Australiaforme

PART ONE - WILLIAM

Who was this man, who made the decision to leave his native land and in so doing peopled

another part of the world with his descendants?

A Cornishman by birth, he probably looked like one: short, stocky, dark-haired, biue-eyed,

with a florid or brown complexion, well defined eyebrows, and an air of sturdy independence

and some integrity. Certainly some of his descendants in Australia are of that very same mould,

though somewhat taller, For William, if the known heights of two of his children are relevant,

was very short indeed. They (Richard and Jane) were about five feet tall, probably less. And so

may William have been.

He was baptised on 8 January, 1797 in the parish church of Calstock, which is situated high on

a hill above the village of that name straggling along the Cornish bank of the River Tamar, the

ancient boundary of Devon and Cornwall.

George II! had been king for 37 years when William was baptised, and on the continent

Napoleon Bonaparte had just embarked on his conquest of Europe. Elsewhere, Beethoven was

working on his Sonate Pathetique (his first piano concerto would follow), and Jane Austen was

halfway through Pride and Prejudice.

William's parents were Robert and Mary Honeycombe, her maiden name having been Row.

He was their third child: they already had two daughters. They had another son, Robert, born in

1809 during the Peninsular War in Spain; he was their seventh and last child and died in 1821,

aged 11. They had already lost a daughter, Temperance, who died when she was also 11; and

another daughter, Jennifer, died in December 1825, aged 20; she was buried on Christmas

Day. Nothing is known of the three surviving daughters, Betsy, Mary and Ann, and nothing is

known of William's early life.

We also know nothing of his parents, other than what the parish registers reveal: that Robert

was baptised in Calstock on 24 March 1769 - a year before Captain Cook sighted Australia

and landed at Botany Bay. Robert married Mary Row in the parish church of Calstock, up on

the hill, on 18 April 1792 - at the height of the French Revolution and a few months before

France became a Republic. Mary was three years older than Robert, and they were evidently a

sober, church-going family, as their fourth daughter was christened Temperance.

Robert, born in 1769, was himself one of eight children, in fact the seventh. His childhood and

that of his four brothers must have been heavily rural, something like that of the young William

Cobbett. who was born in Surrey six years before Robert, in 1763,

Cobbett wrote: 'I do not remember the time when I did not earn my living. My first occupation

was driving the birds from the turnip-seeds, and the rooks from the peas. When I first trudged

afield, with my wooden bottle and my satchel swung over my shoulder, I was hardly able to

climb the gates and stiles; and, at the close of day, to reach home was a task of infinite difficulty.

My next employment was weeding wheat, and leading a single horse at harrowing barley.

Hoeing peas followed, and hence I arrived at the honour of joining the reapers in harvest,

driving the team, and holding plough. We were all of us strong and laborious, and my father

used to boast that he had four boys, the eldest of whom was but 15 years old, who did as much

work as three men in the parish of Farnham. Honest pride, and happy days!'

Cobbett's father was a yeoman farmer, as Robert's may well have been. We do not know what

Robert's occupation was, but most probably, being a younger son, he would have been

apprenticed to some craftsman and become a carpenter or stonemason by trade.

Three of Robert's four brothers, Matthew, William and Richard, were, respectively, a

husbandman (or tenant of a small farm), a fisherman, and a miner.

The eldest, John, was probably also a small farmer like his father.

The fisherman, William, born in Calstock in 1763, would sire another William, a copper miner,

six of whose children emigrated in the 1860s to Australia. But more about them later.

Robert's father, Matthew, our William's grandfather, is recorded as having been a farm labourer

at the time of his marriage to Deborah Deebie in January 1755, when he was 29- Matthew may

have been or become a yeoman farmer, like his younger brother William. This type of farmer

owned his land. But none of these brothers, including a third one, John, did very well. The latter

died in the poorhouse, and Matthew and William were paupers when they died.

Matthew, who was the oldest brother, died in 1787 in Calstock, three weeks or so before his

62nd birthday. Born at the end of the reign of George I in January 1726, in the village of St

Cleer, some 15 miles to the west, he settled in Calstock a few years after his marriage, about

1760. The fact that ail three brothers died in poverty suggests a series of rural and family

misfortunes: bad landlords, bad debts, bad crops, bad luck or bad behaviour Rural life could be

as harsh as it was hard, less full of Cobbett's 'happy days', especially as childhood waned.

Matthew's father, Jonathan Honeycombe, on the other hand, was almost certainly a prosperous

yeoman or husbandman in St Cleer, and a well regarded man, as eventually he became a

churchwarden (about 1760) and an overseer of parish affairs (about 1763). Born in the reign of

Queen Anne, and soon after Marlborough's victory at Malplaquet, in August 1709, he married

Grace Hasdon in St Cleer in October 1726, two months after his 17th birthday. It seems he had

to marry her, for their son Matthew was born two months after Jonathan and Grace exchanged

their wedding vows in church.

Jonathan died in July 1774, a few weeks before his 65th birthday and as the American colonists

prepared themselves for their War of Independence. He was buried in the graveyard of the

parish church of St Cleer. So was his father, Matthew, in September 1728.

It is this Matthew who is the only begetter of all the Honeycombes in the world today. There

were other branches, other families of Honeycombes, but they died out in the 19th century. As

a result, Matthew's children and their descendants became pre-eminent as progenitors. If it had

not been for Matthew, his two wives and their two surviving sons, no Honeycombes would exist

today.

Matthew may also have been a yeoman or husbandman, like his second surviving son, Jonathan.

Or he could have been a stonemason, like his first son, John.

This John was born in St Cleer in November 1683, the first child of Matthew Honeycombe and

Joan Rainolde, who had married in St Cleer in October the previous year. Their second son,

another Matthew, died, aged five, in 1693. They had no other children, as far as we know.

When Joan died, in June 1707, her erstwhile spouse, Matthew Honeycombe, remarried the

following month.

One wonders at his haste. Perhaps Joan had been ill for some time. But it was not because his

second wife, Jane Bennet, was pregnant. His first child by her, yet another son called Matthew,

was born in May 1708; he died three weeks later. Jane's second son was Jonathan, the future

churchwarden, and ancestor of the main line of Honeycombes in Australia; he was born in

August 1709.

Jane also had a daughter, who was given her mother's name. It was customary then for the first

son and daughter in a family to be given their parents' names - or those of their grandparents.

Other children were named after uncles or aunts. Continuity and tradition were important in rural

communities then.

But it is here, at Matthew Honeycombe, who married twice and lived in St Cleer, that the family

tree breaks; the line of succession snaps. For no baptismal entry in a parish register has been

found for Matthew, and so we do not know exactly who his parents were, or who his father

was. However, we can assume -since he married for the first time in 1682 - that he was born

about 1660, the year in which the monarchy was restored in England and Charles II became

king.

There are two likely candidates in St Cleer for Matthew's father, a John Honeycombe and two

Anthony Honeycombes.

If one of these is ever proved to be his father, we can take the line of succession back for

another generation or so. We might then connect the Honeycombes in St Cleer to one of the

large groups of Honeycombes living in three other villages in eastern Cornwall: Callington,

Menheniot and Calstock - the latter village being the ancestral home of al! the Honeycombes,

where a house of that name (though differently spelt) existed in 1327 and in which a John

Honeycombe dwelt.

His name, the earliest known reference to the surname that there is, appears in a tax return,

called a Lay Subsidy, drawn up in 1327. The name is

spelt 'Honycome' then. The house, named in an Assession Roll (a record of land transfers within

a manor) for the manor of Calstock in 1333, is written 'Honyacombe'.

The name is descriptive of the valley at the top of which the house was built. It derives from an

Anglo-Saxon adjective and a Celtic noun - 'honiga' meaning honeyed or fruitful (the 'g' is soft

and pronounced like a 'y')i and 'combe', meaning valley (pronounced 'coom'), a Welsh word to

this day, spelt 'cwm'.

The earliest Honeycombes to be found in records relating to St Cleer, where Matthew lived and

died, are named in the Protestation Returns of 1641, the year before the Civil War began, and

eight years before the execution of Charles I. Every male over the age of 18, in every village,

town and city, was invited to swear an oath and sign a declaration opposing any 'plots and

conspiracies to subvert the fundamental laws of the kingdom and to introduce Arbitrarie and

Tyrannical government1.

The Honeycombes in St Cleer who signed or made their mark in 1641 were three: Anthony

senior, Anthony junior, and John, one of whom must have been Matthew's father. Two

Honeycombes signed in Callington, five in Calstock and one or two elsewhere.

Not all the returns for Cornwall have survived, although they are the most complete in England

and can be seen in the House of Lords Record Office. Four Cornish parishes are missing,

including those of St Austell and Truro, and we know some Honeycombes were living there in

1641. Nonetheless, of the 30,000 men listed in the Cornish returns, only 14 are recorded as

being Honeycombes, and the largest group of them lived in or around Calstock at that time.

Many Honeycombes, however, are named in the manorial records of Calstock - in the

Assession Rolls and Court Rolls maintained for centuries by the Duchy of Cornwall, whose

dukes owned the manor (and still do). Clearly these Honeycombes were all related in some

way, and in particular connected to the John Honeycombe who actually lived in Honeycombe in

1327 - the year in which Edward II was deposed and brutally murdered, and his son crowned

as Edward III.

This John, who 'took one dwelling, 32 acres of English land in Cornish furlongs', for which he

paid the duke's representative three shillings and ten pence a year, plus 22 pence for four acres

of wasteland, was named in the subsequent Assession Rolls of 1340 and 1347. But in 1356, the

first land assessment made after the Black Death that devastated England in 1348/9 (about a

third of the population died, ie, about 1.4 million people over two years). William Honeycombe

appears, taking possession of the very same house called Honeycombe and the same 32 acres.

Clearly he was John's heir, if not his son.

In France at this time, Edward the Black Prince, son of Edward III, added to his father's earlier

victories, like that at Crecy and the capture of Calais, by winning the battle of Poitiers and

capturing the French king, John.

Eight years later, in 1364, the house called Honeycombe passed from William Honeycombe to

a man called John Clerk. Although William and his

family continued to live in the neighbourhood, this William was the last Honeycombe to live at

Honeycombe itself.

His descendants and those of his relatives spread to neighbouring Cornish villages, and then

further afield. But most of them never lived far from Liskeard, the chief market town in eastern

Cornwall. Some returned to Calstock - like Matthew, the grandfather of William the emigrant.

Some never left. For over six hundred years, Honeycombes were born, lived and died in

Calstock, and were baptised, wed and buried in the parish church, where these events

eventually began to be recorded (after a decree by Queen Elizabeth I) and were noted in parish

registers - the earliest in Calstock dating from 1565.

Was William the stonemason, the emigrant to Australia, aware of his Cornish ancestry and of

Honeycombe House?

He must have known that generations of Honeycombes had lived in Cornwall, and that there

was some connection between the Honeycombes of St Cleer, where his grandfather, Matthew,

was born (in 1726) and those Honeycombes in Calstock who had recently died out (in 1750).

And then there was the house called Honeycombe. Although the fertile valley had been renamed

Danescombe by some antiquarian - on account of an ancient battle there between the Britons

and the Danes - the house had retained its original name and still stood at the head of the valley.

Much altered over the centuries by its various owners, it would be further altered over the next

200 years.

In 1798, in the year after William the stonemason was born in Calstock, the house and its now

30 acres were sold and bought by a Cornish landowner, John Pierson Foote, who installed a

George Marshall as his tenant therein. In 1806, the property was purchased by a mining

magnate, John Williams of Scorrier, and remained in the hands of his family for a hundred years.

Did young William, who was nine in 1806, ponder for a while when he heard about the new

owners of Honeycombe House, and ask his father, Robert, why the house had their name -

Honeycombe? Why did it not belong to them?

William's childhood was spent at a time when great forces, military, social and political, were on

the move: the face and frontiers of Europe were changing in the wake of the American and

French revolutions, and in Britain the agrarian and industrial revolutions that would transform the

nation, bringing it much wealth and woe, were gathering impetus. It was also the dawn of world

supremacy for Britain, of an age of imperial prosperity and greatness that would last for over a

hundred years, triumphing on the backs of gross poverty and misery at home. Millions would

toil in inhuman conditions so that Britannia could rule the waves and the nobility and the new

middle class, in town and country, could prosper and prevail.

Cobbett was one who bemoaned the rise of these socially callous profit-makers and takers. He

was disparaging about the difference 'between a

resident native gentry, attached to the soil, known to every farmer and labourer from their

childhood, frequently mixing with them in their pursuits... practising hospitality without

ceremony... and a gentry only now-and-then residing, having no relish for country delights,

looking to the soil only for its rents, unacquainted with its cultivators, despising them and their

pursuits.1

Wriiing in 1832, when he was 69, Cobbett recalled a time when 'there was scarcely a single

man to be found that had ever entertained the slightest thought of envying his richer neighbour,

or wishing to share in his property, or wishing to see all men pulled down to a level... I could

never gather from one single wording man... that he wished for any change other than that which

would leave him the enjoyment of the fair fruit of his earnings.'

Such was the background, to some degree, of William's early years in Calstock - a dozy,

ramshackle, rural place, peering out from the dense woods that walled the dark, winding, tidal

River Tamar, the parish comfortably supported and fed by its small sloping farms and strips of

land, by browsing cattle and scruffy sheep, by snorting pigs and squawking hens, by the labour

of some small copper mines and quarries, and by the seasonal produce of its market gardens

and orchards, the latter laden with black cherries, pears, apples and plums.

The untidy village of Calstock then lacked any gutters, sanitation or light; its awkward little

streets ran with filth and mud when it rained; by day it was lit by the sun, though seldom in

winter; by the moon and tallow candles at night. The greatest activity was on its riverside quays,

which were used for transporting goods and people, mainly in row-boats, to the markets

downstream at Plymouth and Devonport. Otherwise, it was an uphill slog, and then along and

down and up, by horse or on foot, to Liskeard; or across the slow river to Devon, via the

Gunnislake bridge.

The age of steam, of paddle-steamers and trains, was yet to come, to be heard and seen, as

well as the clamour and smoke of industrialisation. But by the time of the Battle of Waterloo, in

1815, the industrial heart of England was beginning to throb, The network of canals had been

largely completed by then, and main roads had begun to be surfaced by Messrs Telford and

McAdam. Steam-driven machines were already at work in northern mills and factories, making

textiles from cotton and wool; and the heavy industries of iron, coal and engineering, nurtured by

the Napoleonic Wars, would soon become the chief source of the nation's power and wealth.

Our little Cornish lad, William Honeycombe, was one-year-old when the Battle of the Nile was

fought. He was three when the parliamentary union of Britain and Ireland was effected in 1800.

The first practical steamship appeared on the River Clyde when he was five; the next year

Britain was again at war with France. War with Spain followed; Napoleon became Emperor;

and in October 1805, when William was eight, the Battle of Trafalgar was fought and Nelson

died. Austeriitz followed, and the death of Pitt. In 1806 the Holy Roman Empire was disbanded

and Prussia overthrown; Britain was blockaded by the French; Portugal was occupied, and then

Spain in 1808. The Peninsular War was the

2. Bigg. Bristol and William Robert

A curious correspondence, discovered in the Devon Record Office in Plymouth, relates to the

time of the second Henry Honeycombe's birth (at llsington in 1834) and to the Haytor quarries,

which were located on the eastern fringe of Dartmoor. The letters refer, in part, to a Mr

Honeycombe - who can only be William the stonemason, who was living in the area then.

It seems that his employers were not too happy with him for several reasons, concerning a loan,

his rent, and the cost of his sevices.

The letters are from John Bigg, the secretary of the Haytor Granite Company. He was writing

from the company's offices in London - they were on Bankside in the Borough of Southwark -

to George Tempter of Kingskersweii near Newton Abbot.

George Templer was an industrialist of great entreprise and wealth, who began quarrying granite

at Haytor about 1810, and was one of the first to exploit this natural resource in the region.

Dartmoor granite was coarse-grained, blue-grey and very hard. Nelson's column in Trafalgar

Square in London is made of it, as are many major structures and monuments, like the British

Museum. The granite from the Haytor quarries was used in the reconstruction of London Bridge

in 1825, and George Tempier transported the blocks to the coast on a railway he had built of

granite sets laid lengthways and carved with flanges to steady wagon wheels. The Haytor

Granite Railway, operated by horses, opened in 1820 and ran for eight and a half miles to the

Stover Canal, whence the wagon-loads of granite were taken on barges to Teignmouth and

shipped to various destinations. Teams of 18 horses are said to have been used to pull 12 fully

laden wagons. The Haytor quarries and the village of llsington were only a few miles apart.

It seems more than likely that William Honeycombe was employed by the Haytor Granite

Company in London as well as in Devon. The company's offices were in Southwark and two of

William's children were born in Southwark in the 1820s. He may well have laboured on the

rebuilding of London Bridge. His immediate employers may have been one or other of the

stonemasons named in a company certificate: William Bunting of Southwark Bridge Road and

James Martin of 4 Wellington Road, Newington. But in 1829 William was back in Devon,

where his second son, Richard, was born.

There are ten letters in John Bigg's surviving correspondence with George Templer. They deal

with various business matters, with orders, costs and debts, and begin in November 1833.

The first letter from London that refers to William is dated 5 December.

The handwriting is large and swift, almost sprawling across the page. The tone is brisk, even

brusque.

'Dear Sir - Certainly you must deduct from Bayley some of the Quarry debt in Low Level and

No 1, if he intends to give up the Quarry. The amount I leave to your judgement, not to your

feelings.

