In Australia, meanwhile, one of those starting to add his doubt to the wisdom of commissioning very large vessels was Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe himself. Starting to sense the public mood, La Trobe, on 21 October when the Ticonderoga was still at sea, issued Dispatch Number 142 to his superior in London, Sir John Pakington, Secretary of State for the Colonies. In it he begged to direct ‘the serious attention of Her Majesty’s Government to the evils of disadvantages attendant upon the chartering of vessels of heavy burthen for the conveyance of large numbers of Emigrants to the colony’.[2] The full text of that exchange has been lost, but if La Trobe’s fears were raised in this way in October, the November arrival of the Ticonderoga saw them horribly realised. In a dispatch of 9 November, he states:
I regret to be under the necessity of furnishing another example in proof of the propriety of the question being raised. On the 4th Inst. I received intimation through the Health Officer of the arrival of the Emigrant Ship ‘Ticonderoga’ from Liverpool, with 800 Government Immigrants, at the Port Phillip Heads, having lost 102 by death during her voyage from typhus and scarlet fever; and having an equal number of sick on board of the same disease; the Surgeon Superintendent also sick and the vessel in want of medicines and Medical comforts… I have appointed another Medical gentleman provided with every necessary in the way of medicines and medical comforts. Every effort will at once be made to cleanse the Ticonderoga.[3]
News of the plague ship spread fast. The same dramatic article announcing the Ticonderoga’s dreadful arrival in the Friday Argus was deemed important enough to be reprinted in the Geelong Advertiser the following day. With equal concern, the readers in the busy port town read of the drama unfolding even closer to their doorstep:
the authorities in Williamstown immediately furnished the government schooner Empire with the necessary supplies of live stock, beef, mutton, mild, vegetables, porter, wine spirits, and a medicine chest, and Dr Taylor, of the Ottillia, a gentleman of much practical experience, went down in her to the Ticonderoga, yesterday, to take charge, accompanied by Captain Ferguson, the Harbour Master. The Lysander ship, has also been taken up by the Government as a Quarantine Hulk, and proceeds to her destination at the Heads this day, having on board stores sufficient for all hands for three months, when further arrangements will be made which, we trust, will ameliorate the fearful state of things on board…
As dire as the situation was at Point Nepean, La Trobe was at least thankful that a full-blown crisis in busy Port Phillip had been averted due to the quick thinking of the pilot, Henry Draper, whose action to divert the Ticonderoga to the nascent sanitary station he later described as having been ‘judiciously made’.[4] Captain Boyle too, fortunately, had had the wherewithal to begin offloading his passengers under his own volition without waiting for instruction. Had he made it to Melbourne, the outcry resulting from a full-blown typhus epidemic being unleashed on the under-policed and under-resourced colony in the grip of gold madness could scarcely be imagined. La Trobe could not, however, continue to count on the quick thinking of others, particularly as the newspapers were beginning to give full voice to the concerns of the public. Newspaper reporters now began to fall upon every scrap of news of the hapless vessel that they could find. On Tuesday, 9 November, The Argus published:
We have been kindly furnished with the following particulars relative to this unfortunate vessel by Charles Ferguson Esq., the Harbour Master at Williamstown, who has been down to the Heads in the Empire schooner, and returned on Sunday. It appears there were, on Friday about 714 emigrants on board; 100 deaths and nineteen births had occurred on the passage, seven of the former since the ship anchored at the Heads. There are at present 300 cases of sickness… tents have been erected with sails, spas, &c. of the ship on Point Nepean where a quarantine ground has been marked out… the Lysander ship, too, now at the Heads, will be fitted up as a hospital for the worst cases… both the surgeon and the assistant, belonging to the Ticonderoga, being in an extremely debilitated state. It is to be hoped the liberal measures being taken by the authorities in this case will counteract the further spread of the disease, which it is but natural to expect, when fresh air, exercise and liberal diet, are brought into operation.
Soon, however, the papers began to add their own thundering editorials to the narrative. On Monday, 15 November, The Argus editorial declared:
We must again advert to the evils arising from the sending out of large numbers of passengers in single ships. We lately alluded to several cases in which the mortality during the voyage had arrived at a very frightful extent. Since then, large English vessels have arrived also furnishing a sad list of deaths. Several vessels are now in quarantine, among them the Ticonderoga, which recently arrived with the terrible loss of 104 lives. When she anchored in our port, many scores of passengers were still ill, the doctor and his assistant were both laid up, and the medical stores were all consumed. From the result of such experience, it seems improper that any ship however large, however splendid her accommodation should endeavour to bring many hundred passengers for so long a voyage. Those vessels which have conveyed 200 or 300 passengers each have usually arrived without any serious loss of life; but those conveying 600 or 700 and upwards have frequently furnished such a list of casualties, as to lead us to strongly recommend to ship-owners to abstain from sending them, and passengers to avoid coming by them.
Word of the plague ship began to spread beyond the borders of the new colony, and soon a blistering article appeared in the combative but influential fortnightly Australian and New Zealand Gazette. In it, not only were the foretold consequences of employing large vessels laid bare, but the very practices of the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission, as well as assisted emigration in general, were brought into question:
In our last number we alluded to the fearful mortality which had taken place on board some ships from Liverpool to Australia, in consequence of over-crowding. Liverpool, or, rather, American ships, sailing from that port to the United States, have established an unenviable reputation for this system of packing live cargo, as Irish emigrants to America are evidently considered. Our impression was, that in Australian emigration a different course had been pursued by Liverpool shipowners with regard to Australian ships. And on inquiry we find that it is so; private ships sailing from Liverpool being in quite as good condition, both as regards comforts and provisions, as any out of London.
Our readers will be surprised that the floating pest-houses, in which two hundred and seventy-nine souls have been lost to their families and the colonies, are the property of, for the time being, and were shipped out under the eye of her Majesty’s Emigration Commissioners, who have thus wasted the above enormous quantity of human life, and with it upwards of £5000 of the Victoria colonists’ money. In the name of humanity, we trust the colonists will, as they have intimated, stop the remission of any further land funds, if this is to be the use made of it. But let us recount the mortality on board these sea-shambles Borneuf, 83 dead; Wanata, 39 dead; Marco Polo, 53 dead; and Ticonderoga, a hundred and four dead! Total, 279 persons, starting from England less than six months ago, full of life and spirits at the cheering prospects before them. These have been hurried into eternity from having put confidence in her Majesty’s Emigration Commissioners, whose latest discovery it appears to have been that the best way of promoting the health and safety of 800 souls on board each ship was to stow them away in the space which private shipowners would have allotted to 700. But on this point we will let Mr Rankin, the chairman of the Liverpool Shipowners’ Association, speak—The doctor is dead, and almost all the survivors are down with fever. The last case is the most striking, because the voyage, of 68 days only, must have been performed with winds invariably favourable. What, then, was the cause of this unusual and frightful mortality? The system of packing, which sends 800 in a space not more than enough for 700, and which stows passengers in lower deck berths without any better means of ventilation than a canvas windsail, which cannot be used in storms, when most needed.
2
Letter from Governor La Trobe to Sir John Pakington, 21 October 1952, Public Record Office