by the queer proceedings.

  Large number of steerage with dysentery, scurvy or famine dropsy. Smaller number (about fifteen) with all three. One seaman, John Grimesley, is quite smitten with a fever. A steward, Fernão Pereira, has a septic wound to the hand, caused by a cut from a broken wineglass. Both men were seen by Surgeon Mangan, who put leeches on the first, and a pasted opiate poultice on the second. He is of the view that they will recover presently if excused from duty and so they have been. (Both are good honest men; no idlers or scrimshankers. I do not propose to dock any pay.) The Maharajah is also unwell, though only with seasickness, and has retired to his stateroom, not to be disturbed. I myself had a poor chest earlier in the day, and took a quarter-grain of opium. Found it vivifying.

  Instructions have been issued for the men to desist from referring to the steerage passengers as ‘steeries’, ‘steeragers’, ‘raggers’, ‘shawlies’ & cetera. (These terms are employed not only to disparage certain passengers that were better assisted with kindliness, but are used among the men themselves as varieties of insult.) Leeson has informed them this will not be tolerated. Every man, woman and child on this vessel will be addressed with respect, the common run of person as well as the better. They are Steerage or Ordinary Passengers, and will be known as such.

  A troubling matter must be reported:

  This forenoon it was brought to my attention by First Mate Leeson that very late last night some person – presumably male – had sawn through the bars in the lower foredeck gate, which leads to the First-Class compartments. At first I was perplexed, for in accordance with the regulations all the steerage passengers’ belongings were carefully searched on boarding the vessel; such items as knives, saws, swords, blades, skewers & cetera being confiscated until we debark at New York. But Leeson being a diligent and thorough Mate – who has long since deserved promotion, though receiving none – had enquired of Henry Li the cook. The latter attested that a small hacksaw used for butchery had been pilfered from the galley some time last night, along with some pig innards and a flagon of freshwater.

  A number of items have been stolen from First-Class; viz: a silver-plate watch belonging to Minister Deedes, a pair of cuff-links from the Mail Agent George Wellesley and a quantity of American dollar paper currency from the Maharajah. All are agreed that to search the entirety of steerage would probably prove fruitless, if such an endeavour were possible, which it is not now. I have promised that the thefts will be repaired by the Company’s insurance policy and requested the victims to keep the matter to themselves, as I do not wish to cause wider alarm than is necessary. Meanwhile I have arranged for extra watchmen at night and other measures.

  Leeson has said he will put it about steerage that the Minister is very saddened by the loss of his watch, a gift from a number of grateful parishioners on his retirement. We shall see if such a stratagem brings results.

  Such petty thievings have happened previously on similar voyages and in my experience will happen again. Human Nature being the drama it is, a certain degree of resentment may be thought inevitable; indeed, I might venture, understandable.

  The London office will by now have received my official notification of the 8th inst. written from Queenstown, on the perennial matter of overcrowding. Again and again in this past fourteen years, I have insisted that you, as the directors of this company, bear a legal, and indeed a moral duty to maintain the fundamental protection of those who entrust their lives to this vessel and to my own captaincy of same. And yet again, despite my unending protestations, too many steerage tickets have been sold for this voyage, by a factor of thirty percentage at the minimum.

  I fail to comprehend why my passengers and my men must habitually be thrust into peril of this most immediate and outrageous nature, simply for the sake of the profits accruing from so doing. Nor can any satisfactory cause be advanced for the disgraceful failure to provide a physician or at least a nurse on board; nor a safe place for the purpose of accouchements for the women. Perhaps the shareholders think babies come from under the cabbage leaves. I can assure them they do not, though it were easier if they did. It is only a blessing of providence that we have Surgeon Mangan among us now; and if his efforts are tireless and his charity unstinting, he is not a young man and is already being overwhelmed.

  Directly we dock at New York, I once more insist, arrangements must urgently be effected to ameliorate the lot of the steerage passengers, if any, on the return leg. If this is not done, another Captain will be required. I will have no more innocent blood on my hands, nor either on my conscience.

  In the meantime I have had Leeson arrange for expeditious repairs; also for supplementary bolts, chains, hasps and morticed locks to be put on all gates, windows, hatches, frames, casements & cetera, this programme to be undertaken over the next several days. The cost of compleatly emptying our store of these items will no doubt be considerable to the Company. Greater, indeed, than the sum which might have been required to give every soul in steerage a daily dish of broth, or the children of steerage a pannikin of hot milk. Those more learned in matters of accounting than your humble employee may wish to reflect upon the above, for future reference.

  Otherwise the ship seems peaceful enough, if restlessly so; and we continue to progress in adequate time.

  The sea appears unusually tranquil for this time of year.

  Greater number of sharks than is usual.

