by Charles Egan
‘And where will we be staying?’ Luke asked.
‘In here.’
Luke stopped. ‘A fever shed? It looks well built for that.’
‘Come, come. Don’t be alarming yourself. These aren’t fever sheds. These are for the healthy passengers.’
‘So there’s no fever here?’
‘None,’ the priest said. ‘Or not much anyhow. Nothing like what you’ve been used to shipboard.’
Luke and Conaire were allocated beds beside each other.
‘And a bit better than the bunks on the Centaurus,’ Conaire commented.
‘That wouldn’t be hard,’ Luke said. ‘Now I’ve need of a needle and thread.’
‘Don’t we all?’
Luke walked away. A few minutes later, he came back, with a needle and a spool of thread.
‘A decent woman gave it to me. I promised her a farthing for the thread.’
He sat on the other side of the bunk, and removed his trousers. Carefully, he checked that the money was still inside his pocket. Then he stitched up the pocket, and over-stitched it. No one had noticed.
Conaire borrowed the needle and thread. When he was finished, Luke returned them to their owner.
Afterwards, he took the pillow off his bunk, replaced it with his pack, and slept through the rest of the afternoon, evening and the night until he was woken up by a call of ‘breakfast’.
‘Bread and oatmeal,’ Conaire noted.
‘Better than on the Centaurus,’ Luke answered. ‘At least there’s no weevils.’
As they ate, one of the servers came and sat with them.
‘Well lads, ye’re looking healthy enough. Strong too.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Luke said.
‘Don’t worry. If ye’re not, we’ll soon strengthen you up. They’re looking for workers for erecting tents.’
‘Tents!’ Luke echoed. ‘I thought you were finished with tents.’
‘So we were. Have ye seen the number of ships just come in. Must be dozens of them. End of season, all rushing to make it in in time.’
‘Are they that bad?’ Luke asked.
‘Worse than bad. There’s two just in – one from Glasgow, one from Liverpool – and they’re among the worst we’ve seen. We’ve had to take some of the poor wretches into the sheds here, and them not even being able to stand up.’
‘Hold on,’ Luke said. ‘I thought these weren’t fever sheds.’
‘They weren’t. They are now.’
Luke thought of what the priest had said only the previous day. It seemed his comments on everything getting better were a little hasty.
‘So how long is it since the tents were all pulled down?’
‘About a week. We thought it was over.’
Luke made to speak, but Conaire put a hand on his arm.
‘What’s he been saying?’ he asked Luke.
‘They’re looking for men for erecting the tents again.’
‘And how much are they paying?’ Conaire asked. ‘Or had you not thought of asking that.’
‘I hadn’t. I’ll ask him.’
During the conversation with Conaire, Luke had noticed that the other man did not seem to understand Irish.
‘My friend here was asking how much we’d get paid for working on the tents.’
‘God, he’s quick, isn’t he. A shilling a day Canadian, that’s what they’re paying. The same as we’re getting here. Are ye interested or not?’
‘We are,’ said Luke. ‘But tell me this. Would we earn enough for the cost of a letter back to Ireland?’
‘Ye might.’
‘And what of a post office?’
‘There’s plenty of them in Quebec.’
‘What of the Island?’
‘I don’t know,’ the man said. ‘They’ve some class of postal service here for the medical fellows and the officers. I wouldn’t risk it though. If you put cash in a letter, it most certainly would not arrive in Ireland. And even without the cash, the post would be expensive enough, and I wouldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t take your money, and have the letter disappear before it even gets to Quebec. No, best to wait ’till you get to the city, then write your letter as soon as you find a post office.’
‘Fine so,’ Luke said.
‘Good. Now when you’re finished your breakfast, I’ll take you over to your ganger.’
‘I understood that word,’ Conaire said to him.
‘I thought you might,’ Luke said.
Sometime later, another man came to their table.
‘Bob tells me you’re interested in working.’
‘We are,’ Luke said.
‘Well, come with me so.’