'As regards Honeycombe's petition for the five pounds, the Board do not like to sanction the

principle of exceeding any sum allowed. It is a "spice" of the old pudding, and ought to be done

away with! However, the five pounds may be allowed, but it must be paid back; £2.10 at Lady

Day and £2.10 at Midsummer next. Your argument or rather ad captandum statement of the

pregnancy of his wife is all very well if we could afford to be charitable; but such topics are all

ad misericordiam, and really quite out of the question. Truly yrs. J Bigg, Sec'

Elizabeth Honeycombe was then pregnant with the second Henry (born in March 1834).

Mr Bigg wrote again on 16 January 1834. Among other things he said that money was scarce;

he also hoped that as a result of his exertions, the company would supply some of the stone for

the repair of Blackfriars Bridge (as they had done for the new London Bridge). Templer was

authorised to extend the workings on the Low Level at Quarry Head; country debts were to be

recovered; stones for a tomb had still not arrived despite repeated requests; Bayiey's charges

were very high.

Then Bigg complained about an invoice for £7.19.5 sent in by MrGullett (another mason,

apparently William's superior), which didn't add up and included some reeds for the thatching of

William's cottage. Bigg was highly indignant: 'What right had Mr Honeycombe to "order" reed

for his cottage?... Then there is £1.15.3 for thatching the cottage!'

Gullett included three other bills in this invoice, for postage, stationery and leather for a pump.

'Mr Gullett had no right to contract these Bills,' booms Mr Bigg. 'His mere receipt is not

sufficient. If Gullett is allowed to incur such charges, depend on it you will open a door that will

not be easily closed... This is altogether an objectionable business.'

Another letter, dated 2 May 1834, begins: 'Dear Sir - Enclosed I return you the bill for £200

accepted, for the service of the quarrier and masons.' Some rebukes about delays in payments

and deliveries are despatched before Bigg continues: You will perceive that the plinth and first

seven courses of ashlar must be here before the 15 of next month. You must therefore take into

your purview not only the masons' work on the whole of this portion, but having vessels ready

at Teignmouth, and seeing that B (...) has this stone on board in full time to allow of its arrival

here by the 15 June. Perhaps all this has occurred to you: but will excuse my stating it, as my

anxiety will, I fear, often make me unceremonious at the expense of deference or formality. You

will please to recollect that Mr Honeycombe, by his own written agreement, was to have paid

£2.10 off his advance of £5, last Lady Day: and also some Rent for his house. But this has not

been done.'

Bigg goes on to refer to quotations the company has been asked to provide for stonework on

Blackfriars Bridge and 'a lighthouse at or near Portland'.

John Bigg writes from London again on 19 June: 'Dear Sir -1 have received the return pay

cheque to 25 ult. ! cannot make out at present, how Rowse is entitled to so much super

measure on certain of the atlas (?) stone charged therein, but when the barge is unloaded we

shall cheque the quantities. I hope and trust Gullett and Honeycombe take great care as to the

masons' measure, because from the very high prices given for that work, we shall be ruined

otherwise. The more t look at those prices, the more I am convinced they are the most

exorbitant we ever gave, and such as wiil prevent our taking any more fine work in the Country.

They are "union" prices to all intents and purposes; and even higher than we could have had that

work done in London. Of this, ! am certain.'

Another letter contains this passage: 'But we ought to have employed the masons direct as we

do here. Rowse must make a profit as contractor: and why? What is Honeycombe for if not (as

Sevan here) to look after 40 or 50 masons in our own account.'

The final and shortest letter in this series is dated 25 August 1834.

'Dear Sir - Mr Gullett requests that Bayley may make 100 feet of curb, in getting Mr Woodley's

plinth and Mr Baines head and foot stones. Please to say he may make 1000 feet of flat curb

12x6 at 4/4 if he chooses. I hope the order I sent down on 23 inst will answer this.

1Exeter Cemetery - You would not act otherwise than you have done -

'Honeycombe - My opinion, and I think I can answer for that of the Directors, is, that the fellow

should be dismissed at a day's notice. How stands the rent of his house? As to purchasing the

stone of the Company, he should not be served at any price. He has been spoilt by Whitaker;

and from the lenity shown that person you see the fruits thereof. I am, dear Sir, Yrs truly, J Bigg,

Sec.'

What are we to make of all this? And what was William's actual job?

It seems that he was a foreman in charge of a gang of men in a Haytor quarry, managed by a

Mr Bayley, and that the masons were working on various contracts, making granite curbstones,

plinths, arches, etc, for use in London. William Honeycombe, it seems, was on the make, like

many a tradesman, extracting whatever extras he could get from his employment at his bosses'

expense.

We also learn from the letters that his wife, Elizabeth, was pregnant, and that they lived in a

cottage whose roof needed some total or partial repair.

As usuaf, such a correspondence raises several questions and leaves us with few satisfactory

answers. But suddenly we glimpse the real man. And the antagonism that Mr Bigg evidently felt

towards the company's employees reminds us that trade unions, legalised in 1824, were a

growing force in the land, as workers sought to establish their rights through various self-help

and co-operative organisations. Local strikes and lock-outs occurred frequently at this time.

One such little union of agricultural labourers in Dorset, formed to protect

themselves against falling wages, was prosecuted ill USt&i 1834 fflf administering 'unlawful

oaths' in their initiation ceremonies. The six Tolpuddle Martyrs, as they became known, were

sentenced to seven years' transportation to Australia. Two years later the Chartist movement

took wing. At the same time the government were themselves making various changes in the

way parliament, businesses, towns and counties were run, with Reform Bills, Factory Acts, the

Poor Law Amendment Act and so on. The impetus for social change, especially in conditions at

work, was immense.

Charles Greville, Clerk to the Privy Council, wrote of the first Reform Bill in 1831: 'Nothing

talked of, thought of, dreamt of, but Reform. Every creature one meets asks, What is said now?

How will it go? What do you think? And so it is from morning till night, in the streets, in the

clubs, and in private houses... The country will have it.'

The Bill was passed by one vote on 23 March. Lord Macauiay, then the Whig MP for Calne,

was in the House of Commons. He wrote: 'You might have heard a pin drop as Duncannon

read the numbers. Then again the shouts broke out, and many of us shed tears... We shook

hands, and clapped each other on the back, and went out laughing, crying and huzzaing into the

lobby... All the passages, and the stairs were thronged by people who had waited till four in the

morning to know the issue. We passed through a narrow lane between two thick mazes of

them; and all the way down they were shouting and waving their hats, till we got into the open

air.'

it was a turning-point. Three years later, a new word entered the political vocabulary and the

consciousness of the nation - 'socialism'.

If William Honeycombe was sacked, as Mr Bigg wished, in August 1834, where did he go?

Apparently he remained in Devon. For we find him in the ancient city of Exeter in 1838. His

daughter, a second Elizabeth, was born there, in the parish of St David, on 7 February. The

family were then living at Little Silver, St David, below the hill on which the cathedral stands,

and beside the River Exe.

But William, who was now 41, was still restless and no doubt still resentful of authority and

seeking better employers and employment. Within two years he had moved again, to the sea-

port of Bristol further north.

Here William's last two children were born: Martha, on 15 May 1840; and John, on 22 June

1842. Her place of birth is given on the birth certificate as Hillsbridge Parade in the parish of St

Mary Redcliff, south of the River Avon; and John's as Meadow Street in the parish of St Paul.

William registered Martha's birth and signed his name; his wife Elizabeth registered John's name

and made her mark - as she could not write nor probably read.

The parents were respectively 45 and 44 in 1842, and their surviving children now numbered

eight, the eldest, Mary Ann, now being 18 years old. They lived in Bristol for seven years at

least, and when William moved again it was to Plymouth and thence to Australia.

The first recorded reference to Wiiliam in Bristol is in 1841.

He is shown as living at 1 Hiilsbridge Parade in the rates book for St Mary Redcliff dated 25

March. The house is owned by Thomas Hazell and rated annually at £18. The census for 1841

also shows William and Elizabeth and seven children (John was not born until 1842) at Number

1, with John Furneaux, aged 34, a mason. Presumably he was Elizabeth's younger brother.

Number 1 Hiilsbridge was situated on one side of Number 2, which was occupied by William

Smith, his wife, four children, two women called Greenwell, aged 30 and 18, and a 20-year-old

servant girl. This William Smith was 45, and his occupation, which should be noted, was

shipwright.

The house on the other side of Number 1 was the first in Trafalgar Place and was occupied by

Thomas Harris. He was 29; his wife Martha was 25 (they had no children); three other women

were living with them. Much of this page in the census book has faded away and is unreadable.

But it looks as if Thomas Harris, young as he was, was a ship's master. Again, this should be

noted.

At some point in 1841 William set up in business with George Wilkins.

They are shown in the Bristol Directory for 1841 as 'Honeycomb & Wilkins, masons and

builders, 1 Hiilsbridge Parade.' They are both registered in the rates book, dated 25 March

1842, as being joint occupiers of No 1, with the same neighbours as named in the census -

Wiiliam Smith and Thomas Harris.

Towards the end of that year, 1842, the Honeycombes and George Wilkins must have moved.

For they are absent from the St Mary rates book of March 1843. However, they appear that

month in the rates book for St Paul. They are now the joint occupiers of a house in Meadow

Street, which is owned by John Stratton and rated at £36 The dwelling-house also has a stable

and a yard, and we find from the rates book of March 1845 that the house was next to a

piggery.

In March 1846, there is no Honeycombe or Wilkins in Meadow Street. But in a directory for

1849 George Wilkins is listed as a builder in Stapleton Road, in the parish of St Philips. He is

not, however, in the 1850 directory nor in the 1851 census for Bristol. The last known

reference to him in Bristol is in 1849.

George Wilkins is an important figure in the Honeycombes' story - as will soon become clear.

But we know very little about him. We do not know his age, whether he was married, and if so,

whether he had any children. We know he was living as William Honeycombe's partner in

Number One Hilisbridge in 1842, and as that house was already occupied (in 1841) by

William, his wife, seven children and John Furneaux (perhaps), it would seem that George had

few if any children or even a wife. He is still with them in Meadow Street in 1843-45, and the

directories for these years verify that he and William were still in business together.

In 1846 William moved across the River Avon to Kingsdown, and to the parish of St Matthew.

Here his address in 1846-47 is given as 6 Dove Street.

He then disappears from British records - apart from a mention on his eldest son's marriage

certificate. And most of his family also thereafter disappear.

A genealogist, working from English sources, would have no idea whither in the world the

Honeycombes went

I happen to know, having traced the present-day Honeycombes in Australia back to two of

William's sons, and then having bridged the gap by the chance finding of William and his wife

and four of their children in the list of passengers on the Sea Queen who arrived in Melbourne

1850. But what happened in between?

What happened during William's time in Bristol, where he lived for at least seven years, that

made him resolve in his middle age to leave his native land?

Something in his character, a restless dissatisfaction with where he was and what he was doing,

seems to have motivated his actions. He could have settled down as a stonemason and found

regular work in any English town, or in some village. But he didn't. Every three or four years he

was on the move, and even within these periods he seems to have changed his home address

more than once.

From Cornwall he goes to Devon, then on to London, then back to Devon and on to Bristol.

One wonders whether some misdemeanours were involved, as in the Bigg affair. Did he tend to

overcharge, not pay his rent, concoct his expenses, or otherwise antagonise his employers? Did

he have to move to evade his creditors? Or was nothing ever good enough for him and the grass

ever greener elsewhere? Was his temperament as volatile as that of his sons, Richard and John,

would prove to be, in different ways, in Australia?

Five of William's children married comparatively young, two in their teens. Was the constant

moving from home to home, from village to town, a factor here? Or was there something about

their father's moods and behaviour that made them only too keen to escape from his autocratic

rule?

The first of his children to marry was Mary Ann (called Mary) in 1845. She married in London.

Her father was then in business in Meadow Street in Bristol with George Wilkins, and Mary

gave her father's occupation as 'builder'. What was she doing in London, which the family had

left some 17 years before this?

The marriage took place in a comparatively new church in Bermondsey on 9 November. Built in

1829, near Jamaica Road, with a tapering clock tower and huge columns at the entrance

supporting a heavy Grecian pediment, the church of St James could seat nearly 2,000 people.

Mary Ann was 21, and her husband, William Henderson ('of full age') was a bachelor and a

stonemason. No occupation is given for her, so presumably she had lived with her parents, or

relatives, until the marriage. Presumably she met William Henderson in Bristol. If so, if the liaison

had the blessing of her parents, why did Mary not marry there? The possibility exists that she

ran away with William to London, or followed him there. Her address at the time of their

marriage is the same as his (Fort Place,

off Grange Road), and the witnesses are both Hendersons, Hall and Jane, possibly the

bridegroom's brother and sister

Mary remained in London; antt 26 years later she is listed in the census for teeming

Bermondsey, in 1871.

William's second son, Richard, was the next to marry. His story will be told in full in later

chapters. But in 1847, when William disappears from the Bristol records, Richard was a

mason's apprentice in Carlisle, in the north of England.

In September that year, he married Elizabeth Ryder - twice. The first 'wedding' happened at

Gretna Green across the border in Scotland on Richard's 18th birthday; the bride was 25.

Apparently, the resourceful woman dared the youth to marry her. The union was made official in

November, when they married again in a church in Carlisle.

On this certificate, Richard's father's occupation is given as a stonemason, not a builder, and one

of the witnesses is Richard's older brother, William Robert. All concerned signed the church

year later in October 1848.

What was William Robert doing up there? He was a carpenter by trade and 20 that September.

Did he travel north to be his brother's best man, or was he already working there? The former

premise seems most likely. For we find William Robert back in Bristol in 1849, when he marries

Emma Rowles.

No member of William Robert's family, or hers, witnessed the signing of this register, which was

done by two "regulars'. The wedding took place in the parish church of Temple in Bristol on 29

May. William Robert, we know, was now 21, and a carpenter; Emma was about 24 and is

described as a spinster (no occupation is given). Her father was a farmer; the groom's father

was a mason. The couple's address was 48 Temple Street.

This tittle faci is remarkable, because it was also the address of another William Honeycombe,

who was also another carpenter. He appears as such in the 1851 Census and in severat birth

certificates.

How did this happen? How did two Williams, both carpenters, but of different families, come to

be living in the same house in Bristol in 1849?

They were, in fact, related. The other William was born in St Cleer in 1820 - so he was seven

years older than William Robert. This other William's father, a farmer born and brought up in St

Cleer and also named William, was the son of the John Honeycombe who was the eldest

brother of Robert, the father of William the stonemason. John and Robert were therefore the

respective grandparents of the two carpenters in Bristol.

But how did they meet? For the older of the two carpenters called William did not come to

Bristol until after his marriage in March 1846, in Truro.

His bride, Susan Platt Jenkins (Sukey), was 17 or 18 at that time. Their first child was born in

December the following year in Bristol, as were the next five - and between 1847 and 1854

they all lived at 48 Temple Street.

In May 1849, when William Robert and Emma wed, William and Sukey had just one child,

aged 17 months. Called Phillipa Jane, she died of scarlet fever when she was two and a half.

William Robert had grown up in Devon and Bristol, where his father set up in business in 1841,

(when William Robert was 14). So it seems most unlikely that the two young carpenters met in

Cornwall. The grandparents of William Robert were dead by then, and there were only a

couple of aunts in Calstock who might have given him a home.

What is curious is that William Robert did not follow his father's trade: Richard did, but William

Robert became a carpenter. Was this just his inclination? Or was some other influence at work?

The likelihood of William Robert being apprenticed as a carpenter in St Cleer seems remote.

His apprenticeship was surely done in Bristol, under the guidance, possibly, of his father's

business partner, George Wilkins, who was a builder, it would seem that William the carpenter

of St Cleer met the younger William Robert by chance in Bristol and because they both had the

same trade.

Clearly the two of them became friends, if not associates, as William Robert was lodging with

the other William in Temple Street when he married and not with his parents in Dove Street. But

that was probably because his parents were no longer living in Dove Street, or even in Bristol.

Much is known about the later life of William the carpenter of St Cleer and his wife, Sukey.

They had nine children altogether, and moved to London about 1861. Most of the present-day

London Honeycombes are descended from them.

Very little, however, is known about William Robert. After his marriage in 1849, he disappears

from English records.

But the chance finding of an entry in the 1851 census tells us that he and Emma, his wife, had a

child, a baby girl, in 1850. The entry reveals that Emma Honeycomb(e) and her daughter,

Frances (without William Robert) were living with Emma's widowed mother, Hannah Rowles,

aged 62, in Marine Cottage, Portishead, Somerset. With them were Emma's unmarried brother,

yet another William, aged 21, and a 10-year-old girl, Louisa May, described as a grand-

daughter of Hannah Rowles.

Portishead is on the coast, a few miles west of Bristol and across the River Avon from

Avonmouth. The census details reveal that Hannah Rowles, the mother, was born there, as was

her son, William; Emma, Frances and Louisa Rowles were all bom at Portbury, a tiny village a

mile or two inland and now overwhelmed by the M5. The fact that Emma was living with her

mother indicates either that she and William Robert had separated, or that he was living and

working elsewhere. Or that he was dead.

No record has been found for the birth of Frances Honeycombe, Emma's child. Nor any record

of other children. Or of William Robert's death. But within

seven years of his marriage, Emma Honeycombe, calling herself a widow, remarried. This we

know.