  … We are all without a place to lea our head And this day we are without a Bit to eat and I wood Be Dead long go only for two Nebours that ofen gives me A Bit for god Sake But little ever I thought that it wood come to my turn to Beg Nomore

  Letter to an immigrant in America

  CHAPTER VI

  THE VISIONS AT DELPHI

  IN WHICH THE WRETCHED HUSBAND OF MARY DUANE, QUITE UNDONE BY THE EVIL OF WANT, RECORDS HIS LAST AND TERRIBLE THOUGHTS.

  Christmas Eve, 1845, Rosroe1

  Dearest Mary Duane, my only beloved wife,

  Pen could scarcely put down what I feel now. All is lost, my sweetest Mary, and can never return.

  I have just come back from Delphi Lodge at Bundorragha near Leenaun, where I went up to try and see the Commander. Having walked all the way from our present shelter up to Louisburgh in the County of Mayo, I was told by a man in the town that the Commander was not there at the present time but was after going up to Delphi with Colonel Hograve and Mr Lecky.

  Hundreds of people were all about the town and they trying to get a docket to get into the Workhouse, but all were turned away by the Relieving Officer, it being too full, and the constables beating the people back from the gates.

  The bright windows of the stores had Christmas fare in great abundance, geese and fowl and all such; but just as in Clifden the traders have greatly multiplied the prices. How they can do it to their own people at this awful time I cannot understand. Everything now is the fault of the English and the landlords, the people do say; and Jesus help us, so much of it is.
But it is not the common man of England who is preying like a vulture on the poor people when they have nothing, but the Judas Irish merchant with his greedy eye to whatever mite he can screw out of his wretched countrymen and they so down.

  The town was a dreadful sight, I could never forget it; with a multitude half dead and weeping as they walked through the streets. Worse again to see those for whom even weeping was too much effort, and they sitting down on the icy ground to bow their heads and die, the best portion of life already gone out from them. I saw John Furey from Rosaveel and thought him asleep; but he was dead; and to see that great strong man who could at one time pull a hedge out of the earth with his mighty left hand now lying so still was a terrible thing. But to witness the sufferings of the tiny children; to hear the sounds they made in their agonies. I cannot write it.

  It can never be written, Mary.

  People would not believe such things could have been permitted to happen.

  I faced out alone for the mountain track from Louisburgh. The sun was going down by now. All along the road were unspeakable sights. Cabins and shielings had been torn down and burned. In one house at Glankeen the entire of a family had died: the parents, all of their children and four old people. Two neighbourmen told me the last to die, a boy of six or seven years, had locked the door and hidden under his bed, being ashamed for his people to be found in that way. The men were tumbling the cottage around them as a grave, having no other place to put them.

  Higher up the track there was hardly a living soul to be seen. Where some of the poor people had died, dogs and rats were about. The carrion crows and foxes were gorging also. And then a wretched old woman whose bothy I passed beseeched me for a scrap of food; and when I said I had none she begged me to put an end to her life, for all of her sons were gone and she was quite without support. All I could think of to do was to lift her up and carry her with me along the way. This I did. Christ be my judge, Mary, she weighed as a pillow; but even so, I could barely carry her. As I bore her in my arms she began to utter the Rosary that she and I might live this night. But before long she died and I laid her down and covered her as best I could with stones. I should like to say that I knelt and said a prayer but Jesus forgive me I did not, for I felt that if I did not get up at that moment I would never get up again in my life.

  As I made along, I rehearsed in my mind some words I might say to the Commander: that I was an honest-hearted and industrious tenant who bore him no ill despite our former differences. That I begged his forgiveness for having spoken disrespectfully to him that time when I was angry, that on the life of my child my debt to him would be paid for certain if only he would overturn the eviction and that way allow me the means to pay it. That for all our differing stations he like myself was a Galwayman, no foreign planter come across the sea, and might help another Galwayman who was down on his luck. That he himself was a father, after all, and surely to Jesus could pity my situation, for if he were to put himself into my shoes he must imagine what it is to see your only child scream with the hunger and be able to bring no ease nor comfort.

  The road was hard and fearsome cold. Near Cregganbaun the lake was after bursting its banks and so I had to wade across the road up to my chest in my clothes. The water was cold as a stinging fire. But I felt a kind of courage inside whenever I thought about you, Mary. I truly felt you were with me then.

  At length the lights of Delphi Lodge appeared in the distance. How happy I was! Up to the house I went with haste. Courtly music was coming from the inside of it. A serving girl answered the door. I took off my cap and said I was a tenant of Commander Blake, much in distress, and was after walking three days and nights for to see him, and gave my name. She went away but shortly returned. The Commander was playing cards, she said, and would not come out and see me.

  At this I was astonished.

  Again I asked – Mary, I begged – but he would not come out. Once more I gave my name but she said she was after telling it already and he had answered it with oaths so obscene I would not defile your eyes by writing them down for you to read.

