11
Life at sea
The humid conditions on board the Ticonderoga continued during the first few days of sailing, during which the passengers had their first experience of weather at sea—and it was not pleasant. Soon after departing, a sudden squall had burst overhead in a thick summer downpour. Torrents of rain lashed the ship and the sea stirred in white-capped fury. Confined below for the first time, the passengers heard the main hatches leading up to the open deck being noisily battened down and the ventilation mechanism that had managed to supply at least some fresh air was disengaged. The sea erupted further as the Ticonderoga reached the open water, beyond the protective lee of the southern tip of Ireland. Huddling in the lower decks, many passengers could scarcely believe that a ship of this size could be tossed so violently, like a toy boat on a river being tumbled in an eddy. Suddenly, the great ship’s more than 1000 tons—which had felt solid and comforting—counted for nothing.
Then, for the hundreds on board, the ordeal of seasickness began. It is safe to assume that almost none of the passengers had experienced a voyage of any length, with the overwhelming majority never having been to sea in their lives. Now, suddenly, they were subjected to the fierce waters of the Atlantic on the longest journey in the world in conditions any present-day traveller would find utterly unbearable. As another ship’s surgeon, a Dr Skirving, observed on board a similar emigrant vesseclass="underline"
Unused to the sea, seasick, homesick, cold, wet, fearful and battened down, few aggregations of human wretchedness could be much greater than was to be found… in the close dark ’tween decks of an outward-bound emigrant ship.[1]
The unfamiliar and debilitating bouts of nausea were bad enough, but in those first few days, the realisation dawned that it was in these few pitiful square feet of space that the indignities of illness as well as the myriad other aspects of ship life were to be endured. Married couples were allotted the berth’s top bunk, measuring 6 feet long and 3 feet wide, permitting just 18 inches per person. The same dimensions were given to single women, who were likewise expected to share a bunk, with only the single men—who slept alone—given slightly more room, their bunks measuring 6 × 2 feet. Children occupied the lower bunks in the married quarters, and as two children under fourteen years constituted a single ‘statute adult’, they were expected to arrange themselves in any cramped and uncomfortable manner they could. There was no advantage to be had for married couples without children either, as their bottom bunk would be occupied by another couple, or even another couple’s children.
In all cases, the space between the bed boards of the top and bottom bunks was a claustrophobic 18 inches, slightly less with bedclothes, meaning that virtually any raising of the head was impossible. To the side, considerably less than an arm’s length away, was the neighbouring bunk, with the only privacy being provided by a flimsy board 23 inches in height, and affording no real modesty whatever. It was into these coffin-like dimensions that the Ticonderoga’s passengers were confined every night, or when rough weather arose. Then, as with that first storm just hours after leaving Birkenhead, the porous nature of a wooden sailing ship was revealed. On that occasion, as well as many more to come over the next twelve weeks, sea water would regularly seep, drip and occasionally gush in torrents into the passengers’ living areas. Even on calm days, a wave or current could spring up unexpectedly and cascade in terrifying torrents down one of the open main hatches, making a river of the main and lower decks and soaking everything from clothing and foodstuffs to the bedding, whose straw interior quickly rotted and stank.
The Ticonderoga’s flushing water closets were indeed innovative, but at night or during a storm, they were difficult if not impossible to access, particularly for women in the voluminous skirts of the day who had to contemplate often two sets of ladders in virtual darkness. Instead, utensils of any kind were used to catch urine and other waste, and these often spilled with the movement of the ship. The smell of human beings permeated the whole ship. Sweaty clothes could only be washed sporadically, and then only in seawater tanks on the upper deck, fresh water being strictly reserved for drinking and cooking. Whale oil lamps in their braces nailed to the walls gave off at least some little light, but exuded a particular pungency of their own. Added to this was the stench of the rats—impossible to eradicate even in the newest vessels—as well as the cats assigned to catch them and their many associated stinks. Then there were the babies. Dozens upon dozens of vomiting, nappy-filling infants and toddlers crawled and cried all over the Ticonderoga. Their numbers in fact would be added to during the voyage, as pregnant women who had boarded at Birkenhead contributed no less than nineteen births at sea. It was said that the Ticonderoga’s crew, upon opening the hatches every morning, reeled back at the revolting miasma rising up from the decks below.[2] Later in the voyage, when the ravages of disease took hold of the ship, the stench would defy description.
Initially, though, as the Ticonderoga tracked far out into the Atlantic, a shipboard routine of sorts began to develop, with perhaps the greatest initial shock for people accustomed to the quietness of small village life being the sudden avalanche of noise on board a large and crowded sailing ship. The hundreds of voices of the passengers—talking, arguing, breaking wind, vomiting, copulating, snoring, all in alarmingly close proximity; the constant shouts and swearing of the crew and the officers; the babel of children yelling, playing, crying; then the array of sounds emanating from the ship itself. As soon as the Ticonderoga left the heads of the River Mersey, her timbers began their endless heaving, whining chorus as she began to be pulled and twisted by the elements. Even the clawing hiss of the sea seemed to be conducted upwards through every board and every beam, amplified in the limited confines of the ’tween decks. In a storm, the noise would come crashing from above in terrifying bouts, as if the ocean itself—like a monster at the door—was attempting to batter its way in. Then there was the continual jangling of chains, sails and rigging; the thumping of feet on the decks above; the wind playing its perpetual symphony through the rigging. It all combined to make the Ticonderoga’s aural landscape a blaring, multi-layered cacophony.
The one sound that governed the rhythm of people’s lives on board, however, rang out from the ship’s bell. Like the regulator on a gigantic clock, it was this brass voice that spoke the routine of life on the long journey. The bell sounded for the passengers to rise at 7 a.m., then at the other end of the day, at 10 p.m., to go to bed. It began the ship’s day, not at midnight but at midday ceremony, as the captain and mate lowered their sextants at the sun’s zenith and Boyle uttered, ‘Make it noon, first mate’, and then the response ‘Ay ay Captain’, as the bell was struck two times in quick succession. Then, the timeglass was turned for the sand to run exactly 30 minutes, at which point the bell would be struck once to sound the half hour, and the glass turned again. So this would continue, day and night, throughout the life of the voyage.
The bell also signalled religious services (of which there were many of various denominations), heralded announcements of news or decrees from the captain or the stewards, and alerted people to go below in the face of impending weather. Most of all, it drove the pulse of shipboard life: the daily meals, around which all other activities revolved.