What happened to William Robert? The problem about his disappearance is compounded by a

reference to him in a death certificate - not his - in Australia in 1876. In it, William Robert is

listed (as such) as one of his father's children. He is said to be 48, and accordingly alive. But

Emma was a widow when she remarried in 1856.

it is impossible to be sure, but the likeliest explanation for this is that the later reference (20

years later) is an error, caused by an assumption in Australia -not that William Robert was alive

- but that he wasn't known to be dead. He may well have disappeared, and been presumed

dead by Emma, but not by his relatives in Australia. Perhaps letters went missing. In any event,

his sister Jane, who provided the information for that death certificate and who emigrated in

April 1854, must have known or believed her brother was alive when she sailed from England.

If he had died before this, the reference in the death certificate many years iater would surety

have said - 'William, dead'.

A possible scenario, based partly on the fact that the man Emma married in December 1856

was a saiior, John Doubting (he was 31 and she 32), could read something like what follows.

William Robert became a ship's carpenter at the outbreak of the Crimean War in March 1854;

perhaps he worked in the Bristol dockyards beforehand. We remember that his Hillsbridge

neighbours in 1841-42, when he was 13 and 14, were a shipwright and a ship's master. Either

that, or he joined the army or navy. Whether as a soldier, sailor or shipwright, let us suppose he

sailed with the allied armies to the Black Sea. Russia had declared war on Turkey, and the

British and French were anxious to protect Turkey and their own interests against Russian

expansion towards the Mediterranean Sea. The allies had mustered their forces at Varna on the

Bulgarian coast of the Black Sea. But these were ferried by ship to Eupatoria, after a cholera

epidemic swept through the French and British camps. The aim of the allies was to capture

Sebastopol, and after the battle of Alma in September 1814, the Russian stronghold was

beseiged. The fatal charge of the Light Brigade happened that October; the siege of Sebastopol

lasted nearly a year. During the winter hundreds of British soldiers died through disease, lack of

proper clothing and food - partly because storms wrecked the transport ships bringing

necessary supplies.

William Robert may have been on one of these ships, or he may have died of cholera or some

other disease in a Black Sea port.

The Crimean War ended with the Treaty of Paris early in 1856. Hostilities had cost Britain

some 25,000 lives and led to a reappraisal of so-called modem warfare, methods of nursing,

medical supplies and equipment. Income tax was raised to 1s 2d because of the war, but

reduced over the next ten years to 7d.

Returning ships, soldiers and seamen brought back news of the many deaths. It is perhaps

significant that Emma remarried a sailor. Could he not have been the one who brought her the

news of William's death? She did not in

fact remarry until December 1856 ~ nine months after the official end of the war and over a

year since the surrender of Sebastopoi.

By the time of Emma's remarriage, only Mary Ann, William Robert's eldest sister, was still in

England, and she was in London, where she had been, since her marriage, for 11 years. All of

the rest of William Robert's family were in Australia, the last to leave being his sister Jane, who

emigrated in April 1854.

Perhaps he was never declared dead, but 'missing', thus allowing Emma and Jane (on receiving

a letter from Emma) to draw their own conciusions: Emma to marry again, believing he was as

good as dead; and Jane to go on thinking that her dear brother (there was a year and a half

between them) would one day reappear. On the other hand, Emma may never have written to

any of the Honeycombes. Perhaps she didn't care for them. Or perhaps she moved away from

Bristol after her second marriage, leaving no forwarding address. And William Robert's family in

Australia were never told, never knew for sure, what happened to him. Nor do we.

There is another possibility. Aunt Lil (William Robert's great-niece) told me: 'Bill came out after

Richard sent for him. He went down the mines in Queensland?' She said nothing more. But was

she right? Was she thinking of another Bill, John's son? Is she getting her facts confused? If she

was right, the questions remain: Whatever happened to William Robert Honeycombe - and will

we ever know?

3. Jane and the Bastards George

Jane Honeycombe emigrated in 1854, and her brother Richard in 1853, three years after their

rather William took his wife and their four youngest children to Australia on the Lady

McNaghten and the Sea Queen.

Richard's story is told in full later on. Let us now return to William and the possible reasons for

his departure, which may be connected in part to what happened to Jane in 1846 and 47.

She had a secret, that has remained hidden for nearly 150 years and was probably known to

very few in England and none in Australia, except herself.

In 1847 Jane gave birth to an illegitimate child.

Of this I was unaware until I began writing this book and, scanning the family trees for one thing,

found another. I had ascribed this bastard child, for whom I had a birth certificate, to the wrong

Jane. I had thought he was the offspring of another Jane, herself illegitimate, who was bom in

Calstock in December 1829. But I had neglected to take into account two salient facts: the

baby was born in London, and his father's name was given as - George Wilkins.

The details on the birth certificate tell us that the baby, christened Edward - later on he called

himself George Edward - was born at 7 East Road, Hoxton New Town in Shoreditch, on 24

April 1847. The mother and the person who informed the registrar was a Jane Honeycombe, of

the same address, and her father's occupation was 'builder'.

Our Jane was born in March 1826. There can be no doubt that the certificate's details referring

to Wilkins - builder- and London relate to her. She was herself bom in London, at Newington

Butts in the Borough of Southwark, and her sister, Mary Ann, married in Bermondsey in 1845.

Bermondsey and Southwark are both south of London Bridge, and Hoxton is due north of it,

via Moorgate and City Road.

There are other, later, associations that connect George Edward Honeycombe to the Bristol

Honeycombes. He appears in the 1871 census for Bristol, lodging as a labourer at Warmley

Hill; and he marries in Southwark in 1887.

Those are the facts. What is the likely story that links them?

Jane became pregnant about August 1846, when she was 20. Her older sister, Mary Ann, had

married a stonemason, William Henderson, in London the previous November, and her younger

brothers, William Robert and Richard (19 and 16 then} were working away from home. Her

other brothers and sisters, Henry, Elizabeth, Martha and John were considerably younger:

Henry was 12 and John was just four. Jane was probably employed as a housemaid or servant.

She may still have been living at home and may not have been working, helping her mother with

household chores and looking after the four youngest

children. Where were they all living? Their father William had been in business with George

Wilkins since 1841, and four years later their business and home address is given as Meadow

Street. But in 1846, William moves across the River Avon to Dove Street and is no longer

working with George Wilkins.

When exactly was the move made, and was the dissolution of the partnership connected with

Jane's pregnancy? It seems so, and the date of William's move to Dove Street must be crucial in

this respect. We know he was there in 1846 - but from what month?

On the other hand, the change of address and Jane's pregnancy may be coincidental. William

may not have known about her plight For Jane gave birth to her child in London in April 1847.

She couid have gone there ostensibly to stay with her married sister, Mary Ann Henderson, and

then have remained, on the pretext that she had obtained some employment. But she is back in

Bristol in 1851 - by which time her parents are in Australia. She appears in the census for that

year, aged 25, as a house servant, working for a Mrs Mary Tierney, widow, in Clifton, at 9

Caledonia Place. Mrs Tierney, who was 49 and a 'pensioner', had several dependents and

servants and was born in the East Indies. Cliton was a middle-class address and her husband's

pension must have been a good one, not to mention his East Indian assets.

It seems likely that Jane had left the infant George Edward with her sister in London or had had

him adopted. She would not, as a spinster, be living in Mrs Tierney's superior house with a 4-

year-oid child. After this, it appears she returned to London, as when she emigrated, her county

of residence in England is given on the ship's passenger list as 'Middlesex'. Hoxton was in

Middlesex then.

The fact that George Edward was born in London, and not in Bristol, must indicate that there

was something secretive or shameful about the event, and that her father did not approve or

would not approve, had he known about it. Perhaps he never knew - nor saw his daughter from

the time she first went to London to the day he met her again in Geelong. Perhaps only Mary

Ann Henderson knew. For it is surely she who brought the infant up in the Borough of

Southwark, where later on he spent nearly all his married life.

But Jane was not ashamed in the birth certificate to name the baby's father - George Wilkins.

More than this, she toewwho he was, and wished his responsibility (or irresponsibility) to be

known.

Do we have here a broken promise of marriage? Was Jane in love with him? Or did he seduce

her - even force himself upon her?

Research has revealed very little about our George Wilkins - whether he was married and how

old he was. Two men named George Wilkins married in Bristol in 1831 and another with that

name in 1837 - occupations unknown. No evidence has been found that connects any of these

three with our George. A fourth George Wilkins (possibly one of the above), who was born in

St Agnes near Truro in 1789 and who married there in 1825, would have been 57 in 1846.

Is he our George? Or was it a son of his who deflowered William the stonemason's daughter,

Jane? We do not know.

All we know is that the father of Jane's child lived with the Honeycombes in Bristol for three

years, from 1842 to 1845, when Jane was aged 16 to 19. She was 20 when she became

pregnant in 1846. George Wilkins was still in Bristol in 1849, in a business as a builder in

Stapleton Road, St Philips. Was he still seeing Jane? Or avoiding her? Was she still hoping he

would marry her? In this she was disappointed, as in much else, it seems. For five years later, in

1854, Jane emigrated, abandoning not just what friends she had and any small expectations, but

her native land and her little boy.

There was more than one bastard called George.

George Edward Honeycombe apparently knew who his father was. But when was he told?

And when did he assume his father's first name? He was just Edward to Jane. He must have

been told at some point about the Bristol connection and about the Honeycombe and Wilkins

business. Perhaps by Mary Ann Henderson. For we find him in Bristol, unmarried, in 1871,

aged 24, lodging with a deaf laundress, aged 69, Elizabeth Haskins. Had he gone to Bristol to

see if any of his father's or mother's family could help him with money or a job? Did he go there

to find his father?

What we know of his life thereafter is a sad tale of infant mortality and gross deprivation in the

gas-lit squalor of south London.

After Bristol George disappears for 16 years. Was he for a while in the army or navy? Or

working wherever and how he could? Or even in prison? For he does not marry until 1887,

when he is 40, and employed as a porter in Bermondsey. He is then living at 15 Tenda Road, a

dismal row of cottages between two converging railway viaducts. Presumably he was a market

porter or a railway porter, and may have been so for some time.

One of these viaducts, the more northerly one with over 800 brick arches, had been

constructed in 1834 to carry London's first passenger railway trains to Greenwich. The first

section to be completed was from the Spa Road Station to Deptford, and the first train from

London Bridge Station to Greenwich steamed out, with the Lord Mayor of London on board,

in December 1836. When a branch line was added on to Croydon, the first signal box in the

world was erected where the lines divided. At night its red and white lights and lit interior

caused it to be dubbed 'the Lighthouse'. It stood less than half a mile from George's lodging, and

the sight and sound of trains, the billowing smoke, whistles and noise, must have constantly

marked his early married life. For trains from London Bridge ran every quarter of an hour,

between 8.00 am and 10.00 pm; fares were: 'Imperial carnages, one shilling; open cars,

sixpence.'

Perhaps George worked at the Spa Road Station, or in one of the stations nearby but built later

- either the Bricklayer's Arms or South Bermondsey.

Strong smells were endemic in late Victorian Bermondsey. Leather was one of the main

industries, the making of boots and saddles, shoes, gloves and bags; tanner's yards lined Long

Lane, their pits replete with animal skins being washed or soaked in tan-pits. Allied trades were

furriers and hatters. The effluvia of breweries also assailed the nose, especially the output of

Courage's Anchor Brewery by Tower Bridge. A sweeter smell issued from biscuit-making

factories: from Peek Freans, and Spinel's (who made dog biscuits). Pearce Duffs factory made

custord powder; Crosse and Blackwell's pickles; Hartley's jams; Sarson's made vinegar, and

the Metal Box Company made tins. There was a market in Blue Anchor Road crammed with

200 stalls; and a lively music-hall, the Star. And all along the Bermondsey wharves and

warehouses on the river, steam-ships and cranes conflated the sensory kaleidoscope of smells

and sounds. Much of the bacon, cheese, butter and lard that London needed was stored

thereabouts. Some of it was refrigerated, but part was stacked a few yards from the rat-

infested, sewage-ridden docks and alleyways, and the slimy turgid river. Bermondsey was the

background of some of Charles Dickens' novels; its workhouses and prisons, its fetid tenements

and shops.

By 1881, more than 86,000 people were crushed into an area less than two miles square: as

many as nine or ten might live in one room, without sanitation or a water supply, except for a tap

in the street serving 25 houses. Once a large Cluniac Abbey flourished in the area, among open

fields and market gardens, with the town houses of the wealthy spaced out along the river bank.

Tower Bridge had not been built when George got married (it was opened in June 1894), and

London Bridge was then the last bridge across the river before it flowed out into the North Sea.

But a subway existed under the Thames in 1887, an iron tube seven feet wide that ran from

Tooley Street to Tower Hill. People could walk through it and under the Thames for a

halfpenny. It is said a million did so every year.

This was the scene of George Honeycombe's last days as a bachelor, and of his first years of

marriage. His bride was Charlotte Flegg, the daughter of a tailor. The fact that she was 20, half

George's age, and that the wedding took place in the Methodist Chapel in Manor Road on

Christmas Day, 1887, implies a sudden or romantic urge - although there was nothing romantic

about their married life.

The following year, in the Whitechapei area across the river, an urge to kill, to cut and mutilate,

was given its most sensational form in the later months of Charlotte's first pregnancy. Five

prostitutes were horribly slaughtered between August and November 1888 by a man who

became known as Jack the Ripper. During Charlotte's second pregnancy, another three

prostitutes would die in the Waterloo area, poisoned by a cross-eyed Scotsman, Dr Cream.

The first of George and Charlotte's eight children, a girl, was in fact the only one to live beyond

her teens and then to marry. Six of their children died before they were four years old, and three

of these, all boys, died in their infancy. The fact that Charlotte was employed in the Newington

Workhouse as a general

servant and laundress cannot have improved the children's chances. For three of her children,

Mary, Rosina and Thomas, were actually born in the workhouse, and the first two died therein.

Her second child, Mary, died aged two in the infirmary attached to the Newington Workhouse:

cause of death, marasmus, or wasting away. That was in May 1892. In October the following

year Rosina died, of bronchopneurrtonia: also aged two and also in the workhouse. After a

seven-year gap of no known births (miscarriages maybe, or perhaps George was away), the

eldest son, George, born in September 1898, died accidentally the following month of, as the

death certificate puts it, 'suffocation while in bed with parents'.

Were they both drunk that night? Or so exhausted by the labours of the day that the baby was

smothered as they slept? They were living then at 16 Elham Street, as they were the following

year when a second baby boy, Thomas, born in the Mint St workhouse in July 1899, died, it

seems, in the same way in September. An inquest was held, and the cause of death was

attributed to 'asphyxia - accidental death'.

A third son, Frederick, died aged three months of heart failure in Guy's Hospital in May 1903.

One-year-old Emily died in 1909.

She was the Honeycombes' last and eighth child. The sixth child, Lilian, born late in 1901,

somehow survived for 14 years. That was her age when she died in July 1916 of tuberculosis

and exhaustion in the Workhouse Infirmary at Tonbridge, in Kent. What was she doing down

there? Her parents were in London. Was she earning a crust as a beggar or a prostitute? No

occupation is listed for Lilian, and no address, only - 'Of no fixed abode'.

For most of this period, from at least 1897 to 1909, George and Charlotte were resident in

Southwark. All their children were bom there and were probably christened, if they lived long

enough, in a Methodist church, not in the massive parish church of St Saviour by London

Bridge, which became a cathedral, Southwark Cathedral, in 1906.

Southwark, which was once a Roman suburb, and later fortified to protect the river crossing,

had become as overcrowded and diseased as Bermondsey, if not more so. The Medical Officer

of Health wrote in 1858: 'Overcrowding is the normal state of our poorer districts. Small houses

of four rooms are usually inhabited by three or four families and by eight, 16 or 24 persons'.

Maypole Alley, in particular, was 'a nest of infectious diseases'. In one small parish, that of St

George the Martyr, more than 51,000 people dwelt.

Southwark, or 'The Borough' as it was called, was famous for its prisons, hospitals and inns. In

the Borough High Street, leading from London Bridge, inns abounded. Here were the Tabard,

from where Chaucer's pilgrims journeyed to Canterbury; the George; and the White Hart,

where Mr Pickwick met Sam Weller. Most had been destroyed by the Great Fire of

Southwark in 1656 and rebuilt. The coming of trains gradually put all of them, as well as the

horse-drawn coaches, out of business.

Then there were the prisons: the Marshalsea Prison, where Charles Dickens' father was briefly

lodged for debt; the King's Bench; the White Lyon; the Counter; and the Clink. The latter took

its name from Clink St, a verminous alley beside the river and near the great west door of St

Saviour's. It gave its name, the Clink, to the English language as a pseudonym for a prison.

Yet another jail was situated in Horsemonger Lane, not far from where Mary Ann Henderson

and her family, and possibly Jane's bastard son, lived in 1849. On the roof of the jail was a

gallows, whereon people were hanged in full view of the crowds in the street. One such public

execution in 1849 was witnessed by Charles Dickens, who wrote about what he saw and felt in

a letter to The Times, published on 14 November.

The execution was that of a married couple, George and Maria Manning, who had robbed and

murdered a lodger, Patrick O'Connor. Dickens wrote of 'the wickedness and levity of the

immense crowd' and of 'a scene of horror and demoralisation', attended that Tuesday morning

by 'a concourse of boys and girls'.

He continued: When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians and vagabonds of every

kind, flocked on to the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour. Fightings,

faintings, whistlings, imitations of Punch, brutal jokes, tumultuous demonstrations of indecent

delight when swooning women were dragged out of the crowd by the police with their dresses

disordered, gave a new zest to the general entertainment. When the sun rose brightly - as it did -

it gilded thousands upon thousands of upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal

mirth or callousness, that a man had cause to feel ashamed of the shape he wore... There was

no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to

judgement... than if the name of Christ had never been heard in the world... I stand astounded

and appalled.'

