The filthy smell and stench which came from those who lay sick of this disease was enough to infect the rest of the house, and all that came to see them. It rotted their very mouths and tongues and made them as black as coal before they died.[3]
Doctors who treated typhus patients also reported on their ‘cadaver-like breath’, and how the dreadful smell ‘provided a sensory aspect to the disease that was almost impossible to escape’. Descriptions of the smell of typhus vary from source to source, but most agree that it resembles advanced rotting flesh or vegetable matter, and can easily make a person not used to it retch violently. As we have seen, the interior atmosphere of the Ticonderoga, with her full load of passengers, was volatile even before the disease took hold. Even the crew, inured though they were to the challenging olfactory standards of a nineteenth-century sailing ship, reeled back in disgust upon removing the night covers at dawn. What she then began to smell like with dozens suffering various stages of typhus can scarcely be imagined. The smell reached into everything on board, pervading clothes, bedding, even the very timbers of the ship herself.[4] Nor was the disease the only factor contributing to the ship’s rank atmosphere.
With passengers either ill or physically or emotionally weakened, and with morale and possibly even sanity collapsing, fewer and fewer had the strength or presence of mind to make the climb from the lower decks to use the ships’ water closets. Night utensils became filled to overflowing, and other receptacles began to be used for human waste, urine, vomit and ordure: soup tins, pots and other cooking utensils, drinking mugs—anything that could be found. With the rolling and pitching of the ship, the floors of the decks became awash in filth, further compounding the hellish atmosphere. The lower deck was in an even more indescribable state, as effluent began to seep down the walls and through the floorboards from the equally chaotic main deck above. Those who were still well enough to eat left food scraps, putrefying, where they lay.
At one stage, Captain Boyle ordered his second mate to venture below to the passenger decks and attempt to organise some kind of clean-up. He at first flatly refused but further pressure eventually compelled him to do so. His report to Boyle about conditions below deck so appalled him that he immediately appointed a number of the still fit men from the single men’s quarters to become cleaning constables. This supposedly, led to some improvement, but the descriptions of the ship when it was inspected after it arrived in Melbourne indicate that little was in fact achieved.
Now, in mid-October, the ship was heading on a course roughly 140 degrees east, making fast for the entrance to Bass Strait. As the Ticonderoga closed on her final destination, however, the rate of mortality from the disease increased. Death, it seemed, was making a final lunge as the finish line drew near. The end of October was particularly grim.
On 23 October, Margaret Stewart, 22 years of age and travelling alone in the single women’s quarters, died along with her dreams of meeting a husband with good prospects in Australia. The following days saw a gaggle of little children perish: Jane Smith, three; Mary Rutter, two; Elizabeth Drinnan, one. Nor were mature patients spared. James Dochard, 22, left his wife Mary, 23, and younger brother, William, eighteen, to finish the journey alone. A young mother, Mary Ann Henderson from Ross in the heart of the Highlands, joined her infant son, David, leaving behind her husband and a two-year-old, James. Another Scot, Jane Kay, died, leaving her husband and five children, all under the age of eight. A few weeks later, their youngest, William, would die in quarantine.
The Ticonderoga’s crew also became sick, but as they berthed separately, the rate of infection among them was not as severe as it might have been. Some estimates of ten seamen falling ill have been quoted, which represents slightly less than one-fifth of the 48-member crew. One of those was William Boyle, the ship’s third mate and younger brother of Captain Boyle. Deep in a coma, the captain knew his brother was in a parlous state, unlikely to recover.
The group that seems to have been least affected by the disease was older children and teenagers, only 5 per cent of whom died from the typhus, despite many more than that contracting the disease. Most of those who did fall sick usually recovered and survived. Apart from a naturally robust constitution, many may have been spared, ironically, by being compelled to man the ship, particularly in the trials of the Southern Ocean. Captain Boyle seems to have encouraged many of the young men in the single quarters to learn as much as they could about the art of sailing, and he drew upon their help when the ship needed all the manpower that could be mustered during the storms. It was dangerous work—although not nearly as dangerous, it would seem under the circumstances, as staying below deck.
Undaunted, the two doctors continued to make their presence felt in the dreadful lower decks of the ship alongside Captain Boyle, who in every recollection of this terrible part of the voyage to have survived, is remembered by all to have displayed the utmost consideration for his ailing passengers: ‘Captain Boyle was as careful as possible for the wellbeing of those committed to his charge,’ recalled Christopher McRae. ‘From a sense of duty and the possession of a human and kindly disposition, he used every means at his command to prevent such a condition of filth.’[5] Simply observing the regular presence of the foremost authorities of the ship—the captain and his two surgeons—seems to have given many people the sense that, at the very least, they had not been completely abandoned. Boyle would do his best to assure people that the ship was making good time, and that any day now they would arrive at Port Phillip, where the best of care would be arranged for them—a promise he quietly prayed he could honour.
Drs Sanger and Veitch, now overwhelmed, sought more help among the passengers, as some of those recruited earlier had become sick and even died. Few came forward. An exception remained the Fannings—John, his wife Mary and now their son Patrick, sixteen—who throughout had served as nurses and attendants amid the chaos of both the male and female hospitals. This steadfast family all risked their health—indeed, their lives—to assist their fellow passengers in dire need, and remained until the end of the voyage, and even well after, battling at the forefront of the disease.
Two young women put forward their services. Mary Dochard, a young Scot from Stirling who had recently lost her husband, James, to the disease, was travelling with her extended family, including her late husband’s parents and several siblings and in-laws. Perhaps she felt obliged to assist the surgeons, if only to offer some protection for the rest of her family. The second young woman had lost no family, as she travelled alone in the single women’s section. She also appeared to be in good health and, being somewhat older than most of her companions, possessed a maturity that Sanger and particularly Veitch found compelling. Rather than sit out the weather and hope to remain free of illness, Annie Morrison, who had farewelled her father from the ferry at Tobermory, stepped forward to offer her limited experience of nursing.
In the putrid decks and in the ship’s hospitals, the small band of two doctors and a handful of volunteer nurses and other assistants worked tirelessly among the Ticonderoga’s sick, which in the latter stages of the voyage was estimated to be around 300 wrestling with various stages of the disease.
One morning, after another dismal night of broken sleep, Dr Veitch arose to once again proceed with Dr Sanger to the hell of the lower decks. Undoubtedly, there would be more grief and sickness than they had seen just the previous evening, and there would be little they could do to relieve the passengers’ suffering, but both felt it was their duty and purpose to make their presence felt, and to try. A knock on the door of Dr Sanger’s small cabin did not meet with its usual answer, however. Veitch called, but still no response came. Another entreaty was at last met with a hoarse response. Veitch quickly pushed open the small wooden door to find Sanger, still on his small bed, covered in sweat, his temperature sky high. His worst fears realised, Veitch began to administer what he could to his superior, even managing to retrieve some of the medicinal wine he had kept in reserve for just such an emergency. Sanger was presenting with the early stages of typhus and seemed utterly incapacitated. The mantle of care would now pass from one of the most experienced doctors in the emigration service to a virtual novice on his first appointment, facing one of the greatest disasters ever to have taken place in the history of peacetime emigration.