When La Trobe’s report had hit Merivale’s desk, it was like an explosion. The barely controlled panic in Murdoch’s words to his superior is palpable. In it, he quotes La Trobe’s report extensively, choosing those passages that could be turned to ameliorate any responsibility on the part of the Board. The impression was of a man trying to position himself in the best possible light before an impending disaster. The very next letter in the pile was Governor La Trobe’s report itself.
It is referenced with the number CO 309/13 and dated 26 January 1853. Addressed to the Right Honourable Sir John Pakington, 1st Baron Hampton, member of the Privy Council and Queen Victoria’s Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, who would later rise to First Lord of the Admiralty, it begins,
My despatch No 163 of November 9, 1852 apprized you of my having received intelligence of the arrival of the Government Emigrant Ship ‘Ticonderoga’, the lamentable loss of life by disease which had been experienced during the passage and the great extent to which the sickness of a very serious character still prevails…[2]
Holding in my hand the personally written words of the first Governor of my home state of Victoria, after whom one of Melbourne’s main streets is named, was something of a thrill; that he was writing about the arrival of my ancestor’s vessel was doubly so. What I craved, however, was some direct reference to James William Henry himself, and this did not seem to be forthcoming. Several other letters again seemed to be of no relevance, then at the very bottom of the box, a two-page document written in the far less legible, almost hurried-looking hand of Dr Joseph Charles Sanger, offering the dramatic heading,
Ship Ticonderoga, Thursday, Midnight, November 4, 1852.
Sir, I have the honour to announce the arrival of the Ship ‘Ticonderoga’ from Liverpool with a large number of Government Emigrants on board under my superintendence—I deeply regret to have to inform you of the serious amount of formidable sickness prevalent during the whole voyage especially the latter part, and of the long list of fatal cases resulting therefrom.[3]
Sanger’s letter, written at midnight on one of the worst days of the saga, is a desperate cry for help, the first official description to the wider world of the still-unfolding tragedy. Then, about two-thirds down the first page,
There are at present at least 250 patients requiring treatment, and both my coadjutor, Mr Veitch, and myself are almost wearied out by the constant demand for our services, especially as it is impossible to get proper nurses for the sick in sufficient numbers.[4]
Although no shadow of doubt had ever clouded my appreciation of the story, seeing my great-great-grandfather’s name, written in such dramatic fashion, as proof of the part he played in the drama of the Ticonderoga, nevertheless sent a surge of relief coursing through me, sitting that day in the little room in the great building on the other side of the world. Much of the excitement I felt was for my father.
I thanked the librarian, before arranging for as many photocopies of the letters as the few pounds in my pocket would allow. On the train journey back to my digs in Islington, I pictured my father opening the big yellow envelope that I intended to mail him, and his eyes scanning the hand-written lines, revealing the story of the terrible second half of Ticonderoga’s journey to Australia.
19
The Southern Ocean
To the best of their efforts, the authorities at Birkenhead organised the Ticonderoga’s passengers in berths as close as possible to others of similar national, ethnic or religious backgrounds. Beyond that, it was pure chance that determined exactly where, and with whom, they would spend the voyage. The luckiest passengers were the 103 families assigned positions on the ship’s main accommodation deck.[1] As claustrophobic as their tiny berths may have seemed as they settled themselves into them at the Birkenhead depot back in August, it was with a shudder of horror—and no little relief—that they had watched those other families—56 in all—shuffle past to line up above the dark, yawning hatch that led down to their own berths in the Stygian bowels of Ticonderoga’s lower deck. It was here in these gloomy confines that the epidemic that seized the ship at the end of September would wreak its most terrible havoc.
Meanwhile, the passengers were forced to deal with another tormenter, one that visited all decks and did not discriminate on the basis of class, sex or age: the weather. From five weeks into the voyage until almost the very end, it had begun to seem to all on board that it represented nothing but a long and continuous torture.
A few days after dropping below the equator, excitement rippled through the ship as the voice of one of the crew, high in the rigging, announced ‘land to starboard!’, and all on the upper deck rushed to the rail. There, about 20 miles distant, rising from a blueish sea mist, stood a tall and majestic finger of rock pointed directly at the sky. Captain Boyle appeared on deck with his officer of the watch and the two consulted closely. Dr Sanger was beckoned over and handed the spyglass. The captain seemed pleased:
Sir, you may inform the passengers that we are passing the island of Fernando de Noronha—a little over 200 miles from the coast of Brazil. The ship is making excellent time. Tell them also, if you will, that this is the last land we shall see for some time.[2]
The last comment sent a slight shudder through those who heard it, and all eyes strained for a better view of the distant and mysterious island—in fact, a Portuguese prison colony—surprised at how hungry they had become to step foot upon something solid after so many weeks at sea.
A day or so later, on 12 September, the mother of one of the English families, Mary Sharpin, 35, listed as ‘Wesleyan’ from Norfolk, succumbed to what Dr Sanger again noted simply as ‘fever’. She left behind her husband, Robert, and three daughters, aged four, seven and ten. Nor would this be the final tragedy to visit the family.
An eighteen-year-old girl, Christine Rankin, plus two more infants, Lawrence Fulton and Helen Gartshore, were all buried at sea a few days later. In just over a week, from 10 September, Sanger and Veitch had lost fourteen passengers, in equal numbers of children and adults. Any notion that the epidemic now starting to rage on board the Ticonderoga could be confined to children was now confounded, and it was becoming clear that a catastrophe was looming.
With no understanding of the true cause or origins of the disease, and with its relationship to the bacteria carried in the common body louse not to be revealed for another half-century, the common treatment for typhus in the mid-nineteenth century revolved around the supposed invigorating qualities of wine. In one of the most respected naval medical texts of the time, William Turnbull’s The Naval Surgeon Comprising the Entire Duties of Professional Men at Sea (a copy of which Dr Veitch’s father, James, would undoubtedly have pressed into his son’s hand, entrusting it to him like a precious tome), the primary method of treatment for typhus fever was described as ‘wine, in liberal quantity, suited to the circumstances of the case, but given in small doses at once and judiciously repeated’.[3] This was preceded by a period of induced purging and vomiting brought on by the administration of a compound of antimony, a metallic element that had a particularly violent effect on a patient’s bowels and stomach. Though unpleasant, the treatment was not uncommon.
2
Letter from Governor La Trobe to Sir John Pakington, January 4, 1853, Public Record Office, CO 309/13
3
Letter from Dr Joseph Charles Sanger, November 4, 1852, Victorian Public Records, VPRS 1189/1112/8252
3
William Turnbull, 1806,