It was not until 1868 that the last public hanging took place. But it was not until 1964 that the

hanging of people sentenced to death for murder in England came to an end.

The sole survivor of George's eight children was the eldest, Charlotte Elizabeth Ann

Honeycombe. She was 28, and living at 3 East Place, Chapel Street, Clerkenwell, when she

married James Bristow, a 34-year-old carman, in May 1917.

She said she was 25, and gave no occupation, probably having none of any account or repute.

She told the registrar that her father was dead (he was still alive), and failed to remember or

provide his first name. Clearly she had strayed very far from any regular or respectable home

life. Maybe she never knew any such thing.

What else do we know of her father, George Honeycombe? A porter when he married in 1887

in Southwark, he was a journeyman bootmaker in 1891, a hairdresser's assistant from 1898 to

1901, and a general labourer from 1903 until his death, although he is described as a barber in

1916 on the death

certificate of his daughter, Lilian. Over this period he and Charlotte lived in various back streets

in Southwark. But he died in Whitechapel, north of the river, in October 1926. He was 69, not

71 as his death certificate states, and he died of septicaemia caused by a septic foot.

Charlotte died ten years later, and like him in St Peter's Hospital. She was 70, and had been

living at 81 Plumber's Row, Whitechapel, a poverty-stricken address.

Such was the life of squalid destitution of George Wilkins' bastard son, born by Jane

Honeycombe in 1847, and abandoned by both of them to decay, along with his family, in the

grimy purlieus of Victorian and Edwardian London, that formed the other, fouler face of the

gleaming coin of Empire.

4. Australia Felix

If Jane's father, William the stonemason, knew of her seduction or rape by his partner, George

Wilkins, we have a very good reason for the dissolution of their business association. But al! we

can be sure of at this time is that in 1846 the five-year partnership came to an end and William

moved from Meadow Street to Dove Street.

His next major move was to Australia.

Why did he make this most drastic decision to emigrate, so final and far-reaching? He was 50 in

January 1847: he could not expect to return. Why did he choose to go?

It was not as if working or living conditions in England were especially dire then, certainly not

for a master mason in a growing city like Bristol, if of course he was still there after 1847.

Britain had been involved in no foreign wars for over 30 years; Victoria had been Queen for 11;

and by 1848 the growth of national prosperity was being shared not just by the upper and

middle classes but to some degree by the. mass of craftsmen, and artisans, even the. labourers,

on whose actual physical industry the industrialisation of Britain heavily relied. Certainly there

was much urban hardship and rural privation; wages were low almost everywhere and hours

were long. But medical skills and knowledge had much improved, as had sanitation; the Corn

Laws were repealed by Peel in 1346V the Navigation Laws three years later: free, trade

became at last something, of a reality; and the Ten Hour Bili, limiting the daiiy working hours of

women and children, was passed in 1847. The iniquities of the old poor laws had by now been

sorted out, as well as the chaos of local administration, and in 1847 the Poor Law Commission

was replaced by the Poor Law Board.

The presence of policemen in. towns and cities made the streets safer at night and reduced civic

disorders. These streets were now gas-lit, and properly paved; roads were macadamised. The

penny post, instituted in 1840, had become a general means of communication; and the railways

not only facilitated this but literally speeded up the movement of goods, of raw materials and

machine-made products, and above all of people around the country.

Train travei was still a novelty, and generally a joy, compared with the perpetual discomforts of

a seat in a coach, which was like 'a dose box' -especially the smoothness of the ride, the

sensation of speed ('the velocity is delightful', wrote Charles Greville), and the ever-changing

scenery and animation of railway stations. By 1848 some 5,000 miles of railway-lines had been

laid in Britain. A great new national industry had been born, employing thousands to service it,

and widely boosting other industries, like engineering and coal, production of which reached 50

million tons in 1848.

In this year a year of political and nationalist revolutions throughout the continent - and the

appearance of the Communist Manifesto produced by Marx

and Engels - the activities of the Chartists in England reached a ciimax. In April, the last of three

national petitions supporting the People's Charter was presented {in three hackney-cabs) to

Parliament. So many of the signatures were forged (Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington

were among them), and the advertised march of half a million people was such a fiasco, that the

movement petered out, although its principfes would be incorporated in trade unionism and in

later political reforms.

A much greater impact was made on England by the disastrous failure of the potato crop in

Ireland in 1846. In the next five years some 800,000 people are said to have died of hunger and

disease. Over a million left Ireland, to labour in factories and mines in the north of England, and

in railway construction gangs and a host of manual trades. Many emigrated, swelling the

increasing outflow of migrants, which stood at about 25,000 a year before 1830, but averaged

over 250,000 between 1347 and 49.

Most of these emigrants - Irish, Scottish, Cornish, the Midlanders and Northerners - headed for

the United States and the as yet unfederated provinces of Canada. A few thousand went to

Cape Colony in South Africa, or to the newly annexed Boer republic of Natal. The settlement

of New Zealand had been interrupted by the first Maori War of 1845-48. But in Australia,

where the transportation of convicts to the eastern colonies had virtually ceased, the white

inhabitants now numbered over 300,000 - 50,000 of them in Sydney, which still ruled, on

behalf of the British government, all the known settled areas of the huge island continent.

Transportation to New South Wales had ended in 1840, by which time 92 convict transports

had dumped their human cargos on the distant coast. But eight years later, the Secretary of

State for the Colonies, Earl Grey, recommended that selected convicts, those who had served

part of their sentence in Britain, should be exiled, as it were, to New South Wales and Van

Diemen's Land (Tasmania). But such was the outcry from the free settlers in Sydney and

Melbourne against the arrival of a few convict ships in 1849 that all future transportation was

directed to Fremantle in Western Australia - where the system came to an end in 1868.

The anti-transportation rallies in Sydney and Melbourne in 1849 coincided with the publication

in London of a book by Alexander Harris called the The Emigrant Family, written as both a

novel and a guide.

One wonders whether William Honeycombe read this book, and how much he absorbed about

Australia from newspaper items and articles, and regular advertisements such as this: 'To enable

respectable persons to proceed to the Australian Colonies, viz, Adelaide, Australia Felix or Port

Phillip, and Sydney, at the lowest possible cost consistent with security and comfort, say £15

per adult, with the ordinary description of accommodation, or £16 per adult when extra space,

with enclosed cabins, are required (including provisions), the undersigned have established a

Line of Superior First-Class Ships'.

These particular vessels sailed from London on the 1st and 15th of each month, stopping at

Plymouth on their way down the English Channel. Further particulars were to be had from the

shipping lines concerned, and their agents

were ready in many towns and even in some villages, with useful books, pamphlets arid advice.

One such was a Dictionary of Medical and Surgical Knowledge and Complete Practical Guide

in Health and Disease for Families, Emigrants and Colonists- it appeared in 1850.

It advised: 'What is chiefly required is a couple of suits of common strong slops will! a

sufficiency of final, worsted find cotton stockings and a few handkerchiefs...Both adults and

children should wear on board light but not thin-soied shoes, made with buckles or elastic

sides'. Necessities included 'a knife, fork, tea and tablespoon, pewter plate, hook pot, pint mug

for tea, meat dish, waier can, washing basin, scrubbing brush ... 3 pounds of marine soap', etc.

Luxuries that might be brought included a ham, pickles, wine, brandy and jam.

There was also the example, and the letters, of those who had gone before. William's wife,

Elizabeth, had a relative who was a mariner (Thomas Furneaux), and even if William himself had

no friend or relative already in Australia to tell nirn what living there was like, he may nave had

some contact, in a sea-port like Bristol, with captains or sailors who had visited the various

Australian ports of call. Two of his neighbours in Hillsbridge Parade had been involved with

ships. There may have been others in Meadow Street.

That aside, Bristol was a ship-building centre, and one of the largest ships in the world, Brunei's

the Great Britain, had been launched at Bristol in July 1843, under the eye of Prince Albert.

Made of iron, with six masts and a six-bladed screw propeller, she was 320 feet long, and on

her first voyage In 1845 carried 850 passengers to New York, in i 852 she made her first fast

trip of many from Liverpool to Melbourne, before being commandeered to carry troops to the

Crimea. William Honeycombe may have witnessed the launching of the Great Britain in 1843:

thousands did. Besides, every day in the newspapers there were many items of nautical interest.

Was it from his reading or from some personal contact that William chose to sail to Port Phillip

(Melbourne} rather than to Sydney or to Adelaide? Or was he responding to some specific call

for stonemasons to work on the construction of public buildings in the new towns?

The Port Phiitip settlement, whose fertile grasslands had been dubbed 'Australia Felix' by the

Surveyor-General, Major Mitchell, in 1836, was fast becoming independent of New South

Wales and was already seeking the status of a separate colony. A bill to this effect would be

passed by the British government in November 1850, soon after William's arrival there.

ft must aiso be significant that Australia had been part of the consciousness of West Country

people in England, of those who were literate, for over 150 years. Indeed, the first Englishman

to walk on Australian soil and write about the new iand was born in a Somerset village near

Yeovii. He was the buccaneer and adventurer, William Dampier, who with the crew of the

pirate vessei, the Cygnet made a ianding on the coast of northwest Australia in January 1688 - a

hundred years before the arrival of the First Fleet in Botany Bay. He returned, officially, to

Western Australia in 1699 on the Roebuck, and sailed up the northwest coast from Shark's Bay

to Roebuck Bay. Of the

aborigines he wrote: 'They have the most unpleasant looks and the worst features of any people

that I saw'; and he dismissed what he saw of the land as 'the barrenest spot upon the Globe'.

Both Captain Cook's later voyages of discovery set out, with West Country crews, from

Plymouth - in 1768 and 1772. In the first, his ship, the Endeavour, reached Stingray Bay (later

renamed Botany Bay) in April 1770, and sailed all the way up the eastern coast to the tip of

Cape York. In the second voyage, his second-in-command, Tobias Furneaux, a Plymouth man,

became the first Englishman to land with his crew on Tasmania, which he concluded was part of

the Australian mainland.

It would be interesting to establish whether Elizabeth Furneaux, William Honeycombe's wife,

was in fact related to Tobias. Was she a grand-daughter or a second cousin? Perhaps, through

this family connection, Australia had for many years been in William's mind.

Several of the officers, crew and 759 convicts on board the eleven ships of the First Fleet that

left Portsmouth at 4.00 am on Sunday, 13 May 1787, were also from Devon and Cornwall.

One of the convicts, James Ruse, from Launceston, was allowed in 1791 to set up a 30 acre

farm of his own at Paramatta - the first official land grant to be made. Two others from

Cornwall, William and Mary Bryant, made a daring escape from Sydney Cove in 1790. With

their two children and seven other convicts they sailed in a small boat for over 3,000 miles to

the island of Timor. Recaptured, they were sent back to England. William and the children died

on the way. But Mary, imprisoned for a while in Newgate Jail, was back in Cornwall in 17S3;

she was 28. Of those who remained in the Colony, several fared well on acquiring their freedom

- like James Underwood, transported for stealing a ewe at New Sarum. Within 20 years he and

his brother were merchants in Sydney and owned a shipyard and a distillery.

Of the First Fleet officers from Devon and Cornwall, Philip Gidley King of Launceston did the

best. From being the Lt-Govemor of Norfolk Island, he became the Governor of New South

Wales in 1800. Port Phillip Bay was initially named after him in 1802, and a year later it was he

who ordered Lt Bowen (from llfracombe in Devon), with a party of convicts and soldiers, to

establish the first settlement in Van Diemen's Land. Its Governor, from 1824 to 1836, was also

a Plymouth man, Col Arthur. King was replaced as Governor in 1806 by William Bligh,

formerly Captain of the mutinous Bounty, another West Country man.

Many also were the Wesi Country men and women who were transported to Australia - more

than 500 were sent from llchester Jail between 1808 and 1822. Not a few prospered on gaining

their freedom, some returning home with first-hand tales of the land and what wealth could be

made. Among those who returned in due course were the six Tolpuddle Martyrs, four of whom

landed at Plymouth in March 1838. But the ex-convict who received the greatest acclaim,

commemorated even today on the Australian 10 dollar note, was Francis Greenway, a Bristol

architect, born into a family of stonemasons and buiiders, who designed and built the Clifton

Hotel in Bristol and the Clifton Assembly Rooms.

Charged with forgery at Bristol Assizes in 1812, his death sentence was committed to

transportation for 14 years; he was 34, in Sydney, he was appointed before long as Civil

Architect by Governor Macquarie and was responsible for the design and construction of many

of Sydney's public and private buildings between 1816 and 1822: churches, mansions, stables,

barracks, and a lighthouse, most of which were built by convict labour, as were most of the

early stone buildings and bridges in Australia. A government Commissioner sent out from

London, called John Thomas Bigge, succeeded in curtailing Greenway's ideas and activities -

they were 'too grand for an infant colony' - and he was sacked. Slighted thereafter, he died near

Newcastle in New South Wales in 1837. But his buildings and designs eventually won him the

title of 'Father of Australian architecture'.

It is not inconceivable that William Honeycombe, in Bristol from 1841 if not before, knew

Francis Greenway's brothers, and was excited by their talk of the amount of new building being

done in Sydney, and the work opportunities for a stonemason in the developing colony. And

how coincidental it would be if there was a connection between John Bigg of the Haytor letters

and Commissioner Bigge. The latter returned to England in February 1821 and spent the next

two years writing and publishing three lengthy and influential reports on New South Wales. It

was he who proposed that free settlers with money should be encouraged to emigrate and be

offered grants of land in proportion to the number of convicts they employed and the amount of

stock they had. Other systems attracting various types of emigrant were tried out later on.

How odd that a John Bigg(e) influenced the destinies of Francis Greenway and William

Honeycombe and consequently those of their children in Australia.

'Assisted' passages became a matter of government policy in the early 1830s. They were

introduced to attract settlers with the promise of parcels of impoverished land (40 acres for £3)

and a cut-price voyage.

Labourers and craftsmen were in much demand, especially when the flow of convict workers

was cut off in the Australian east. For instance, free passage to South Australia was advertised

in Cornwall in 1840 for 'Agricultural Labourers, Shepherds, Carpenters, Blacksmiths and

Stonemasons and all Persons connected with Building'. Single women, of whom there was a

shortage in the emergent colonies, were also encouraged to emigrate with a reduced payment of

£5, which could even be paid in instalments after they arrived. These women (including widows)

were supposed to be between the ages of 15 and 30. Some who took advantage of this scheme

were older; and several were prostitutes, seeking a husband or a higher income from the better

paid Australian men.

The usual rate for steerage passengers, those travelling on the lower decks, was between £15

and £25. Cabin passengers, lodged in cramped cabins below the poop deck at the stem, might

pay anything from £30 to £90, depending on the quality of the accommodation and the luxuries

provided. It should be remembered that a fair wage in this period was, at most, £1 a week - or

about £50 a year.

William paid for himself and his family. As they travelled intermediate or second-class (steerage

was third), he probably paid about £150 for the six of them. Children under 14 were half the

fare. Infants were free. As he was probably earning about £4 a week (or about £200 a year),

the voyage would have cost him three-quarters of his annual income.

The means of travel, apart from its cost, would have been another of William's worries. There

were also the risks involved - of being wrecked for one thing - and various considerations

concerning the type of ship and the route.

In the 1850s, the fastest run made by a saiiing-ship between Liverpool and Melbourne was 63

days - the same time as the record for the return journey via Cape Horn. The two ships

involved, the James Baines on the outward journey, and Lightning coming home, were clippers

of more than 2,000 tons, built in the eastern shipyards of America and owned by James Baines,

founder of the Black Ball Line in Liverpool. The first of their type was the Sea Witch, built in

1844 in New York. Clippers, which could attain speeds of 20 knots and cover 400 miles in 24

hours, were the giants of the sea in appearance and performance. In some cases their spread of

sail stretched to 10,000 yards of canvas, and a few could carry as many as 900 passengers.

Their heyday was, however, fairly brief, lasting for 30 years, between 1845 and 1875. By then,

coal-fired iron steamships were in the ascendancy. In 1855, one such ship, the Royal Charter,

set up a record for the run to Melbourne on her maiden voyage - 59 days.

The most famous of those early steamships with iron hulls, which also carried a big spread of

sail, was the Great Britain, iaunched in Bristol in 1843. Between 1852 and 1877, with a three-

year break when she was commandeered as a troop-carrier in the Crimean War and in the

Indian Mutiny, the Great Britain made 34 voyages to Australia, ten of which took 62 days. She

carried more emigrants to Australia than any other ship, over 20,000.

These steamships were strictly speaking auxiliary ships, their engines being auxiliary to sail - a

help and not the main driving force. Engine power was most useful when leaving or entering port

and in any doldrums. In strong westerlies, the engine's screw would be unused for days and

weeks at a time. It was not until the 20th century, and the development of steel hulls, steam

turbines and twin screws, that sail vanished from the masts of ships.

Steam was not the only factor that shortened the time ships took to sail around the world,

although many of the smaller, unwieldy vessels under 600 tons continued to take well over three

months to make the voyage. For many years, from 1788 until 1850, nearly every ship made for

Australia via the Canaries, or the Cape Verde Islands and Cape Town, and thence eastwards

along the 38th parallel. The distance to Sydney using this route was over 13,000 nautical miles.

Then 'Great Circle Sailing' was proposed. This arose from the premise that, as the Earth was

round, the shortest route between A and B would follow a curve, not a straight line. The theory,

first propounded by a Liverpudlian, John Towson, was put into general practice by 1852.

This new route, seeking out the most favourable winds, meant a non-stop voyage which took

the ships down across the Atlantic to South America, close to

Rio de Janeiro, and then, after looping down under South Africa, with Cape Town 700 miles to

the north, curving up to the Bass Strait.