Again, they walked most of the length of the island back to the Irish burial ground.
‘So where have ye lads come from?’ the ganger asked.
‘We’re both Mayo. We came by way of Liverpool on the Centaurus.
The ganger stopped, and grabbed Luke by the arm.
‘A Mayo man! And you came by Liverpool!’
‘What else could I do?’
‘Go through Westport.’
Luke laughed.
‘Westport? That would have been pricier. Only the rich go through Westport.’
‘And what of that? You wouldn’t be here if you had, that’s for certain. Nor would you have been on a floating charnel house like the Centaurus. Good Christ, I had to go through Liverpool, no choice, but you – you had a choice.’
‘So what’s so special about Westport?’ Luke asked.
‘Clean ships. Proper ships. The Dewdrop earlier in the summer, everyone talked about that. Crossed the Atlantic and through quarantine without losing a soul. And I saw the Grace out of Westport too after I’d arrived. That wasn’t even stopped at quarantine, straight through to Quebec. Or Montreal perhaps. But a man like you, you had the choice and you risked your life on a coffin ship instead.’
Luke thought back to when he had been leaving Mayo.
‘Not as much of a choice as you might think. Like I say, the Westport ships were expensive. Killala too. I thought it better to go to Liverpool, and leave the money with my family. God knows, they’ll need it enough with the shortage of potatoes.’
When they arrived, Luke was surprised at the size of the tents. Many had already been erected. They were put in with three other men, and quickly learnt the system. They worked for some hours, until a break was called for food. Bread and water. They sat with the other three.
‘So where have you come from?’ one of the men asked.
‘Mayo. We came over on the Centaurus by way of Liverpool, and our ganger friend doesn’t seem to think much of that.
‘I wouldn’t blame him. We just heard tell of that. Bad, was it?’
‘Damned bad,’ said Luke. ‘There’s worse, I hear. Not many I’d say.’
‘Ours was one. Myself and my brothers, we came over with the Virginius, and a more accursed ship you never saw. Left Liverpool with five hundred men, women and children in May. Two months on the Great Ocean, and a hundred dead every month. What do you think of that?’
‘I’d heard things were bad,’ Luke said. ‘The Robert Peel…’
‘Another Liverpool ship. But by Christ I’ll tell you, the Virginius was worse, a living Hell. Hardly anyone able to get off the ship without being carried, that’s how bad it was. And another hundred dead in Grosse Île. My brothers and myself, we were the lucky ones.’
‘Ye’re looking well enough,’ Luke said.
‘We’re only a short time off that god damned ship. But we’re recovered well, and fed better.’
‘So what part of Ireland…?’
‘County Roscommon. Town of Strokestown. Denis Mahon, he was our landlord. Cleared the whole lot of us out. Thousands of people, I’ve no idea how many. Then we had to march across Ireland, and take the cattle boat to Liverpool. The Virginius was waiting, do you see. Mahon had paid our passage on it and all, he did. All the way to Quebec. Decent fellow, you might
say, but it shows how desperate he was to get rid of the lot of us. And on a hellhole of a ship like that. Someone should kill that son-of-a-bitch.’
Abruptly, Conaire stood.
‘I’m sick of hearing this,’ he said, voice raised. ‘Ye’ll be going on about it to the end of time. Can you not leave it rest?’
The three brothers looked at him in astonishment.
‘I’m sorry,’ the first said. ‘I didn’t mean to be upsetting you. Would you not think we should kill Mahon, is that it?’
‘It’s not that at all,’ Conaire replied. ‘Look at this,’ he said, gesturing across the river. ‘Quebec. Or the rest of Canada. Whatever ye suffered, the landlord has given you all that.’
Luke had stood. He put his hand on Conaire’s shoulders.
‘Hold it there,’ he said.
Conaire stood away, angry.
‘No, I will not hold it. It’s what none of us Irish will ever understand. No one’s interested in all this nonsense.’
One of the brothers stood. ‘Nonsense…?’
