Sanger thanked him, but pointed out that medical staff of any description were needed desperately. Ferguson did his best to recruit more from the able-bodied passengers, but even his powers of persuasion were barely adequate. He even flexed his authority to intercept one John Chambers and his wife Janet, who were simply catching a ride on board the Lysander to take up a position as assistant lighthouse keeper at Shortland’s Bluff. Now, they were told, they were to be re-employed—at a rate of six shillings a day—as hospital attendants on board the Lysander, which was now a floating hospital.[8] This is in itself a testament to the depths of the emergency. Ferguson knew well that lighthouse keepers in the colony were regarded far more highly than nurses, and the step down the social ladder for the young couple—albeit a temporary one—would have been significant indeed. It is reported, however, that both served admirably on board the Lysander, without complaint, for the entire period of its quarantine.
Next, Ferguson turned his attention to the Ticonderoga herself. Dr Taylor had made his preliminary examination of the ship, and was visibly shaken by what he had seen. The lower decks were appalling, he said—virtually indescribable. People were so ill as to be crawling on hands and knees. How anyone could have endured a day down there, let alone three months, was utterly unfathomable. Believing—as virtually everyone at the time did—that diseases such as typhus were borne through the air by ‘foul miasma’, his immediate assessment was that it was poor ventilation that had been the root cause of the catastrophe. As Ferguson later stated, ‘Doctor Taylor will report fully as soon as he has made himself acquainted with matters on board. Want of ventilation and cleanliness appear to me to have much to do with it…’[9]
Fresh provisions would be needed, and quickly. Ferguson had already arranged to draw upon his contacts in the upper echelons of Victorian colonial society, and fortunately Mr John Barker, Clerk of the Victorian Legislative Assembly and prominent landholder in the Westernport area, agreed to supply beef from his Boneo and Cape Shanck properties for five pence a pound. The lime-burner families, too, would be engaged to regularly supply eggs and fresh milk.
Turning to Boyle, Ferguson enquired how often his ship needed pumping. Mustering a little pride, Boyle stated that the Ticonderoga was tight as a drum, one of the finest ships he had sailed, and that her pumps rarely required anything beyond normal use. After some thought, Ferguson surprised the captain by instructing him to fill the holds of his ship with seawater, then have the pumps manned continually, day and night until the water, as well as the foul air, was drawn out. However, he added in his report, ‘it was evident that to check the further spread of this disease, the people should all be landed out of the ship’.[10] Everyone, declared Ferguson—the sick as well as the healthy—as well as their belongings, were getting off the ship as soon as possible. Boyle announced that he had a number of large tents on board each capable of housing ten men. Ferguson bought the lot. He reported:
As it was evident that to check the further spread of this disease, the people should all be landed out of the ship, I urged the immediate erection of large tents on shore, and Captain Boyle having twelve for sale, each capable of holding ten men, I purchased them on account of the Government for Seven pounds each, and ordered them to be at once erected and occupied.[11]
Then, he continued, the Ticonderoga would be thoroughly cleaned from top to bottom. Every bench, every locker, every inch of floor and deck would be swept, washed and disinfected with chloride of lime, then several coats of whitewash. Every remaining piece of bedding, every sheet or cloth, as well as the beds, benches and tables where the Ticonderoga’s passengers slept, ate, lived and died, would then be ripped from her insides and burned on a great and cathartic pyre or else thrown into the sea. In the end, no trace would remain of the Ticonderoga’s passengers, or the terrible disease that had literally decimated their numbers.
The disembarkation happened agonisingly slowly, but soon the little cove began to resemble a camp city. Boxes and trunks soon littered the sand and foreshore as people re-established themselves at the cove. People in their dozens, in various stages of illness from near death to experiencing the first symptoms, were deposited wherever there was something to lie on. However, some had already circumvented Ferguson’s intentions to purge the ship and had taken their blankets and bedding from the ship, lice-ridden as they probably were, further risking the spread of the disease.
The first to come off the Ticonderoga were the dead—two at a time, in the rowboats—but even from among the fit passengers, few could be found to bury them, terrified as they were of themselves becoming victims of the contagion. A burial area had been set aside a little way from the shore, but with no coffins, and hardly anything left that could be used as even a shroud, the dead were buried, usually by their own family members, fully clothed along with their few meagre possessions. Even sadder perhaps, is that these humble burial plots were not to last, as the ground had been sited too close to the water’s edge. In just a few years, therefore, the Ticonderoga’s victims, as well as their resting places, would be lost forever to erosion and the sea.
Nor, it transpired, was Point Nepean’s sandy soil, with its meagre 10-foot water table, suitable for the digging of graves in any case. This too proposed a problem for the disposing of animal offal and carcasses, as well as the hastily dug toilets, all of which were liable to spreading more filth and illness with one decent rain.
The several hundred healthy passengers who had travelled on board the Ticonderoga likewise came to regard themselves as victims of the disease—albeit by default—being equally subject to the restrictions imposed by Dr Hunt and harbourmaster Ferguson. It was not long before some began to resent the confinement of this desolate place. Many who had lost loved ones wanted to pick up the pieces of their broken lives and start again in this new country; others wanted to put it all behind them and move on. For the time being, however, none would be allowed to do so. In front of them was a bay, behind them an ocean and standing in between them and the town of Melbourne was roughly 100 kilometres of scrub and bush, making it as unreachable as the moon.
Ferguson was aware of the potential for trouble rising out of a large number of discontented passengers. In his report to La Trobe, he added:
As there is such a large body of people landed, I beg to recommend that a Sergeant and a small body of police be sent down overland and stationed at the Eastern boundary of the quarantine ground to maintain order, and check the insubordination which was beginning to show itself amongst the seamen and Emigrants before I left.
Soon, a contingent of around half a dozen sergeants accompanied by six mounted constables was beating its way overland on horseback through bush to set up camp, ostensibly to protect the borders of the quarantine station, but also to prevent those who might attempt to leave it, and be ready to react to any unrest.