Many ships were wrecked. Despite the addition of the chronometer to the sextant, enabling the

captain to determine both longitude and latitude, landfalls could be accidental. Australia would

appear many hours, even days, before or. after a sighting was expected. There were no

timetables then, not even for ships' departures. Ships left not on the hour or minute, but on an

advertised day, if then.

The worst shipwreck and civilian disaster in Australian history was the destruction of the

Cataraqui in 1845. Packed with emigrants, she was on her way to Melbourne. A miscalculation

of her position after four days of cloud, rain and gales led her on a stormy night to strike the

rocky coast of King Island in the Bass Strait. Heavy seas broke over the ship and tore her

apart, sweeping passengers and crew overboard. All those below deck were drowned; others

were broken on the rocks. Nine men somehow reached the shore. But 399 people died.

Ten years later, the Guiding Star, also outward bound from Liverpool, disappeared in the ice

and dark of the Southern Ocean: 546 people vanished with her. The Cospatrick caught fire on

her way to New Zealand in 1874. Of the 473 on board, only 83 managed to get away in

lifeboats. Of these, all but three were dead when they drifted ashore. The following year, the

Strathmore was wrecked on the uninhabited Crozet Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. Of

the 400 on board, 38 got to the shore, where they endured for six months before being rescued

by a whaler.

Ships were more often wrecked on British shores. In 1854 the Tayieur, two days out from

Liverpool, struck an Irish island - 290 drowned. Five years later, the Royal Charter, a new

auxiliary ship on her homeward run, was driven onto Anglesey hours before she was due to

dock. Over 350 died: many were gold prospectors who had made a small fortune and were

returning home.

Amazingly, some people in these shipwrecks always survived. The loss of the Guiding Star is

the only case on the Australia run of all the passengers and crew on a ship perishing.

Nonetheless, at least 26 emigrant ships in this period were lost, and more than 2,500 people

were drowned.

In August 1848 William Honeycombe may have read about the destruction by fire of an

American ship, Ocean Monarch, outward bound for Boston: nearly 200 people died. And in

December, 72 were suffocated during a storm in the Irish Channel as the steamer,

Londonderry, with hatches battened down, crossed from Siigo to Liverpool. Even the Great

Britain had had an accident, having run aground in Dundrum Bay in 1847; she was repaired in

Liverpool. It was not until May 1852 that she was able to sail for New York.

Yet, overall, more people died of disease at sea than of drowning. There was never a ship in

which no one died - of typhus or cholera, TB, measles, pneumonia and other virulent nineteenth

century maladies. Some women died in childbirth. Conditions on land for the masses of

emigrants may have been unhealthy and full of hardship. At sea, conditions were even worse.

Some of this would have been known by William Honeycombe. But he would have had little

concept of the physical reality of Australia: the animals and insects, the gum-trees and the bush,

the dust, the Hies, and the heat. Australia was as remote as the moon, unimaginable though in

view. Pictorial representations were very few; no photographs then, just the occasional

newspaper pen-and-ink sketch. And once there, the likelihood was that the emigrant would

never see England again.

We cannot really know what persons and events influenced Wifliam's decision to emigrate: what

discussions in beer-houses, music halls, or at firesides, added to his resolve - what happenings

in his personal and working life in 1849 made him choose a date of departure from Plymouth in

February the following year.

Was his thinking, or that of his wife, Elizabeth, similar to that expressed by Mrs Micawber in

David Copperfieid, which had been serialized in a monthly magazine since May 1849 and

would conclude in November 1850?

The Micawbers were on the eve of emigrating to Australia. Said Mrs Micawber: 'My dear Mr

Copperfieid, Mr Micawber's is not a common case. Mr Micawber is going to a distant country,

expressly in order that he may be fully understood and appreciated for the first time... From the

first moment of this voyage, I wish Mr Micawber to stand upon that vessel's prow and say,

"Enough of delay: enough of disappointment: enough of limited means. That was in the old

country. This is the new."'

The Micawbers saiied from Gravesend on the River Thames. The port of departure for the

Honeycombes was Plymouth.

Why Plymouth? London and Liverpool were the busiest ports of emigration - over 130,000

sailed from Liverpool in 1848, mainly to the USA and Canada. But Plymouth sailings were

mainly to Australia. Of 130 emigrant ships that left Plymouth in 1849, 109 were Australia-

bound.

Besides, as we have seen, Plymouth had been West Country people's point of departure for

Australia for nearly 200 years, and any family leaving England would want to spend their last

weeks and days ashore near their stay-at-home relations and the villages of their birth and

ancestral life.

It is quite possible, however, that William's choice of Plymouth as the port of embarkation was

not a choice as such, but because he was already there.

His last known address is in Dove Street in Bristol in 1847. Perhaps he then moved south,

seeking employment in Exeter or Plymouth, where much civic construction and development

were taking place, especially in Plymouth, which was joined to London by rail (via Exeter) in

April 1849. Steam trains, apart from their exciting novelty, were a huge boost to trade and the

movement of workers between cities and towns. London was now much more accessible, a

mere six hours away.

Plymouth itself had achieved no national importance until it became the principal naval base in

Elizabeth I's war with Spain. This was largeiy due to two local boys who'd made good: Sir

Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins, who was comptroller and then treasurer of the navy.

Drake sailed from Plymouth in July

1588 to attack and defeat the Spanish Armada. Because of wars against the French a hundred

years later, a new navai base was established at Dock on the River Tamar, west of Plymouth,

by 1696, Dock expanded so quickly that at one time its population exceeded that of Plymouth;

its name was changed to Devonport in 1824, A mile-iong breakwater in Plymouth Sound,

completed by 1841, provided shipping with one of the largest and safest harbours in the British

Isles,

If William Honeycombe and his family came to Plymouth from Bristol in 1847, 1848 or 1849,

he might have been employed as a stonemason in Devonport, where a great fire, in September

1840, had destroyed three ships in dock and several dockyard buildings. If he worked in the

complex of docks and navai buildings - or even in the city - he might have met yet another

Wiiliam Honeycombe, a great-great-grandfather of mine.

This William, a miliwright and then a dockyard sawyer, was born in Liskeard in Cornwall in

1786, not far from Calstock and St Cleer. He was consequently 63 in 1849 and more than ten

years older than Wiiliam the stonemason. Wiiliam the sawyer continued to work in the

dockyard, receiving about 1/6d a day, until 1855, when he was 69. He and his wife, Dorothy,

whom he married in Stoke Damerei in Plymouth in 1811, had produced ten children, of whom

five had survived. Of the girls, Mary Ann, the eldest, had married a shoemaker; Margaretta was

unmarried and probably in service; the third daughter, Ann Maria, had three illegitimate children

- the first by a soldier, it seems; the last by her brother-in-law.

Of the two surviving boys, the eldest, William Henry, born in 1816, was a dockyard sawyer like

his father and, though married, had no children. The youngest in the family was my great-

grandfather, Samuel, who would be 21 in October 1849.

The common ancestor of both familes was the Matthew Honeycombe who lived and died in St

Cleer and had two surviving sons, John and Jonathan, the former being the progenitor of my

line, which had moved, via William the sawyer, from Liskeard to Plymouth.

Nothing illustrates the mobility of familes more than the movement of this family away from its

ancestral village, beginning with William the sawyer's father. He, another William, was born in St

Cleer (1750); William the sawyer in Liskeard (1786); Samuel in Devonport (1828); Henry, my

grandfather, in Gravesend (1861); my father, Gordon Samuel in Edinburgh (1898); and finally

the author, Gordon, in Karachi, British India (1936). Notable is the fact that each generation

over a period of 200 years was bom not only in a different place but further away every time.

1849 was also notable for both families in that Samuel and William the stonemason both chose

to leave Plymouth about the same time, enhancing not only their social expectations but also

those of their descendants.

Samuel left, it seems, after his mother died in a cholera epidemic, and because a girl became

pregnant by him. His mother, Dorothy, died on 2 October 1849, a month or so before Elizabeth

Frayne knew she was expecting Samuel's child, who was born in June 1850 and christened

Ellen. Her birth certificate names Samuel Honeycombe as the father and gives his occupation as

carpenter. Perhaps he worked in the dockyard with his father and older brother, both sawyers:

certainly they were all living in Fore Street in 1849, the busy thoroughfare leading to the

dockyard. Perhaps Sarnue! would not marry Miss Frayne and there was a family row, the more

bitter following his mother's death. His obituary in the Gravesend and Dartford Reporter (1911)

says: 'He was apprenticed in the dockyard, afterwards joining the navy, and during his naval

service he travelled round the world and took part in the Crimean War.1 At the end of the war

he settled at Gravesend in Kent, about as far from Plymouth eastwards that he could get. There

he became a local worthy, honoured as the Surveyor and Inspector of Nuisances for the

Northfleet Borough Council in Kent.

Although naval records do not substantiate the statement that 21-year-ofd Samuel joined the

navy - his name does not appear as crew on any ship that saiied from Plymouth nor on any

Crimean ship - he may have changed his name. He may indeed have emigrated, temporarily.

The fact remains that he left Plymouth (in 1850 probably and possibly by sea) about the time

that William the stonemason emigrated from there, both thereby completely altering the direction

of their lives and the social milieu and opportunities of their children and their children's children.

I like to think that in 1849 or early the following year, the two Honeycombe families met by

chance - probabiy in a smoky, crowded pub. It is not impossible, as William the sawyer and his

sons were employed in the dockyard and were then living in Fore Street. Besides, he and his

family had lived in Devonport for about 40 years, and with a name like theirs would have been

locally quite well known.

Whatever brought William the stonemason to Plymouth, we know that he sailed from there in

February 1850. If he was there in 1849, his departure may have been influenced by the cholera

epidemic that put an end to Dorothy Honeycombe's life.

Cholera was the scourge of the nineteenth century, as bubonic plague had been in earlier

centuries. Over 53,000 people died of cholera in the epidemic that swept through England in

1849. In Bristol, in a four month period, over 400 people died; in Liverpool that autumn cholera

killed over 5,000. The epidemic in Plymouth and Devonport began in July and lasted until

November. In Devonport, 717 had died from cholera by the end of September, the most fatal

month being August, when 488 people were buried in the parish of Stoke Damerel - the

average burials there being about 90 a month.

Dorothy Honeycombe, who was 63, died of choleraic asphyxia', the second, usually fatal stage

of the disease. Don Steel, in Discovering Your Family History, writes: The first stage is a mild

and painiess diarrhoea, which lasts for two or three days... In the second stage the diarrhoea

becomes very violent, accompanied by continual vomiting, a severe pain at the pit of the

stomach and intense thirst. The symptoms then advance rapidly - agonising cramps of the legs,

feet and abdominal muscles, the surface of the body becomes cold and blue or purple, the skin

dry and wrinkled, the features pinched and the eyes deeply sunken. Death often comes in as

little as one day from asphyxia by vomit.'

The cholera epidemic, in Plymouth and Bristol, certainly preceded William's departure and may

have been a factor in his decision to emigrate. Disatisfaction with working and living conditions

could have been other factors, and concern for his children's future. Or was he [ured by the

Australian dream of egaiitarianism and fair shares for all? William was a bit of a radical,

remember, and a socialist, a discontented, energetic man. He was not as destitute, as debased,

as the thousands of city dwellers who laboured and lived in all but intolerable conditions merely

to keep body and soul together. He would have questioned such an existence, sought remedies,

and being literate would have read for himself about emigration and the means of escape. For

such as he, life in industrialised England held little promise. The promised land that the papers,

returning sailors and settlers had told him about for many years - as had probably male relatives,

neighbours and friends - lay elsewhere, far away. Better to live elsewhere, to seek better wages,

better working and living conditions, and a fairer life for his children, without want and misery

and hunger and despair, and blessed with hope.

He must have had his reasons and they were probably very personal ones. For England at the

mid-century - hard as life was for most - was passing through a period of comparative stability.

According to Lytton Strachey: The Victorian age was in full swing... The last vestige of the

eighteenth century had disappeared... and duty, industry, morality and domesticity triumphed.'

These were epitomised by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. She was 30 in 1849 and had

already given birth to six children; her husband was planning his monument to his ideals of

peace, prosperity and to progress most of all - the Great Exhibition, which the Queen would

open in Hyde Park in London in May 1851. The Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, a Whig,

would be succeeded by Lord Paimerston and Gladstone. Known as Liberals, they would

govern the nation for most of the next 50 years.

None of that would William the stonemason see, nor did he probably care for such things. He

was middle-aged and ageing; his four older children had already left the family - although two of

them, Richard and Jane, would follow htm overseas.

At some point towards the end of 1849 William must have made his momentous decision to

emigrate. He signed the forms and paid the fares of a passage to Australia for six - for himself

and his wife and his four youngest children, Henry, Elizabeth, Martha and John. That Christmas

was the last they would spend together in England.

In February, 1850, not long after William's 53rd birthday, they packed their bags and boxes,

taking what few possessions they could and were advised to take. They said their farewells, and

faced the prospect ahead of them of a fearful voyage to the other end of the world.

5. Mereweather and the Lady McNaqhten

They sailed from Plymouth on 24 February, 1850 on the 653 ton barque, the Lady

McNaghten, commanded by Captain Hibbert

The ship was not very large, and it was not a good month to go to sea, as the northern

hemisphere's worst winter months (January, February and March) led straight into the increasing

autumnal coid and gales of the southern hemisphere. The Honeycombes reached Port Phillip in

June, thus exchanging one winter for another.

There was of course no other way to get there, and the thousands who followed the First Fleet

to Australia were united by a common bond, whatever their ciass: they were all fellow-sufferers

of the lengthy journey by sea. Not a few swore never to entrust themselves to a ship again, so

awful was that experience. But nonetheless it played a part in melding them into a nation: they

had survived the voyage and all that this entailed, and this gave them an initial awareness of what

it meant to be an Australian - getting there made you one.

!t also can be claimed that the close circumstances of living together and eating together on the

cruei sea taught every passenger enduring lessons of consideration for others, of self-help and

group effort, which were affirmed later by their pioneering existence on the often inimical land.

The arrivals also had a common aim: for all those who travelled voluntarily were seeking a

better, fairer life, and were resolute enough to make their resolve a reality.

So a sea voyage was the emigrants' shared beginning, and remained so for nearly 150 years.

Passenger plane flights from London to Sydney via Singapore did not begin until 1S34. But

those plywood and fabric biplanes could carry no more than ten passengers. The flying-boats

that replaced them in 1938 carried 15, and those flights took five or six days. But this was

nothing to the four or five months taken by the smaller saiiing-ships a hundred years earlier,

transporting their tetchy human cargos halfway around the world.

Life on board a mid-nineteenth century emigrant ship subjected every passenger, whether

cabinned in the poop or confined below deck, to shared and unplumbed depths of misery,

sickness and fear.

On the other hand, some of those in steerage, who were inured to hardship and poverty on

shore, found the regulated life and regular food an actual improvement on their lot on land; and

those with open minds and imaginations found themselves strangely exhilarated by the sea's

power and mystery. Very few passengers on a ship, perhaps none, had ever been at sea before

- although a few might have enjoyed an outing on a paddle-steamer on a river or along the

coast. Some from land-iocked villages or city slums had never even seen the sea.

It was very much a journey for all on board through space as well as time. The ship itself, would

become, as William Golding portrayed it in his trilogy about

a Victorian warship, 'the whole imaginable world... an astonishment-., this extraordinary hamlet

or village built a thousand miles from anywhere'.

Before William Honeycombe and his family embarked, they may have had to find

accommodation in an inn or lodging-house for a night or two - unless they were already resident

in Plymouth.

Steerage passengers were generally accommodated in large crudely furnished warehouses,

where everyone ate and slept. Known as depots, they were smelly and unhygienic, and many

emigrants were infected by the diseases transmitted by previous occupants of toilet, bed or

bench.

But the inevitable lack of privacy forewarned steerage passengers to some extent of what lay

ahead.

No such preparation probably availed the Honeycombes, who must have been somewhat

disturbed if not appalled when they saw the insubstantial, undistinguished Lady McNaghten at

anchor and their cramped dark quarters therein.

What they saw was a dumpy, bulky, wooden three-masted barque, with a square stern and a

rounded bow, about 108 feet iong.

What they actually saw within the ship, and where they would live while at sea, has been

described for us by another passenger, who voyaged with the Honeycombes from Plymouth to

Port Phillip, on both the Lady McNaghten and the Sea Queen.

We are fortunate in that a diary of that voyage was not only kept but published a few years

later, by Hatchards in London. Entitled Life on Board an Emigrant Ship: being a Diary of a

Voyage to Australia, it was written by the Rev John Davies Mereweather, MA.

He was rather a pretentious person, who obviously took himself and his calling very seriouly

indeed, his affectations extending to the spelling of his surname, which would have been

pronounced 'Merryweather'. Born about 1817, in the parish of St James in Bristol, he was the

son of John Mereweather, gentleman. His university education was pursued at St Edmund Hall,

Oxford, where he obtained a BA degree in 1843 and was ordained the same year, when he

was 26. Presumably he was then employed as a curate or vicar in the London area, as he

emigrated from Gravesend. In 1850 he would have been 33 and was unmarried.

The Rev Mereweather boarded the Lady McNaghterat Gravesend, where the ship's voyage

had in fact commenced. She would have been anchored off the southern and Kentish shore of

the River Thames. Mereweather, a cabin passenger, went on board on Wednesday, 30

January, 1850, and after 'attending to some necessary arrangements' in his cabin, set about

making his presence felt. He went below and addressed the emigrants, prevailing on them to

gather together and hear what he had to say.