‘Yes,’ said Conaire, ‘and you can hit me if you like, but I’m still right. That’s the trouble about the Irish, we go on suffering, and griping about our suffering to the end of time. Look, you’re in a new country, in a few weeks you’ll be in Quebec. A man must take his chances and stop looking to the past and whimpering like an infant.’
The other man sat.
‘By God, you’re a strange fellow.’
On Sunday, Luke and Conaire attended Mass with the others. They both stood up for communion, as the priest gave out the communion wafer to the long line of communicants.
‘Corpus Christi.’ Body of Christ.
‘Corpus Christi.’
‘Corpus Christi.’
After Mass, they stood outside smoking pipes.
‘You’re a religious man anyhow,’ Luke said to Conaire.
‘I don’t have to leave everything behind.’
After a while, the priest came over to them.
‘Luke, isn’t it?’
‘Yes Father.’
‘All well?’
‘Good and bad,’ Luke replied. ‘We’re sleeping and eating down at the healthy sheds. Yesterday we were setting up tents down by the Irish cemetery. I’d not expected that.’
‘Ah yes,’ the priest said. ‘I’d heard of that. We’ve big numbers coming in again. Sometimes I think it will never end. The ships are making a desperate dash out of Cork, Liverpool, Glasgow and everywhere to try to get up the river in time. God knows, some of them are in a dreadful state, and there’s dozens of them, as you can well see. There’s desperate pressure on us all. The most heart-breaking are the orphans and it’s hard to find anyone to mind them. But our brethren in Quebec are trying to sort that problem. The churches are offering the people in Quebec twenty shillings a month and a clothing allowance for each orphan they take into their care. An excellent idea, you might think, but the chief problem is to find relatives or friends of the children in Quebec, and, God knows, that’s not easy.’
Sunday or not, Luke and Conaire had to work that afternoon. The ganger brought them back down the east end of the island again, where they were put to work, cleaning the ditch beside the cemetery, which stank. After some hours, they were brought up and into the cemetery to dig mass graves and bury more coffins, shovelling more clay on top. As they walked back to the other end of the island that night, Luke saw the tents were already full.
After a few days, they were transferred to the wharf, where rock-filling was being carried out to extend the dock. It was backbreaking labour, which put Luke in mind of English railways. He noted that Conaire was becoming stronger, and working harder than he had before. He thought of the lumber mills and the forests. Perhaps it would all be possible for both of them.
One morning, the doctors came to the sheds and started checking the people. Luke and Conaire stood in line, and were asked which ship they had been on. When they indicated the Centaurus, they were sent back in. Most of the rest of the people in the sheds joined a growing crowd outside. Looking through the windows, Luke estimated it at hundreds strong. After a few hours they started moving down to the sea, where boats were waiting to take them off to a steamer.
Luke could see Fr. McGauran at the boats, blessing each group as they pulled away. After some hours, the loading was completed and the steamer pulled away up river. The Centaurus people were allowed out. As the priest came back up the track, Luke went over to him.
‘What was that, Father? Where are they going?’
‘Montreal, God help them. They’re supposed to be the healthy ones. And enough of them are, perhaps, but I reckon there are some there with fever. But we haven’t room enough here for everyone, so they have to go. All we’re doing is sending fever up river. They’ll be dying before they even reach Montreal, poor devils, and once they bring them into the Emigrant Hospital, they’ll be dying even faster.’
‘Where’s that?’ Luke asked.
‘Pointe St. Charles. It’s a class of an infirmary in Montreal. And it’s in a desperate state, I can tell you. I’ve been hearing stories of it all summer. It’s not a place I’d want to go. Sheds, that’s all they are. They say there’s hundreds dying. The nurses and the nuns, they’ve been dying at a terrible rate. Doctors too. Just like here. And it’s not just the Irish, neither. Everywhere the emigrants go – Quebec, Montreal and further – they bring fever with them. The local people don’t like it very much. There’s strong feeling against the Irish in many towns in the Canadas.’
