The Longest Journey (Lynda's Lot: Genealogy & Family History)

The Longest Journey

1839 newspaper advertisement: Free Passage to New Zealand

New Zealand Company Regulations, 1842

Conditions on New Zealand's immigrant ships
Britons who decide to make a new home in New Zealand embark on the longest journey of migration in human history. In the nineteenth century this voyage was made by ship. Not only was the passage long and comparatively expensive, it was miserable and dangerous. Most who left Britain in the nineteenth century opted for North America – a shorter, cheaper passage across the Atlantic. In 1850 this took ten days and cost £4. By comparison, the journey to New Zealand took from seventy-five to one hundred and twenty days and cost at least £15. But trans-Atlantic emigrants faced worse conditions and, because the passage to New Zealand was better regulated, greater risks of death by shipwreck or illness.

Government regulations
In the 1830's the British government began stationing officers at British ports to ensure that regulations about the seaworthiness, ventilation and provisioning of emigrant ships were observed. Those promoting emigration to New Zealand had a particular reason to see that standards were maintained: on such a long voyage, bad rations and poor conditions would have led to disease and death. To prevent the passage to New Zealand becoming notorious, the New Zealand provincial and central governments insisted on even higher standards than those of the British. This spared migrants to New Zealand the worst abuses of the Atlantic crossing. Reports of the dreadful conditions on board, from those who had made it to the other side of the world, put many people off.

The dividing line
Leaving your homeland to make a new beginning was a major life event. New Zealanders have an experience common to all recent immigrant nations: they or their ancestors left one place for another. The sense of belonging to another place has been passed down even to those who did not themselves migrate. All share stories of a journey made by ancestors from a distant homeland.

Shipping and shipping companies
Between 1839 and the 1890's, several hundred sailing ships brought tens of thousands of immigrants from Europe to New Zealand. In the 1840's the ships were generally around five hundred to six hundred tons and carried between one hundred and two hundred and fifty passengers. By the 1880's they could weigh over 2,000 tons and carry up to five hundred passengers. The ships were owned by several companies.

In the late eighteenth century a route to transport convicts from Europe to Australia had been developed. This took ships south-west down the north Atlantic, often as far west as Brazil, then south-east to Cape Town. The ‘easting’ to Australia from Cape Town was roughly along the thirty-ninth parallel. By the 1840's ships bound for New Zealand were following a similar route across the Atlantic (though seldom reaching Brazil), then swinging wide round the Cape of Good Hope into the roaring forties – westerly winds that moved ships along at great speed. Vessels were sailed as far south as their captains dared, in order to benefit from stronger winds, but there was a risk of violent storms and icebergs.

Immigrants were subjected to a great variety of conditions en route. Storms in the English Channel or the Bay of Biscay were followed by pleasant sailing in the trade winds. In the equatorial doldrums, awnings were often raised over the decks to provide shade from the incessant sun. Storms were encountered again in the Southern Ocean or Tasman Sea, sending ships tumbling and rolling.

Embarkation
The journey to New Zealand began for most migrants with an overland trip to the English ports of London or Plymouth, or to Greenock docks near Glasgow. If ships were not ready to leave, passengers had to wait for up to a fortnight, often without enough money for decent board and lodging. In the 1870's, government barracks at Plymouth and Blackwall accommodated people waiting to board.

At London, the loaded ships were towed by steam tug to Gravesend, where cabin passengers boarded. They escaped the usual crowding, pushing and confusion on the dockside. On the day of sailing, carpenters could be still putting up partitions and bunks – temporary fittings in space used for cargo on the return voyage.

Passengers embarked knowing they were leaving their native land and often their loved ones, perhaps never to return. An 1841 emigrant recorded that no one was in a talkative humour as they took ‘a last long aching gaze’ at their native shore, but noted later that ‘the hope of the future’ drove regret away.Women often recorded the pain of parting. One wrote in 1865 that she felt ‘dreary and lonely and unhappy’ and could do nothing but cry. After a month at sea in 1869, a woman migrant took out ‘likenesses’ of her family, read their letters, and had a good cry. But in 1858 a woman who felt inclined to join other women crying, asked herself what there was to cry about and set about tidying her bunk.