There are about 50 passengers on board', he wrote, 'of diverse callings and diverse character.

As to religion, all creeds seemed represented in this little community. We have on board

members of the Anglican Church, members of

the Roman Church, Presbyterians, Baptists, Cafvanistic Methodists, and Independents. One or

two profess to belong to a fanatical sect called the Church of New Jerusalem, while some are

students of Tom Paine's theology, and are bigoted believers in unbelief. To this mingfed

assembly I addressed a few words. I told them that it was necessary at ali seasons to hold

communion with God by means of earnest and diligent prayer; but that it more particularly

behoved us to do so, who were about to commit ourselves to ail the dangers of the perilous

deep during a long and trying voyage. That, consequently, it was my intention, unless the

arrangement should be strenuously opposed by a majority, to offer up with them every evening

during the voyage, prayers to "the eternal Lord God, who alone spreadeth out the heavens, and

ruleth the raging of the sea." That, although ! was not an appointed chaplain to the ship, I yet

considered it my bounden duty as a priest of Christ's Church, to "sow unto them spiritual

things," and , therefore, all, of whatever creed, were at full liberty to avail themselves of my

services as a clergyman of the Church of England.

'In reply, they thanked me very cordially for my offer; they were as sensible as I could be of the

hallowing effect of common prayer on the proceedings of the 24 hours; they ought now more

particularly to be prepared to meet their God; although our creeds were different (the chief

spokesman was a Wesleyan) yet our danger was common; they considered it a great privilege

to have a clergyman on board; and he finished by saying that it was their unanimous wish to

have evening prayer as long as the voyage should last.'

'On that evening then, whiist we lay at Gravesend, i went down into the after steerage at eight

o'clock, and having read a chapter in the Bible, offered up a set prayer (the prayers i used were

those most excellent ones composed by the Bishop of London,) and this practice I continued

until we arrived at Adelaide, unless let or hindered by very heavy weather, or by great rolling of

the ship.'

The Rev Mereweather writes nothing of the human scene, of the actual departure from

Gravesend. He merely notes, on 1 February: 'Weighed anchor at Gravesend at 1.0 pm, and

cast anchor at 6.0 pm at the Nore' - a North Sea sandbank at the mouth of the Thames marked

by a lightship and several buoys.

But a vivid picture is painted by Charles Dickens, in David Copperfield's farewell visit to the

Micawbers on their emigrant ship, also anchored off Gravesend.

'Among the great beams, bulks and ringbolts of the ship, and the emigrant-berths, and chests,

and bundles, and barrels, and heaps of miscellaneous baggage - lighted up, here and there, by

dangling lanterns, and elsewhere by the yellow daylight straying down a wing-sail or a hatchway

- were crowded groups of people... talking, laughing, crying, eating and drinking; some, already

settled down into the possession of their four feet of space with their little households arranged,

and tiny children established on stools; others despairing of a resting-place and wandering

disconsolately.'

After saying goodbye to the Micawbers, David Copperfieid was rowed away, like other

visitors, from the motionless ship.

'We... lay at a little distance to see the ship wafted on her course. It was then calm, radiant

sunset. She lay between us and the red light; and every taper, line and spar was visible against

the glow. A sight at once so beautiful, so

mournful, and so hopeful, as the glorious ship lying still on the flushed water, with all the life on

board her crowded at the bulwarks and there clustering for a moment bare-headed and silent, 1

never saw. Silent only for a moment. As the sails rose to the wind and the ship began to move,

there broke from all the boats three resounding cheers, which were echoed and re-echoed. My

heart burst out when I heard the sound, and beheld the waving of hats and handkerchiefs.'

Before the Lady McNaghten left Gravesend the secretary of a religious society came on board

to sell some bibles. He also provided Mereweather with 27 copies of Family Prayers and 14

copies of selected Homilies. The Captain's wife, Mrs Hibbert, was the last to embark. Of her,

Mereweather wrote: 'Although this lady, during the voyage, took little opportunity of making

herself useful to the emigrants, and in fact regarded them in the same light as her husband - that

is, as so many live animals which he had stipulated to land in a certain locality; yet I am

convinced that the presence of a captain's wife is absolutely indispensable aboard an emigrant

ship. She not only acts as a direct check on the husband, but she acts as an indirect check on

the officers of the ship, and particularly on any viciously disposed females who may be on

board.'

Mereweather was seasick, for the first and last time, on 2 February. Then on Sunday, 3

February, the ship moved off but soon anchored 'in glorious sunshine' off Margate, favourable

winds and tides being awaited before the ship could round the North Foreland and sail westerly

down the Channel and along the coast of southern England. Weather conditions were adverse,

however, and after an abortive sortie on 4 February the ship backtracked and anchored off

Deal, where for three days, from 5 to 7 February, the ship rode out a northwesterly gaie.

The howling of the wind through the cordage of the ship was unceasing,' wrote Mereweather, '

and most distressing to the ear... Above the roaring and whistling and howling of the wind I

could hear the sound of the sea breaking over the renowned Goodwin Sands, which were right

to leeward of us.'

By Sunday, 10 February, the ship was still detained by contrary winds, and the Rev

Mereweather held a service below the main deck - 'I first read the Psalms, then the two

Lessons, then the Communion Service, including a sermon... The people behaved most

admirably and responded most heartily. The First and Second Mate attended, but neither the

Captain or his wife came down.'

At last, on Tuesday, 12 February - two weeks after the passengers had embarked at

Gravesend - the wind changed. The ship weighed anchor and set sail.

The emigrants', wrote Mereweather, ' who were quite dispirited at laying at anchor on a

dangerous coast so many days in sight of their native country, are overjoyed to see the canvas

spread. I opened a school on board for the first time. A young woman, one of the passengers,

has goodnaturedly offered to superintend it. About ten children attended. Our arrangements will

not, however, be completed until the rest of the passengers come on board at Plymouth.'

Among those passengers wouid be the Honeycombe family, whose own departure, from

Plymouth, must have been much delayed by the tardy appearance of the Lady McNaghter. The

ship, after all, had officially left

Gravesend on 1 February. One imagines the Honeycombes, having prepared and packed and

said most of their goodbyes, would be casting anxious eyes at the weather and perusing the

shipping news, while lodged in some unfamiliar, temporary biilet. When would their ship be in?

In fact it took the Lady McNaghten eight days to sail down the Channel and along the English

coast, driven hither and thither by continuous contrary winds.

At last, on the evening of 20 February, a pilot came on board, dad in voluminous black and

yellow oiiskins, thick jackboots and a face-conceaiing sou'wester hat. Then at dawn on

Thursday, 21 February, the ship sailed around the Breakwater and into the safe harbour of

Plymouth Sound. There she anchored, presumably among many other ships off Plymouth Hoe.

The poor people on board,' wrote Mereweather, 'some of them half-starved from sea-sickness

during their 19 days of beating down the Channel, were overjoyed to see the glorious sun

lighting with its first rays the fine harbour of Plymouth. Tempest tossed as i had been, I thoughl I

had never seen anything half so beautiful.'

He exhorted the passengers 'not to commit any excess' when they were allowed ashore to

purchase provisions and personal comforts, and to taste English ale and walk on English soil for

the iast time. 'They made many fair promises,'Mereweather wrote. 'But alas! These promises

were soon to be broken.'

indeed, one of the emigrants, having drunkenly assaulted the police, had to be redeemed from

the Town Hall by Mereweather, who obtained the man's release from the Mayor himself. And

the night before the ship departed, he noted that many returned 'in a most disgusting state of

drunkenness - many of them highly professing Christians.' The only consolation was that no

Anglicans were among them.

He also noted, on Saturday, 23 February: There are numbers of fresh passengers pouring into

the ship.'

Among them were the six Honeycombes - William, Elizabeth, Henry, Elizabeth, Martha and

John - leaving England and leaving Plymouth, and none of them would ever see England again.

Who saw them off? Who embraced them and bid them farewell? Perhaps some of Elizabeth

Honeycombe's relatives, some of the Fumeauxs, watched the family be ferried in longboats from

the shore to the ship and waved goodbye from Plymouth Hoe. Perhaps William's older children,

Richard and Jane, even William Robert, travelled to Plymouth from wherever they were to see

their parents, their younger brothers and sisters, for what might be the last time.

Perhaps William the sawyer or his son William watched the departure -even Samuel

Honeycombe, my ancestor, whose life would alter dramatically when he also left Plymouth and

went to sea.

As the sun rose on the Sunday morning the Lady McNaghten raised anchor, lowered some sails

and turned towards the entrance to Plymouth Sound, turning her back on England and the cold,

grey fields and leafless woods of the Devon shore.

if as ftfereweather says there were about 50 passengers on board the Lady McNaghten when

she left Gravesend, then about 63 must have embarked at Plymouth. The total complement of

passengers when the ship sailed from Plymouth was 115 - excluding the Captain's wife, Mrs

Hibbert, and the ship's surgeon, Mr Taylor. The crew would have numbered about 15.

33 passengers were bound for Adelaide; the rest, including the Honeycombes, would travel on

to Port Phillip, on another ship,

As the Honeycombes were Ifsted as being intermediate passengers on the Sea Queen, it seems

probable they aiso travelled as such on the Lady McNaghten. This meant they were a cut above

steerage, paid more than steerage passengers, and were accommodated in an enclosed space

or cabin below the main deck, but still among those in steerage. They probably travelled

together as a family as a result, and were guaranteed some measure of privacy. Occassionally,

on big ships, intermediate passengers were accommodated in rough cabins or huts on the main

deck itself.

Those who paid for the voyage would not have thought of themselves, or wished to be

described, as 'emigrants'. This label was disparagingly bestowed on those who were 'assisted'

and didn't pay. Assisted passengers would have travelled as part of a financially assisted group

or package, or free it sponsored by the government or by some commercial, religious or

philanthropic organisation.

The cabin passengers on the Lady McNaghten were three single men: the Rev J D

Mereweather, Mr Rogers and Mr Wildman. Along with Mrs Hibbert and the surgeon, Mr

Taylor, they would have dined and socialised with the Captain and his officers, their tiny,

cramped windowed cabins surrounding a living and dining area or saloon under the poop deck

{the raised top deck at the stern). A special kitchen-pantry and toilets would have been

provided for the cabin passengers and officers, and each cabin would have had a bunk, or two-

tier bunks, six feet long and three feet wide, with shelves, hooks for clothing, a storage space

under the bunk(s), a wash-basin, bucket, folding-table and perhaps a collapsible canvas chair.

Single men in steerage - and there were 33 on the Lady McNaghten -were usually lodged under

the sailors1 quarters in the prow of the ship, the fo'castle: they might have single bunks, six feet

by two, or hammocks. Single women - and there seems to have been just one on this voyage

(Harriet Hill) -were lodged as far away as possible from the single men, at the other end of the

ship, at the stern. They would usually share a bunk. Boys and girls aged 14 and over would

usualfy be accommodated with the single men or women. Married coulples in steerage shared

their sleeping quarters (like open hutches arranged along both sides of the ship and facing

inwards, with two-tier bunks six feet square) with other married couples or with thefr children,

who usually occupied the upper bunk, sometimes four in a bunk, depending on their age or sex.

Very

young children and babies - and there were 32 pre-teenage children on board -would sleep

with their parents. These sleeping boxes were divided from one another by planks. Between

them, in the centre of the deck, were !ong tables and benches, aligned fore and aft.

The headroom beiow the main deck would have been at most six feet four inches, usually less.

Only when the hatches were open was there any appreciable iight or fresh air. Lanterns were

few and padlocked to avoid any misuse, and any risk of fire. Candles were allowed in cabins

but nowhere else.

The Rev Mereweather has provided us with a description of the actual accommodation

arrangements for steerage passengers on the Lady McNaghten.

'A rather confined space in the bows of the vessel under the forecastle is appropriated to the

unmarried men. The berths are two deep, and about thirty of these have been put up

athwartship with every regard to economy of space. As the scuttles (port holes) are blocked up

by the berths and baggage, the whole compartment has a most lugubrious and dungeon-iike

aspect. This place is entered by the fore hatch. The middle part of the ship, that entered by the

main hatch, is entirely taken up by the cargo. The whole after part of the vessel, that part, I

mean, which is entered by the after hatch and extends under the cabins (we had a poop deck)

right to the stern, is appropriated to the married steerage passengers, with the exception of one

enclosed cabin given to two or three unmarried men, an arrangement which is very inexcusable

on the part of the charterers of the ship, inasmuch as the constant presence at night-time of wild

reckless young men among familes of boys and girls, tends to produce irregularities and

indiscretions, and in fact did eventually produce them. Around this large saloon were fitted up

open berths athwartship, two deep, for about 60 persons; also six enclosed cabins, the berths in

which were arranged along-ship. All in this saloon are steerage passengers, and have the same

allowance of victualling; but those who have enclosed cabins pay more for them than they would

for open ones. The nominal price of steerage passengers is £15 a head for each adult, provided

he has an open berth; an enclosed cabin will cost two people about £40.'

William Honeycombe and his family, who paid about £150 in all, must, as intermediate

passengers, have occupied one of these enclosed cabins in steerage, its two bunks would have

contained all six: the four children in one and the parents in another; alternatively, William may

have slept with his two sons, and Elizabeth with her daughters. Being small persons, the six foot

square bunks, narrow space and low ceiiing, would not have troubled them unduly. Henry was

of an age, nearly 16, to bed down with the single men. But the fact that his name does not

appear in the lists of single men, suggests that he lodged with his family. It seems he may also

have been a sickly child.

Once below deck the Honeycombes would have stowed such hand luggage they were

permitted to bring on board. Their boxes and heavy luggage wouid be stored in the hold, along

with any change of clothes, to which no access would be allowed for at least a month. Having

identified their quarters and the nearest water-closet (separate ones for men and women, and

each with a chute to the sea and a seat-flap), they would have contained their doubts and deep

gloom and commiserated or joked with their neighbours. Some of the women

and girls would have doubtless wept at what they saw and at what they were leaving behind.

But the children would be seized with excitement, as much as the younger men. They were on a

ship, and going to sea; it was a great adventure at least to them.

First-class or cabin passengers were the last to go on board. But even they, amongst the bustle,

confusion and noise that attended every embarkation, had to shift for themselves as the Captain

and crew made the ship ready for the voyage, while awaiting the pilot, the tugs, and the tide.

Two emigrants who embarked from a quay at Liverpool in the 1850s described their

impressions of this scene.

Charles Scott wrote: 'Families walking behind each other up the plank into the ship loaded with

their bags containing their months Change of Linean and Cook-Utensils - like Noah and his

Family going into the Ark... Turn your eyes around the quay and you see Buckets, Tubs,

Barrels, and such like placed in ample order for the Ships use, then before those stood a great

Mountain of luggage belonging to the Passengers such as Boxes from the Hat Box up to the

large packing Box.'

Robert Corkhili; 'What with the singing of sailors, the swearing of Officers, the complaining of

passengers... this ship sounded like the Original Babel.'

Animals were often carried on board as a fresh supplement to the basic menu of salted beef and

pork, potatoes, biscuits, rice and peas. Chickens, ducks, sheep, pigs and even cows were

boxed in and penned on the main deck, mainly for the consumption of cabin passengers and

officers. Large ships might carry as many as three cows, 50 pigs, 90 sheep and 300 assorted

chickens, ducks and geese. A disagreeable odour would accompany them across the world.

The ship's galley, partly enclosed, was also on the main deck and big ships might include a

butcher - as well as a doctor, and a matron to supervise the single women. Some of the crew on

big ships might make a pet of a pig, calling it Dennis. One or two perhaps had pets of their own:

a monkey, a parrot, a dog. Cats as well as dogs were sometimes brought on board by

passengers. Even a favourite horse or workhorse might find a place on deck.

Although Mereweather mentions no animals being on board the Lady McNaghten, this does not

mean they were not there.

All the clutter of livestock, stores, an outdoor toilet, sail lockers, ropes, galley and sailing gear

left little space for promenading or for the rowing-boats that served as life-boats, some of which

were put to use as shelters, pens or receptacles. No ship ever had sufficient for the numbers on

board. There was little if any life-boat drill. During a storm the deck hatches were battened

down, and in a shipwreck those below had not much chance of survival. Those who worked on

deck or slept in the fo'castle, like the seamen, or in the poop, like the officers and cabin

passengers, were the likeliest to survive. There was an unwritten rule that if lifeboats were

launched, cabin (or cuddy) passengers had priority. After a gale, one captain reassured a female

cabin passenger: 'If ever we are compelled to take to the boats... the emigrants (in steerage)

must stay behind.'

Some of the big clippers of the 1850s and 60s carried over 700 passengers and a crew of 150.

The total number of persons on the Great Britain on her first trip to Australia in 1852 was 737.

On the Marco Polo the same year it was over 1,000 - 888 were passengers, of whom 53 died

of various illnesses and diseases during the voyage. Compared with these giants, the Lady

McNaghten, with her 122 passengers and crew, was a very small ship indeed.

Nor would her departure have been accompanied by the music of brass bands, the waving of

flags, the firing of guns, by cheers from attendant and smaller craft. These were reserved for big

ships. But most passengers had the benefit of a visit from Methodist or other preachers, who

distributed tracts and prayer books and conducted farewell services, which reduced most of the

overwrought listeners to tears. Mournful psalms and hymns were sung against the discordant

sounds of the dock and departure, and rude sailors would up the volume of their shouting and

shanties to drown the hymns.

Fanny Davis left Liverpool on the Conway, steerage, in June 1857. Aged 27, she was on her

way to Melbourne, on her own, to join members of her family.

