Veitch comforted Sanger as much as he could, but privately had little faith that he would recover. He seemed to be alarmingly advanced. No red rash had yet appeared, but Sanger was definitely febrile, nauseous and showing early signs of delirium. He managed, however, to impress on Veitch that he should carry on the work they had started, and that even with little medicine to administer, they were still of great value. Besides, they could not now be too far from Port Phillip and must surely soon be weighing anchor. Then, he said, help on a grand scale would be at hand.
Feeling a dread weight of responsibility, Veitch gathered his handful of nurses and assistants and got to work. After a short time, he asked the dependable Annie to inform the Captain—but no one else—of Sanger’s condition. She did not flinch.
Amazingly, amid the chaos, somewhere between twelve and nineteen (sources vary) babies were born during the voyage—mostly to Scottish women. It being impossible, particularly in the latter stages, to use the female hospital, most of these births took place in the mothers’ own bunks in the married quarters, where they were attended by Mary Fanning or others acting as midwives. Utterly against the odds, each of these newborns, though surrounded by death, survived not only the birth, but the remainder of the journey. Amid the terrible jangle of the dying, the grieving and the demented, the cries of just-delivered life could also be heard on board the Ticonderoga, contributing to an already surreal symphony. To the further encouragement of all, some of the patients—particularly the older children and youths—began to show signs of recovery, their fever dropping, and the rash and delirium abating. Those who had been lucky enough to be washed, largely removing the infestations of lice from their body and clothing, stood a better chance of recovery. These incidences were, however, some of the few moments of joy.
The tragedy that befell the Robertson family from Inverness unfolded on 26 October, when both Daniel, 40, and his wife Isabella, also 40, died within hours of each other. A few days later, their now orphaned baby daughter, Ann, would also pass away, leaving their eldest, eighteen-year-old Mary, to care for her three younger siblings, one of whom would also die a few weeks later in quarantine. Having left Birkenhead a family of seven, the Robertsons would finally disembark in Melbourne just three strong. In the last few days of October, the death toll on board rose to a terrible crescendo with around 25 passengers perishing within a few days. On 28 October, 32-year-old Sarah Bell from Somerset died, leaving a husband and three children, although she had begun the journey with four. The next day, James McKean, 24, also passed away, making a widow of his 22-year-old wife Margaret. On the last day of the month, Margaret Rutherford, 28, died. Exactly a month later, she would be followed by her husband. That night, as the ship pitched in a stiff breeze towards the north, yet another funeral for two of the infants who had died over the past two days took place. It was a pathetic affair, with barely a word spoken above a mumble of the few lines of the prescribed service and the endless wash of the sea. There were simply no words left to say.
Then a triumphant voice sang out somewhere high in the rigging: ‘Light! Port bow!’ Forgetting everything—even the melancholy reason they were on the deck—the funeral party rushed to the side of the ship and peered into the darkness. There, in the distance, a pale yellow beam stoked the blackened sky to the north.
Instantly, feet were heard from everywhere rushing onto the deck. Captain Boyle appeared, his first mate clutching a heavy ledger, hurriedly opening it to a particular page under the dim light of a hurricane lamp. ‘Yes, First Mate, yes?’ Boyle urged impatiently. ‘A moment please, Captain,’ said the excited young officer, running his eye over the myriad lines of information in front of him. Then, finding what he was so frantically seeking, ‘Three by three seconds, Captain!’ The two men peered again at the stabbing shaft of light, each counting quietly to themselves. To those watching the late evening scene, the suspense was almost unbearable. ‘I think we have it, First Mate, please note the time,’ said Boyle finally, with an excitement in his voice that even he could barely contain. ‘Please feel free to inform passengers and crew that we have just sighted the Cape Otway light, on the coast of Victoria.’ It was early on Monday morning, 1 November, 1852.
21
Arrival
Four days later, an alarming headline would greet readers of the late morning edition of The Argus newspaper: ‘Terrible State of Affairs on board an Emigrant Ship at the Port Phillip Heads!’
Their attention well and truly grabbed, groups of people going about their business stood still alone or in huddles along busy Bourke and Elizabeth Streets, holding open the large sheets of newspaper, close by the paper boys and newspaper stands where they had just been bought and, with growing alarm, read on:
Intelligence was brought to Williamstown, on Wednesday evening last, by Captain Wylie, of the brig Champion, from Adelaide, that a large ship named TICONDEROGA, ninety days out from Liverpool, with upwards of 900 Government emigrants on board, had anchored at the Heads. A great amount of sickness had occurred amongst the passengers, more than a hundred deaths having taken place, and almost a similar number of cases (Typhus fever) being still on board. Nor was this all. The doctor’s health was so precarious that he was not expected to survive, and the whole of the medicine, medical comforts, etc., had been consumed…
Passers-by, or those who could not afford the thruppence for their own copy, paused and shuffled close to hear the words spoken aloud by readers who found themselves with an instant and captivated audience. In colonial Victoria, where the single artery to the outside world was the arrival of ships, any new emigrant vessel was worthy of attention. Who was on board? What news, fashions and innovations would soon be arriving from the place that, although on the far side of the globe, was the colony’s cultural and economic epicentre: Britain? Ships also brought other, less welcome things, however, and as they listened, one word stuck like a thorn, compelling people shake their heads and raise a protective hand to the throat. Typhus. Muttering quietly, the shock felt by some quickly hardened to a sense of anger. This, they said, had long been predicted.
Having sighted the Otway light, Captain Boyle could momentarily relax. He had, after all, managed to steer his large ship, undamaged across the ferocious seas of one of the longest and most dangerous shipping routes in the world. Moreover, despite neither he nor any of his crew having ever sailed these waters before, he had managed it in 90 days, which—while not a record—was an excellent time nonetheless. As navigators, Boyle and his first mate had proved themselves to be exemplary, missing not a mark, and successfully negotiating by far the most dangerous part of the voyage: the final days before reaching Port Phillip. It was at this point that the dreaded ‘threading the needle’ needed to be negotiated, with the approach to Bass Strait requiring seamen to slip through the narrow gap between the north-west–south-east running line of the Victorian coast and the rocky northern tip of King Island, Cape Wickham out in Bass Strait. After emerging from the whiplashing of the frigid Southern Ocean, this was no easy feat.