Boredom on the long voyage was relieved by such novel sights as dolphins, flying fish, albatrosses and whales. For cabin passengers at least, books, chess and cards helped pass the time. Quoits, a game using plaited rings of rope, was played on deck. Entertainments ranged from simple debates to the performance of plays. Concerts were popular, and newspapers were produced on several ships.

The monotony was also relieved by passing ships. People waved handkerchiefs, and letters were sometimes passed to home-bound vessels – the ships would heave to and people would row small boats back and forth. In the Southern Ocean encounters with other ships were rare.

During their travels, passengers saw strange and wonderful things. In the Southern Ocean in 1843 a passenger ‘saw a sunset of such glorious beauty as to be well nigh worth coming thus far to look at’.Watching flying fish ‘afforded infinite amusement’, one diarist noted. On an 1881 voyage, the single women from steerage were brought up onto the poop deck (where they were not normally allowed) to view the phenomenon of phosphorescence on the waves.

Close confinement often led to quarrelling and ‘cabin fever’. Shipwreck or fire was a threat on every voyage.

Anticipation mounted as voyages neared their end, and the immigrants would be on deck before daybreak to watch for the first sign of their new home. Vessels that arrived carrying disease were quarantined. At quarantine stations, passengers and bedding were disinfected. In a few sad cases, deaths in quarantine cut short the new lives for which immigrants had hoped.

Assisted immigrants
Some immigrants paid for their own passages, but many had their fares paid by colonisation companies or the government. They travelled in steerage – a low-ceilinged space beneath the main deck. Those paying their own way were usually in ‘second’ or ‘intermediate’ cabins, or in a saloon cabin below the poop deck, at the stern. In 1866 the cheapest saloon fare was more than three times that of steerage. Steerage passengers generally outnumbered those in the cabins by ten to one.

Britain’s class distinctions continued on board. Privileged cabin passengers enjoyed more space, privacy and better food. Down in steerage, class resentment sometimes simmered. One reason given by the surgeon of the Christian McAusland (1872) for keeping cabin passengers off emigrant ships was that ‘an ignorant and unreasoning lot of agricultural people are made doubly discontented and dissatisfied at only viewing the cabin victuals, livestock and fresh meat etc. which they are unable to obtain’. However, on many ships rigid class distinctions began to break down, anticipating New Zealand’s more fluid class structure. Some cabin passengers mingled with those in steerage. Not all the cabin passengers approved: there were complaints about ‘the impudence of steerage’, and one remarked that ‘even the poorest imagine that they will be grand folk in New Zealand’.

Writing of the conditions in steerage, one cabin passenger commented, ‘Poor creatures, it is a horrible place between decks, so many people in so small a space, I wonder how they live’. Steerage passengers slept in tiers of bunks. They were provided with mattresses, but not bedding. Bunk space was cramped, and tables and forms occupied the spaces between tiers. The headroom between decks could be as little as 1.8 metres. Steerage was divided into three compartments: single men occupied the forward area, next to the crew’s quarters; single women were aft; and married couples were in the middle. Separate hatchways gave access to each compartment.

Church services
During religious services the separation between cabin and steerage was relaxed. On the Lord Auckland (1842) the captain initially read prayers to the cabin passengers in the cuddy (the saloon cabin), while the doctor read them to the steerage passengers and crew below. Later on this voyage, all the passengers assembled on the main deck for prayers. Finally steerage passengers were admitted to the cuddy for prayers. Eventually it became usual for cabin and steerage passengers to form a single congregation. Shipboard concerts also brought passengers of all classes together as both performers and audience.