In her diary she wrote: We all march on board with a canvas bag on each arm and nothing is

allowed to go on board but what they wiil contain... Nearly all the single women sit down and

have a good cry the first thing, and I fee! very much inclined to join them... My berth is at the

bottom of the main hatchway [so] we shall be all right for air in the hot weather, besides the nice

light it gives. There are two persons in each berth. I have got a very nice agreeable companion

by the name of Miss Wellington, a native of Penzance in Cornwail. I am appointed captain of a

mess; that is to make all the things ready for cooking for eight people and to attend at the

storeroom when the stores are given out. In my mess I have of course myself and Miss

Wellington, two sisters likewise from Cornwall who are going out to be married, and one more

Cornish girf who is going out to be married to a man she has never seen...'

An American reporter wrote in 1855: 'Everything seems dreamlike to their senses - the hauling

of blocks and ropes, the cries of busy seamen as they heave round the capstan, the hoarse

orders of the officers, the strange bustle below and aloft, the rise and expansion of the huge

masses of canvas ... Here are women with swollen eyes... mothers seeking to hush their wailing

babes. In one place an aged woman, who has nearly reached the extreme term of life, sits

listless and sad.' Antoine Fauchery wrote in 1857 of 'Old white-headed men, smart ladies on

the shady side of forty, and above all many children. About ten of them have already slipped

between my legs, all between two and five.' Some mothers nursed babies; a few were pregnant;

others would become so during the voyage.

William Rayment left from London on the Himalaya in 1852. 'Everything is strange and I am

surrounded by strangers, the majority with very elongated countenances. Children... give vent to

their feelings in a game of marbles. Sailors are rushing about and passengers are rushing in their

way. Everyone is out of his place.'

The Lady McNaghten left Plymouth at dawn on Sunday, 24 February, 1850, passing around

the Breakwater and so out to sea, with the Eddystone lighthouse on her left.

The Rev Mereweather wrote in his diary: 'At daybreak we weighed anchor and sailed slowly

out of the harbour under a cloudless sky.'

William Rayment wrote: 'I waved my hand. I can safeiy say that I did not see the boat for

tears.' Edward Lloyd, who sailed from Liverpool wrote: 'My meditations were interrupted by a

person informing me that the pilot was about to leave us, and that if I had any message to send, i

would now have the opportunity. I hastily scribbled a few lines, and gave them to him: and once

his form had disappeared over the side, and the sound of oars from his boat died away in the

distance, I felt as if the last connecting link between me and the old country was severed. The

night was settling in, and adding an external gloom to the already sombre colour of my thoughts.

"You are at sea now," said a voice.'

The scene on the Lady McNaghten was described by the Rev Mereweather, and we may

imagine that among the on-deck passengers within his gaze were our Honeycombes.

He wrote: The ship is now swarming with her new denizens, who are all clustering round her

sides, casting farewell and lingering looks on the shores of England as they are gradually falling

back into the far horizon. Some of the women, I observed, were shedding tears as they

watched the old country sink into the sea behind them, others appeared thoughtful and serious:

but the men showed no more feeling than if they had been going on a pleasure excursion. For

my own part, although I was little affected at sailing away from the impenetrable fogs of

London, yet, now that I am sailing away from the beautiful coasts of Devonshire, under a

glorious morning's sun, on this tranquil Sabbath morning, I think with regret on my country that I

am leaving, perhaps for ever, and think that I never loved her half so well as I do now... The

confusion on board prevented me from having morning service. But at eight in the evening I had

the usual prayers, after which I addressed the newly arrived, and told them that it was my wish

to continue evening prayers up to the end of my voyage. I pointed out to them the infinite

blessings which attend the prayers of even two or three met together in Christ's name, and I

sincerely hoped that those who were averse to joining in this delightful communion, would not

be so discourteous (to use the mildest expression,) as to interrupt those who were anxious to

offer up the homage of their hearts to the God of tempests. I concluded this address with a

blessing. Afterwards, a party of the emigrants came round me and thanked me for my

determination. They also said that they would do all in their power to second my efforts in every

way during the voyage. Thus ends what may be termed the first day of the voyage.'

William Honeycombe, aged 53, was probably not among that approving little group of

emigrants. Given what we know of his character he is not likely to have been a religious or

God-fearing man - although his wife was apparently a Wesleyan. I see him, as the ship moves

southwestwards along the shadowed coast, standing by a bulwark, his family below, musing on

the past, hoping that the ship will safely reach her destination and, like Micawber, that something

will

turn up. For he could not have had the slightest notion of what might happen in that other world

a world away. Nor of what would happen. Nor that what he and his family were doing was life-

changing, historic.

Most probably, as it was cold on deck, he just spat over the side and went

below.

7. Atlantic Vovage

Fanny Davis, on the Conway, suffered as early as her second night at sea. She wrote: 'We went

to bed expecting to have a good night's rest, but about twelve o'clock we were awake with

heavy peals of thunder and the lightning was very dreadful; they did not shut down the hatches

as i had heard they did in bad weather. The wind rose very high and now began our troubles -

the ship rolled and creaked and every mentionabie article in the shape of water kegs, cans,

teapots, buckets, with innumerable other things all pitched off the shelves and the tables onto the

other side of the ship and then in a minute after the ship would roll over to the other side and all

our things come back joined by all the articles from the other side of the ship with the most

horrid noise as most of them were made of tin. We had to hold on to the sides of our berths to

keep from joining the other articles on the floor. The people were all very frightened and when

we shipped a heavy sea they all began to shriek that we were sinking... in the morning the

people are nearly all seasick.'

Two days later - 'Some of the people are nearly dead with the seasickness, they retch so

violently and with little intermission.' Fanny Davis was also ill but was able to crawl out of bed to

get a cup of tea.

On the third day - 'All are still very ill and the sailors are obliged to come down with buckets of

water and mops and clean our apartment up, as there is no one able to do the least thing but lay

in bed and groan.'

A day later - 'Last night was the worst. The wind rose to a perfect hurricane; they fastened

down the hatches but that did not prevent the water making its way down to us and, to make

the matter worse, the ship began to leak in under the bottom berths... and the waves washed

over deck the whole night. All at once there arose a cry that we were sinking and, of course,

that added to the general confusion and many were on their knees praying who had perhaps

never thought on the name of God before.'

By then, Fanny Davis was neither seasick nor frightened ('I don't know how it was'), but some

were ill for over a week. At the height of the storm a young sailor was swept overboard - 'It is

so dreadful to think he cried out three times for the lifebuoy to be thrown out to him' - and

disappeared.

Four days later, on a Sunday morning, one of the married women gave birth to a baby boy -

'He is to be called "Conway" after the ship. They were all in high glee as they said it brings good

luck and a fair wind.'

And indeed the wind changed that evening, and two weeks after the ship left Liverpool she

wrote: 'A very fine day... Everybody seems happy... The days pass so fast and pleasantly it is

like a dream.'

A death, a birth, fear of dying, depression, exhaustion and nausea - all within two weeks, among

strangers in confined dark spaces, and unaccustomed to a ship at sea. No wonder the voyage

out changed people's perceptions, even their characters, as it would change their lives. Even

when there was no storm, the motion of the ship, its odd strong odours, prostrated the

passengers.

Samuel Shaw, in 1852: 'In less than two hours after sailing there was scarcely a one but was

sick and lying about the deck helpless.' The next day -'There is still no difference in the state of

the sick, I believe they are worse than ever as they are lying in their beds heaving up and the

smell is very bad.'

Seasick, cold, miserable and homesick - such was the lot of every passenger; and in their

solitary suffering they had the time to dwell on the immensity of what they were doing and where

they were.

Edward Lloyd, in 1846: The sea was rolling the ship from side to side in impotent spite; the tall

masts describing segments of circles in the clouds, and the giant sails flapping loudiy against the

masts. For the first time... I seemed fully to comprehend my position, and the undertaking in

which I had embarked... A sort of incredulousness pervades the mind.' And later - 'Heavy and

fitful are my slumbers; old and accustomed faces crowding round me, bidding goodbye and

melting again, in a strange jumble of times and places and occasions.'

The start of the Lady McNaghten's voyage was not too dreadful, although, being February, it

must have been very cold. The Rev JD Mereweather records that during the first night at sea the

ship passed the Lizard, the southernmost point of Cornwall and the English mainland. They

would then have swung southwards and into the unusually pacific Atlantic. He noted on 25

February there was 'a very great calm'.

He wrote: The ship passes lazily through the waves, almost without motion. Afi the emigrants

are on deck. The men are in groups, some boxing with gloves; others fencing with foils; others

playing at single stick. The women are sitting on the spars chatting, sowing or knitting. Some

poor creatures are sick already. There are on board 110 to 120 emigrants, including children;

and the appearance of a great many of them is far superior to what I could have anticipated. I

am quite astonished to find so many well dressed respectabie looking people as steerage

passengers in an emigrant ship.

'26 February: A fine day. Wind blowing fresh from the SSW. We are now about halfway

between Scilly and Ushant. More sea, and many sick, especially the newcomers. The surgeon

has discovered that some of the children have ringworm, and that others are covered with

vermin. He has given orders to the parents that the hair of those affected should be cut off, a

proceeding to which the parents object, alleging that the appearance of the children will be

spoiled; he, however, in inexorable.

'1 March: A wet day with baffling winds. Saw several jelly-fish floating on the surface of the

water. An old woman, a Methodist, amid other lamentations, complained that no prayer

meetings were held on board. Some one replied to her: "Why, how can you say that? Does not

the minister read prayers every evening?" "Oh, I know that," she said. "But them be only

parson's prayers."'

On Sunday, 3 March, a gale from the northeast speeded the advance of the three-masted

barque.

'Our bulky, siow sailing-ship is actually going through the water at the rate of nine knots. The

dead-lights were closed on account of the heavy sea, which rendered out cabins dark and

disagreeable. Could have no prayers. At ten pm

there was an alarm of fire from below. The steward, who is a dirty drunken person, had fallen

asleep in his berth with a lighted pipe in his mouth. The burning tobacco had fallen on his

counterpane, and set the bedclothes on fire. Luckily the smeil of fire had alarmed the inmates of

the adjoining cabin: they rushed to the steward's assistance, and drew him from the danger,

stupified with terror and intoxication. By God's superintending providence the fire was soon

extinguished.'

The cabin (or cuddy) steward served the cabin passengers. The incident would have served as

a scary reminder as to how vulnerable all on board a wooden ship were and would have

probably enforced fire-safety awareness and precautions.

Meanwhile, gale-force winds continued for two more days, and the ship bucked and banged on

its course. Some were bruised and injured, as was Mereweather himself. '! was thrown by the

violence of the motion from one side of my cabin to the other, and severely cut and bruised. At

dinner we were obliged to iay hold of the cuddy table with one hand, whilst we fed ourselves

with the other. Had a dish of roast meat hurled into my lap.

'6 March: The gale has subsided, and the sea is going down fast. The children being no longer

sea-sick, I resumed my school today for the first time after leaving Plymouth. About 18 children

attended. The forenoon (from ten to twelve) is taken up by spelling, reading the Bible, and

learning the Church Catechism; the afternoon (from two to four) by needlework for the girls. I,

myself, instruct two of the eldest boys. As I am the whole and sole promoter of the school, I

only assert a right when I require that ail the children, of whatever denomination they may be,

shall subject themselves to my course of religious instruction. The parents make no objection to

this arrangement, although the majority of the children are born of Dissenting parents. The

school is opened in the morning by the children singing the morning hymn; and is closed with the

evening hymn. Of course, if the sailors are busy where the children are, the singing does not take

place. I always endeavour to be present at these hymns, because I can assist the children, and

because my presence is a check on any jocularity among the bystanders, should the little things,

as they often do, sing out of tune. But I would here record my great satisfaction at the entire

sympathy which is shown by all the married persons for my undertakings.'

One wonders whether Henry Honeycombe was one of the older boys to whom Mereweather

refers, and whether the four Honeycombe children, baptised as Anglicans, attended the school.

As not all the children on board were involved (18 out of 34), and as William Honeycombe was

probably a free-thinker if not an atheist, it seems likely that his children were not thus employed

during the day, although it would certainly have occupied their time and allowed their parents

some time to themselves. But perhaps the two youngest, Martha and John, were allowed to

attend Mereweather's school and the afternoon sewing sessions.

The school, newly resumed, was abandoned, however, the following day.

Mereweather wrote of 7 March: 'At six this morning, a little boy, five years old, a delicate child

of whom we had no hopes, was found dead in his berth. At noon, which is the usual hour of

buria! at sea, the body having been sown up in canvas together with a large shot, was brought

on deck by two sailors in a

handbarrow, over which was thrown the union jack. When it was taken to the lee gangway, 1

began the sublime service, surrounded by the Captain and officers and most of the emigrants -

all, of course, bareheaded. As soon as I pronounced the words "We, therefore, commit his

body to the deep, to be turned into corruption," the flag was gently and reverentially lifted from

the bier, and the corpse allowed to slide into the ocean. There were no games on deck, or

frolicking about today.'

This sad little boy was the younger son of Jacob Kernot, who was apparently travelling to

Australia without a wife. Someone like Eliza Vivian, perhaps, a cousin or sister, might have been

travelling with him. She also had two children. It would not be the ship's last burial at sea.

The following day was 'a very glorious warm day.' It was 65° fahrenheit in the shade; white

clouds floated in the azure sky. The Portuguese island of Madeira was sighted on the port side

of the ship, about 20 miles away. A few whales swam lazily by the ship, their size and spouting

attracting the admiration of the passengers.

The Lady McNaghten was now two weeks out from Plymouth, by which time a kind of

normality, and shipboard routines, wouid have been well established. It seems she was roughly

following the Great Circle route, leaving Madeira, and then the Canary Islands, well to the east

and making for the mid-Atlantic - although Great Circle sailing was not fully tested until that year

(1850), when the Constance, thus sailing, reached Adelaide in 77 days.

John Fenwick, on the Lightning, a clipper, wrote in 1854: 'Daily life on board begins about 5.0

am and sometimes sooner.' Mereweather never mentions any details of daily routines, nor even

any item about the other cabin passengers or about living and dining with them. His diary entries

are generally rather sparse. But shipboard routines must have been similar, depending on the

weather and the size of the ship.

Decks were swabbed, or washed, first thing, and if it was calm enough, male passengers came

up from below with wash-basins and pails to shave and wash as best they could on deck and

get some air. Modesty prevented women from doing so; and some, especially in steerage, never

washed their hair or bodies or changed their clothes for more than a month.

Those who had cabins performed their ablutions therein, with difficulty and one at a time. Sea-

soap was used when private supplies gave out and a salt-water sponge bath. Water was for

drinking, boiled, as it tended to become contaminated. When it rained, steerage passengers

rushed out on deck to gather what they could from sails and in buckets to drink, and with which

to wash themselves, their clothes and pots and pans.

John Fenwick: 'From six until after eight there is a goodly number [of men] washing themselves

on both sides of the deck house. The fires in the galley being lighted before five, many messes

are busy making stirabout or hemty pudding from six till seven... At half past seven the chiefs of

each mess go with every variety of tin pail and pan to receive their quantity of boiled coffee.'

Intermediate and steerage passengers ate at the central dintng-tables between their cabins in

shifts from half past seven, being served tea or coffee

and biscuits, gruei and perhaps some ham and aggs. Cabin passengers had more lavish fare and

more choice. But for all, dinner was generally about half past twelve and tea at four or six. Ale,

wine, port or brandy, which had to be paid for, could be drunk at both these meals. Duties, like

cooking and cleaning, were shared by the women and married men of each mess; single men

were bad at both.

On the Lady McNaghten there was an unusually !arge number of single men: bachelors and

married men travelling on their own. Apart from the Rev Mereweather, Mr Rogers and Mr

Wildman in cabins under the poop deck, under the main deck were William Craddock, Fred

Nicholl, John Bowden, Thomas Emver, John Ashurst, Robert McKinley, Henry Ridgeweil,

Hatton Strafford, Frank Bickers, William Stephen, Alex Slone, Alex McClean, Frederick

Keogh, George Robertson, Humphrey Short, William Tyne, John McVicker and Jacob Kernot,

with now only his older son. There were also W Andrews, T Carting, T Rawe, JT Atkinson, W

Gray, W Millard, WJ Phillips, E Simmons, F Barnby, L Mock, and A Vellacott. In addition

there were the teenage sons of four families on the ship: Henry Honeycombe, Richard Silver,

William Brimsmead and J Cadwallader. And a teenage daughter, Charlotte Silver. Alternatively,

Richard and Charlotte Silver may have been brother and sister of Alfred Silver and not his

children.

Harriet Hill and Eliza Vivian seem to have been the only women travelling on their own, though

they might well have been with cousins or a married sister. Eliza Vivian also had two children.

The married couples, with their children numbered, were: Benjamin Wray and wife (2); Alfred

Silver and wife (plus Richard and Charlotte perhaps); John Davis and wife (4); John Andrews

and wife; William Ball and wife; G Chapman and wife; W Dunn and wife; J White and wife;

Henry Baker and wife (1); W Cadwailader and wife (plus J Cadwallader, their son); R Tonkin

and wife (1); J Gee and wife (2); S Richardson, junior, and wife (2); W Honeycombe and wife

(4, including Henry Honeycombe); F Henshidge and wife (5); James Lawrence and wife (2);

and J Lawrence and wife (5). The Lawrences were obviously related and were probably

brothers.

The spelling of these names, and the initials and Christian names given, vary in each shipping list,

as do the total numbers of passengers on board. But there were always deaths, and births to

alter the numbers as well.