  I looked in the window of the withdrawing room at the front. A strange kind of ball was in progress, with elegant ladies and gentlemen in frock coats and they wearing the masks of goblins or angels and supping hot punch. I could not see the Commander anywhere within, but his horse and trap were in the yard.

  I sat down on the snowy ground beneath a pine tree, intending to wait. It was dark now. It was very quiet all around. I was thinking strange thoughts, all sorts of thoughts. I do not know what I was thinking about. After a while I must have fallen into a sleep.

  I dreamed that you and I and our child were in Paradise together, with warmth and plenty all about us. Music was playing. Your father and mother were there with my own, as hale and young as could ever be hoped; and many old friends, and all of us were happy. Our Lord came among us, as I thought, and gave us bread to eat, and wine to drink. A strange thing was that He had a newborn pig in his bloodied hands and when I asked him why, Our Lord said in our own Gaelic language: he is holy. And then Our Lady came in to the place where we were – not a chamber but a kind of shining meadow – and She touched our faces one by one and we became full of light, as water. And Our Lady said in the English language: blessed be the fruit of my womb.

  When I woke up it was black-dark and the music was after stopping. I could taste the bread I was after eating in the dream, as sweet and luscious as any I ever knew. But then the cramp came back, harder than before – Christ stand between us and all harm – like a blacksmith’s iron aflame in my guts. I thought my time had come to die but it stopped, then, and I could feel myself weeping for the pain of it.

  All the lights were put out in the house. The lower portion of my body was covered in snow, and I could scarcely feel my legs no more. Such a dreadful stillness over the icy land I never heard before. Not the cry of a beast nor the croak of a bird. Just blackness and stillness all over the fields. It was as though the whole world was quietly dying.

  Someone was after coming out and putting the horse inside in the stable and blanketing him. I went and waited beside the trap for a time.

  But he never came out.

  At length I went and knocked on the door again. One of the other servants, an old footman this time, said I would have to go on for myself. Otherwise he was after being told to set the dogs on me and it was more than his life was worth to give me admittance to the house for His Lordship the Commander was in a drunken fury. He gave me a cup of water and pleaded with me to go on for myself.

  At that a terrible raging anger swept through me like a torrent. I tried to strike the man – God pardon me the raising of my hand to an aged person – but he slammed the door shut on me.

  I prowled around the house like an animal for a time. But all inside must have gone to their beds for the windows were darkened now and shuttered. The madness came up again in me then. I let a roar out of me.

  I cursed the living name of Henry Blake, and prayed to Christ that neither he nor his will ever know rest so long as they live, all seed and breed of them that ever sees Galway. That they may never sleep a night in their lives again. That they may die in agonies and have a dishonoured grave.

  Mary, I would have murdered him if he came out of the house. Christ forgive me, but I would have got pleasure out of watching him suffer so I would.

  Wind was coming up hard and biting off the lake. Now I heard a wolf crying in the hills behind. Down the mountain to Leenaun I went, thinking I might beg a place for the night in some haggard or even a morsel of bread itself or a sup of milk for the child. But the people would not stand for it, being afraid of the fever and they whipped me out of it with shame and scorn. Some troopers went past in the rain but gave me nothing either. They said they had nothing to give.

  I came back here to find your sister looking over the child who was bestraught with the hunger. She said you were after going walking all the way over to Kingscourt to ask about help. That w
as shutting the stable door when the horse is after bolting, Mary, because I know there is not a soul in that place at the present. I have sent her away now, for the pitiful screams of the child were distressing her.

  They will stop soon.

  Do you remember, my gentle Mary, how we used to go out walking together when we were young? The simple happiness of the days together and the sweetness and friendship of our nights. What a life we thought we should have, a life of buttermilk and bees, you once said. Even though I knew I was not your first choice for a companion of life, there was no happier man in all of Ireland than myself at that time. Nor would I have translated my place with any king or landlord, neither with the Sultan of India himself. All the gold in Victoria’s throne would not have given me lure or temptation: nor every gem in her crown. O my own wife. My own Mary Duane. I felt that love would flower if watered with consideration and gentleness and I believe it did, at least for a time.

  There are so many kinds of love in the world. If we were more like sister and brother sometimes, that would have been more than sufficient for myself; for no man ever had a better friend and helper than you and it was all my happiness to care for you.

  But then a rat came into the wheatfield.

  The meaning seems to have gone out of it all lately. Even the face of our innocent child now only seems a mockery.

  I beg you pray mercy on my soul for all I have done and for the terrible thing I am about to do.

  Forgive me for failing you, when you deserved so much more.

  Perhaps after all you should have married that other creature of Satan who has brought me so low. Well now you are free.

  I am so cold and afraid.

  She will not suffer, Mary, I will do it quickly and be not long after her.