Single women
On ships with all-male crews and single men as passengers, the character and future prospects of single female immigrants were thought to be at risk. Men were denied access to the women’s compartments, and captains were instructed to ‘prohibit familiarities’ between unmarried men and women. The vulnerability of single women to the attentions of young upper-class men, who tended to look on single, lower-class women as ‘fair game’, was one argument against having cabin passengers on emigrant ships.

Pests, smells, damp and dirt
Vermin infested the immigrant ships. Smells emanated from the latrines and from animals on board. The steerage compartments were subject to flooding when waves broke over the ship. On one vessel, some emigrants were half-drowned in their beds during a storm, and on another, the beds in steerage were almost constantly wet.

Food and diet
Live sheep, pigs and poultry were carried and killed periodically to provide fresh meat for the cabin passengers’ table, where fresh milk was also served. Those in steerage survived on salted and preserved meat, ship’s biscuit, flour, oatmeal and dried potatoes. The diet was coarse, monotonous, and offered poor nutrition, but it rarely ran short.

Some men passed the time trying to catch fish or seabirds. They snared albatrosses by baiting hooks on long lines that trailed behind the ships. They shot or harpooned porpoises and sharks, and caught smaller fish on lines. The catches helped vary the dreary shipboard fare. Barracouta were thought to taste like mackerel.

On early voyages, shipping companies decided what to feed their passengers. From the later 1840's, the companies were required to follow ‘dietary scales’. These gave steerage passengers less flour, raisins, sugar, tea and coffee, but more salted meat, biscuit and oatmeal than those in the cabins. Spoilage or skimping by unscrupulous ship owners could reduce the amount of food passengers actually received. There were different arrangements in cabin and steerage for cooking and serving food. The crew cooked and served food for cabin passengers. The emigrants in steerage were divided into messes of about six people, and stores were handed out to each mess. On earlier voyages the emigrants cooked their own food. After 1855 food was cooked for passengers in a central galley in common pots, with the food of each mess kept separate.

Steerage passengers were each allowed 3.4 litres of fresh water a day. But water stored in barrels often deteriorated and became undrinkable in a couple of months. Both cabin and steerage passengers attempted to catch rainwater to drink or for washing.

Personal hygiene
Lack of fresh water made keeping clean difficult. Salt water was not pleasant for washing, even with special soap. In the tropics men could swim or were hosed down on deck by sailors. Women, to preserve propriety, were usually denied these opportunities to keep cool and clean.

Those that died were generally children. In the 1860's and 1870's, one in five of the infants below the age of one died on the voyage. Births on the voyage seldom outnumbered deaths. Children were particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases such as scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough and measles, and the shipboard diet lacked supplies of preserved milk and was overloaded with starchy foods. Poor ventilation in steerage was often blamed for the deaths of children. But when infectious diseases came on board, passengers died even on well-ventilated ships. Careless medical inspections of embarking passengers were often blamed for outbreaks of disease.

Cramped hospitals below deck were often blamed for deaths at sea. Incompetent surgeons failed to prevent the spread of disease. Positions as surgeons on immigrant ships to New Zealand were poorly paid, and securing a passage back to England was uncertain. Inexperienced men were sometimes appointed. Some surgeons were over-fond of drink, and a number admitted to taking opium for their own medical conditions.

The ‘medical comforts’ on board included sherry, spirits and stout for the sick. One surgeon complained that his supply included two hundred and forty bottles of gin for which he ‘had no use whatever, except as inducements for men to clean out the apartments’. Another reported he had been abused for refusing to supply brandy for supposed diarrhoea, commenting that there were a remarkable number of stomach aches in the evening which could be cured by gin. Besides looking after the health of the immigrants, surgeons had to keep order below decks. To help them, they appointed matrons, who looked after the moral welfare of the single women, and constables, who maintained discipline among the single men, helped distribute rations, and organised the male steerage passengers for shipboard duties. Surgeons were also expected to appoint schoolmasters to teach the children. Attempts to conduct lessons met with limited success, usually because no suitable place for a classroom could be found, especially during the long haul through the Southern Ocean.