William Mackenzie Roberts, my great grandfather’s brother, emigrated to Ontario in 1869, on board the Cleopatra. 

William was just seventeen: his birthday had been five days before the Cleopatra embarked from London’s capacious Victoria Dock. (He had a lucky escape: three months later the Cleopatra was wrecked off the Newfoundland coast – forty-three years later, the Titanic would go down in the same icy location.)

Leaving London

Newspapers of the day reported a ‘distressing spectacle’ at Victoria Dock on the morning of Thursday, 13 May 1869. ‘The spectators who thronged the quays to watch the tardy process of warping out of the basin equalled in numbers the emigrants themselves,’ wrote the Daily News (14 May). ‘The latter seemed very jubilant at the prospect before them, and their relatives and friends ashore proportionately depressed and tearful.’ 

Surely William’s parents were among the lamenting crowd lining the quayside in the cool early summer weather, as the Cleopatra puffed away on the noonday tide? 

On board was a motley collection of passengers. Most of them (240 it was estimated) were unemployed East End labourers and their families, some of whose passages were assisted by the British and Colonial Emigration Fund. Also aboard was a party of sixteen souls from Portsmouth who had brought along their vicar to wave them off. Elsewhere on the ship, it was noted, was a small cage containing a variety of English songbirds. 

A group of eighteen teenage boys also appears on the list. It is tempting to assume William was one of them and that this explains why one so young was journeying to Canada without his family – technically he was still a child, although those over twelve were counted as adults by the shipping company. However, as The Times reported (14 May): ‘Among those going out are 18 boys from the Refuge for Homeless and Destitute Boys in Great Queen-street’ who were, as the Daily News put it, ‘conspicuous by the dress by which they are known in the metropolis’. They were Home Children, heading for a new and hopefully prosperous life in Canada. 

William, whose occupation appears to be given as ‘farmer’ on the passenger list, was also bound for a new life but was clearly not with that party. He, or perhaps his father, could afford a cabin, which would have set him back around £10 10s. Those who were unable to obtain assisted passage would have paid £6 6s to be crowded together in steerage, which is where the Home Children were, along with the East End families. Conditions were notoriously awful. 

Before embarkation, they could purchase a ‘ship kit’ for around 7s 6d, according to quality, which included a ‘Mattress, Water Bottle, Wash Basin, Tin Plate, Drinking Mug, Knife and Fork, Spoons, and Marine Soap’. 

Most passengers travelled in steerage so William’s cabin companions on the voyage were few in number: Maria Marriott and her two infants; a young spinster, Eliza Gattin; Mary Johnson and her three children; and Harry Nicolls, a twenty-eight-year-old merchant. One can imagine Maria or Mary might have kept a motherly eye on the seventeen-year-old William during the the eighteen-day voyage. 

The National Emigration Aid Society published a penny guide for those embarking on such a voyage as this. Emigrants to Canada were warned to ‘avoid crimps [tricksters who coerced the vulnerable into military service], touters, and all other land-sharks, who wait for you upon arrival by train, &c., and who look upon emigrants as safe prey for plunder.’ What arrangements had been made for William’s arrival? Where did he head after setting foot in the country?