Next morning, Luke and Conaire were brought out to the Centaurus, together with most of the rest of the Centaurus passengers on Grosse Île. They were paid five shillings each as they left.
When they arrived, Tyler greeted Luke on the deck.
‘I wasn’t sure I’d see you again,’ he told him.
‘I wasn’t sure either. We didn’t know if the ship would wait.’
‘Oh, they wouldn’t let us out that fast. Had to wait for most of them to die. We’re a clean ship now.’
Minutes later he heard the sound of the anchor being weighed. He walked back along the side to the capstan. Then the anchor was aboard.
‘What now?’ Luke asked.
‘That’s it’ Tyler said. ‘That’s the end of Grosse Île for us, we’re heading to Quebec.’
Luke and Conaire glanced at each other. ‘That’s it?’ Luke echoed.
‘Didn’t I tell you we’re a clean ship now? Just give thanks to the Almighty, and we’ll have you in Quebec in no time. But you’d better shave first.’
Luke and Conaire went down, and shaved in cold seawater. Later they were back on the outer deck.
The Centaurus sailed on, passing between more ships. Many boats were going forward and back from shore to ship. Then Grosse Île lay behind them.
They passed churches surrounded by cottages and fields. At another village there were houses painted white, with red roofs and yellow doors. More islands and villages followed, until they dropped anchor as darkness came.
After only a few hours, the Centaurus was moving again. As a red dawn brightened over the St. Lawrence, they dropped anchor again.
Quebec.
Chapter 14
Morning Post Correspondent in Montreal, October 1847: The number of emigrants arrived in this country during the past summer has probably exceeded 100,000; but owing to the awful visitation of disease and death amongst them, that number has been already, and is likely to be still further, fearfully reduced before the closing of the approaching winter. It is supposed that, at least 10,000 deaths have occurred on the passage out, at Grosse Île and at Quebec; while the deaths at Montreal and other places in Lower Canada have probably averaged 500 a week, or 2,000 a month, and may be fairly stated in round numbers at 8,000 souls. If 18,000 human beings have fallen victims to the fearful malady of typhus before reaching the Upper Province, it is not unlikely that the deaths in Western Canada have not fallen much below, if indeed they have not exceeded,
the average numbers that have perished in the Eastern section of the province, so that we may safely estimate the total amount of mortality at from 35,000 to 45,000 souls – a frightful picture of disease, death and destitution to be presented by a colony like this.
Luke found it impossible to count the number of ships in the harbour. Quebec sparkled in the early morning sun – the domes and spires of its churches standing high above the city. He could see many docks, similar to Liverpool. He could also see ponds with floating timber. He watched closely, wondering which forests they might have come from.
A six oar rowing boat came alongside, a union jack at the stern. Two men scrambled up to the deck. Luke and Conaire watched from a distance.
Tyler came on deck with the captain, holding his arm. One of the men presented them with a sheaf of documents. The captain signed where Tyler indicated. The second man examined a few of the passengers, went down the hatch to examine the passenger decks, and came back. More papers were taken out and signed.
Tyler dragged the captain back towards his cabin. Within moments the rowing boat pulled away, and the anchor on the Centaurus was weighed once more. For another hour the ship tacked into the wind, and at last it edged into dock. A gangplank was lowered.
‘Quick, let’s get back, and get our packs before they disappear,’ Conaire said.
‘A good idea that.’
They fought their way down to the passenger deck against the flow of passengers. They slung their packs over their shoulders, scrambled up again, and joined the queue edging towards the gangplank.
Tyler came alongside.
‘Well, this is goodbye, Luke. I hope you get on well in Canada.’
‘You too,’ Luke said. ‘I’ll think of you every time I see whales.’
Tyler laughed. He shook hands with both Luke and Conaire, and returned to the sails.
Luke could see many men milling on the dock.
‘Looks a bit like Liverpool,’ he said to Conaire.
‘How’s that?’
‘See all the runners. Watch out for the scum. They know well – a fool and his money are soon parted.’