Three Honeycombe children had birthdays during the voyage: Elizabeth was 12 in February;

Henry 16 in March; Martha ten in May; John's eighth birthday was in Adelaide.

Shipping lists in the newspapers are not very precise or even accurate concerning the sex of

children, most merely write 'children'. The South Australian Register of Adelaide and the Argus

of Melbourne give the children of William Honeycombe and his wife as four 'boys' (Adelaide)

and four 'sons' (Melbourne). The non-identification of two of the four Honeycombe children as

'girls' may be due to the simple fact that the girls were dressed like boys and had short hair. We

know, from Mereweather, that the surgeon, Mr Taylor, had insisted on some children's hair

being cut off as they had ringworm (or lice). William Honeycombe may have seen this as a

sensible ploy, whether or not necessary, and a

strategem likely to render his daughters less attractive to the licentious men on board. To this

end, and because wide skirts were an inconvenience on ship, he may aiso have garbed them in

trousers.

Henry was probably a 'delicate' boy. A stonemason, like his father, he would die of Bright's

Disease (inflammation of the kidneys) when he was 24 - a complaint he could have suffered

from as an adolescent, before it became chronic or acute. Is it possible that his poor health was

a fact in determining the family's departure to a warmer dime?

Health and hygiene were always of some concern on passenger ships, especially the bigger

ones. So were some of the doctors. Not a few were inefficient, intemperate, insolent, immoral

and occasionally deranged. None of them was aware in those days how diseases like typhus,

cholera and TB were caused and spread. Such drugs that they had were mainly for the

treatment of diarrhoea, constipation, headaches, mental and physical debility, and for the relief

of coughs and colds, and pain. For the latter, only opium and morphine were used. There were

no cures, other than total cleanliness, for the body lice, fleas and cockroaches that infested

every ship. And the smells - of unwashed bodies, of human and animal excrement, of stinking

bilges and cargoes and rotting wood - must have been inescapable, especially below, where

there was little or no ventilation. Nonetheless, people were accustomed to the stinks and stench

of English towns and villages, which must have smelt like an Indian slum today.

This did not prevent some, however, from complaining loudly and disgustedly about other

passengers, especially those travelling steerage.

Those (men) who didn't or refused to wash were forcibly stripped and scrubbed by their more

sensitive neighbours. Many Irish and Scottish crofters and peasants in steerage, and some

English labourers, revolted the niceties, as well as the noses, of those cabin passengers in the

poop.

William Johnstone, in 1842: 'Our greatest annoyance is the emigrants' - ie, those in steerage on

assisted passages - 'A most awful set, about 20 respectable out of the whole number. Scenes

are daily occurring which... are yet most revolting... Fighting and swearing from morning to

night.' Thomas Murdoch, in 1854: 'We are at our wits' end on the subject of water closets...

The labouring classes are not in the habit of using that form of convenience, and they use it very

ill, and throw bones and all sorts of things down it. They are the greatest nuisance.' Jessie

Campbell, in 1840: 'Captain Grey and the doctor complaining woefully of the filth of Highland

emigrants. They say they would not have believed it possible for human beings to be so dirty in

their habits. Only fancy their using the dishes they have for food for certain other purposes at

night...'

But even cabin class persons could be at fault. William Thompson, a fastidious Scot, in 1854:

'As to the rest, it makes one like to spew to come in contact with them. The one called

Henderson (a woman) is a very bad specimen of vulgarity, slipshod and dirty in the extreme.'

Let us hope that the cabin passengers on the Lady McNaghten had not too much cause to

scorn those in intermediate and steerage; nor they, including the Honeycombes, to sniff, sneer

and scoff at each others' habits, characters and clothes.

Better weather, and open portholes, would have bfessed the Lady McNaghten as she pushed

on southwards, down the northwest coast of Africa, passing the Canary Islands to larboard.

By now, the passengers were more accustomed to the ceaseless sound and movement of the

ship: they would play cards and chess, read or converse, and welcome the chance to sing

hymns on a Sunday. Anglican and Wesleyan services were if possible, held separately, the latter

probably organised and led by the passengers themselves. The presence of a parson on board

ensured a proper and possibly interdenominational service, Such was no doubt provided on the

Lady McNaghten by the Rev Mereweather, dressed in his vestments, bible in hand.

John Fenwick: 'Divine service as usual. The day was beautifully fine, and the effect of the ship

dashing on through the clear blue waves - everything so bright and glorious - was far more

solemn and devotional than any of the artificial accessions got up in cathedral on shore.'

The shooting of sea-birds was a popular pastime - for those of the men who had pistols - and

the shooting or spearing of porpoises. These were cooked and eaten if they could be hauled on

board, as was the occasional shark. In the Southern Ocean even the albatross was caught, using

a baited trap towed astern to ensnare its beak. Sailors and male passengers joined forces in this,

none fearful of the consequences indicated in Coleridge's Ancient Manner, published a few

years after Waterloo. The albatross (its wing-span could be 11 feet) would be hauled on board

by two men, and killed and eaten by its captors. Trophies might be made of Its head and feet.

Let us return to John Mereweather's diary.

'Sunday, 10 March: In 28DN Latitude. As the sky was cloudless and the sea tranquil, I had

morning service on deck for the first time. A reading desk, covered with the union jack, was

rigged out for me on the poop, so that I faced the emigrants, who were sitting beneath me on

the deck. The Captain, officers, and crew sat behind me on the poop. Read the morning

prayers and preached a sermon. The litany was omitted. The service, altogether, lasted an hour.

Nearly al! the emigrants, excepting a few depraved young men, who sat on the forecastle

smoking, were present, and behaved with great decorum. Soon after service the emigrants

dined, and after dinner they sat in groups round the deck, some few conversing quietly, but most

reading books of a religious nature.

'14 March: At about six this morning we got into the trade winds, commonly called "the trades,"

which blow without cessation from the NE. They will take us to within five or ten degrees of the

line. A bird of the perroquet species dropped exhausted on the awning. It has come probably

from Ferral [?]. Ordered my boys to learn the church catechism perfectly by heart; also the two

Collects for Grace in the morning and evening prayer; the Collect for Peace, and the Collect for

Aid against all Perils; also the morning and evening hymn. This task they are to perform

gradually. They are already accustomed to say the collect on each Sunday; as also the Saints

Days' collects.

'15 March: In N Latitude 24". Thermometer 72° in the cuddy. The trade wind wafting us

steadily onward. Spoke seriously to a young man, a steerage passenger, on account of some

gross language which I heard him make use of last night. He expressed great contrition, and said

that before he left London he would have shuddered even to have heard such language; but that

constant communication with a vile set of young men on board the vessel had inured him to it...

Saw a petrel, a small, black or dark grey bird about the size of a thrush, skimming the waves

like a swallow. Saw also shoals of flying fish sparkling in the sun as they bounded into the air.

They cannot fly more than twice the length of the ship at a time: as soon as the moisture is dried

from the wings they fall into the sea. At night the sea round the ship seemed a mass of fire,

presenting a spectacle most wonderful to see. The cause of this phosphoric phenomenon does

not seem to be exactly known. Some attribute it to masses of animacules of the jelly-fish

species; others to decomposed animal and vegetable matter; whatever be the cause, the effect is

wondrous. We seemed floating over an abyss of liquid flame in never ceasing motion, whilst the

monsters of the deep, as they rushed past the ship, had the appearance of being garbed with

fire, and left behind them a brilliant and a sparkling light: "every track was a flash of golden fire."

'Sunday, 17 March: In about 16° N Latitude. The people assembled to divine service at eleven

am. Said the litany, and read a short sermon. The whole did not take up more than half an hour.

As the weather was hot, I did not wish to fatigue the people by keeping them too long. It is

better to pronounce the "ite, missa esf to a longing than a loathing congregation. Nearly all the

emigrants were present. Had service on the quarter-deck, and not on the poop.

'18 March: Remonstrated with a female emigrant, an unmarried person, on her flirting

propensities. She draws the young men round her towards evening, and converses with them till

ten or eleven o'clock, thereby causing indignation and jealousy on the part of the unmarried

women, angry disputes among the suitors, and angry remonstrances from the staid portion of the

community. She promised me to concentrate her attachments in the future.'

Perhaps this was Harriet Hill, or Charlotte Silver. Three weeks had now passed since the ship

left Plymouth and the passengers would have formed opinions about each other, as well as

some friendships; and the crew on whom they totally relied for food, drink, transport and safe

arrival, would have been individually identified as objects of curiosity, admiration, disgust and

even desire.

The noise they made at the ringing of every bell or command irritated some. Dr Workman, in

1884: 'Sailors surely make tenfold more noise in their work than any other men I know of; they

cannot haul at any rope without yelling at the top of their voices... (they) run tramping overhead

on the deck,., bellowing like a herd of bulls.'

Don Charlwood, in The Long Farewell (the best book about emigrant voyages to Australia)

writes of the sailors: 'They were a rough lot - intemperate, superstitious, illiterate, often violent,

yet, in their way, innocent and not without wonder at the vast world surrounding them. They

brought most of the hundreds of thousands of their charges safely through and received little in

return. When they failed to reach their destination, they and the emigrants shared the same

deep and common grave.' He adds: 'Even officers were an ill-educated uncouth lot.

Examinations for them were not introduced until 1845 - and then they were voluntary. They did

not become compulsory until 1851.' He quotes Charles Bateson: 'The officers... were hard-

drinking, hard-swearing and brutal... wholly unskilled in the higher branches of navigation and

seamanship. The men... living aboard ship under conditions of squalor and hardship, were tough

and quarrelsome. Their indiscipline was notorious.' And Doctor Samuel Johnson: 'Sir, a ship is

worse than a jail. There is in a jail, better air, better company, better convenience of every

kind... When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.'

But, as Charlwood says, sailors were in some ways better off than landsmen: they had a regular

bunk, meals and a wage of sorts, as well as physical action and comradeship; they were free

from family constraints and sometimes from the law; and on shore they could carouse and

womanize without restraint.

On board, however, they were subject to savage treatment and punishments. In 1853 the

enraged captain of the Msrco Polo struck a steward several times with a ship's lamp, cutting his

face and breaking his nose. The same captain put a sailor in irons for several days on bread and

water for insulting the first mate. Another was punished by being strung up, hands above his

head, toes bareiy touching the deck, for nine hours. The mate on John Fenwick's ship was in the

habit of cuffing and vilifying passengers when they got in his way. Accidents were aimost as

frequent as fights, and death - failing from mast or rigging or being swept overboard - was never

far away.

Wrote Fanny Davis: 'I wonder more and more every day how a man can be a sailor'

She was thinking of their sleepless activity in a storm, drenched by sea-water, stung by icy rain,

struggling with flapping sails and lashing ropes, swinging on yardarrns as the ship rolled, shouted

at and abused and fed the poorest of food. Their quarters in the fo'castle, cramped and

constantly infused with noise and odours and dimmed by the smoke from their pipes, were

packed with hammocks or bunks in the converging bows, with bodies, barrels and chests. But

they were very fit, hardy and humorous, playing practical jokes on each other as well as the

passengers, teliing tales, making models, singing their bawdy songs, showing no sentiment, pity

or fear, and brazenly pursuing any woman that caught their eye - though verbal intercourse

between the crew and female passengers was forbidden on some ships. Sexual encounters

nonetheless occurred, and even the odd romance.

The fictional Rev Colley, in Golding's novel. Rites of Passage, rhapsodised about 'bronzed

young fellows bared to the waist - their hands and feet hard with honest and dangerous toil -

their stern yet open faces weathered by the storms of every ocean, their luxuriant curis fluttering

from their foreheads in the breeze.' He particularly noticed 'a narrow-waisted, slim-hipped yet

broad-shouldered Child of Neptune... His feet were bare and... his nether garments clung to his

lower limbs.'

One wonders whether the Rev Mereweather might have been similarly affected.

The officers of course were more approachable and available, and were accustomed, if so

inclined, to take their pick of compliant and adoring females, single or not.

Did our Harriet Hiil, or Charlotte Silver, or even 12-year-old Elizabeth Honeycombe succumb?

Or did some wife on the long sea-voyage? No amorous exchange was possible of course in a

storm, high seas or a gale, with the passengers battened down and incapacitated and the crew

occupied with sails and ropes and pumping out the sea-water that swamped the decks and filled

the bilges. But when the sea was calm, the nights warm and starry, nooks for an assignation

could be found, even on a small ship.

in calm seas, awnings were hung above the deck for shade against the sun, and passengers'

boxes, marked Wanted on Voyage, were brought out of storage so that clean clothes might be

retrieved and dirty ones stowed away. Such an event might be celebrated with a simple concert

or sing-song on deck, or a dance, for the passengers and officers only, although the sailors

might stage an impromptu entertainment of their own. Folk-songs and ballads were popular,

and sea-songs like 'A life on the ocean wave,' and The death of Nelson.' Minstrel songs were a

recent fad, and tears would flow when 'Home, sweet home' was sung. Dances, to a fiddle or

flute, would include a polka, a quadrille and a lively country dance, depending on the likes and

social background of those who took part.

Under a full moon, on a flat phosphorescent sea, the sound of these entertainments must have

accentuated the loneliness of the little ship adrift on the ocean under the starry bowl of night.

Some of those on deck might look at the stars, seeing the Great Bear sink below the horizon

and the Southern Cross emerge. Mrs Meredith, in 1853: 'I do not know one thing that I felt so

much as the loss of the North Star... the new constellations of the southern hemisphere seemed

to my partial eyes far less splendid.' And John Fenwick: 'Noticed the Southern Cross for the

first time. I saw it some days ago, but, expecting something much finer, did not know it.'

The Lady McNaghten was still 10 days north of the Equator, and the passengers, as

Mereweather wrote, were feeling the heat.

'19 March: Very hot. In Latitude 10° N. Read "Wilberforce on Baptismal Regeneration,' which

seems almost too cleverly argued; also "Bishop Jewel on the two Sacraments." An old

Devonshire peasant exclaimed to me as he wiped the perspiration from his brow, that he was an

old man, but yet had never known it so hot in the month of March before. Went up into the

main top in the evening, and remained there until the sun had set. Magnificently coloured clouds

clustering round the retreating luminary. Purple the prevailing tint, so that we seemed surrounded

by an ocean of bronze. Porpoises disporting round the ship: flying fish darting through the air

with incredible velocity: a train of petrels following in our wake, ceaselessly twittering. The

emigrants began at sundown to dance country dances to the sound of a flute and violin. No

grace in their movements - no picturesqueness in their costume, and a rudeness rather than a

heartiness in their merriment. During the whole of the voyage I saw only two groups worthy of

sketching. One was a young mother and her two children; the

other, three or four men listening to another reading aloud. Out of the mass of human beings on

board there was not one person, man, woman, or child, who would have been considered

interesting either by the artist, or the lover of the beautiful. No emigrants were here sailing from

old Greece, cherishing their household gods and their sacred fire, that they might reproduce their

fatherland in a distant dime, but a mob of sturdy Anglo-Saxons, hungrily inclined, flying from a

country where beef and mutton is seven pence a pound, to one where it is only three halfpence.

'21 March: In Latitude 6° N. Thermometer 84" in the cuddy. Early in the morning, one of the

female emigrants was safely delivered of a female child.'

The mother was either Mrs Chapman or Mrs Richardson, for both had given birth on the ship

by the time Adelaide was reached - as the shipping list in the South Australian Register for 15

June 1850 notes.

Mereweather continues: 'At night there was a great commotion on board. Some of the

unmarried male emigrants, instead of going to their berths at ten o'clock, according to the rules

of the ship, insisted on sleeping on deck. The doctor, who is nominally charged with the

superintendence of the passengers, insisted on their going below, knowing that most of them

were mischievous and depraved characters. They set him at defiance. He then appealed to the

Mate for assistance. Upon the Mate remonstrating with them, they laughed at him too. The

Mate then roused the Captain, who was asleep. But as the Captain was deficient in moral

courage, and not equal to cases of emergency, he refused to interfere. It is not improbable that

he thus wished to compromise the doctor; for like most Captains of emigrant ships, he was very

jealous of his powers, although what these powers actually are, it would be hard to say. So

these fellows have gained their point, and the ship is nightly in danger of taking fire from their

lighted tobacco flying about. The present arrangements for the social well-being of emigrant

ships are as yet most defective. Although each ship professes to have stringent rules and

regulations for the passengers; and a doctor is placed on board, partly for the purpose of seeing

that these regulations shall be carried out; yet this doctor has no power to enforce these

regulations, should any one set him at defiance. Thus, an emigrant may endanger the safety of

the ship by his carelessness, or put in jeopardy the health of his fellow-passengers by his

filthiness; or poison the morals of the young by his lewdness, without subjecting himself to any

punishment. The Captain has the power of putting in irons; but that is never resorted to except in

cases of mutiny or assault. And when we consider that now, when a steerage passage to

Australia costs no more than £15, the vilest of the vile, reprobates as bad as convicts, yet

unconvicted, crowd on board these ships just at starting, with the fruits of their last villainy in

their pocket, we must acknowledge that the want of stern discipline in such ships is loudly called

for. I have no hesitation in stating that some of the single male steerage emigrants on board of

our ship are the most obscene miscreants that it would be possible to conceive, and that, by

their dogmatic and practical infidelity, their oaths, blasphemies, and filthy jests, they create an

atmosphere of hell around them wherever they are...

'22 March: Many of the passengers complain of missing various articles of property. Some of

the more respectable wish that a general search should be

made; but the doctor is so dispirited at being so set at defiance the other night, that he no longer

cares about taking the initiative in anything. Our married steerage passengers are of a very

mixed class. Some are wretchedly dirty peasantry with large families, sent out by their Lord of

the Manor; others are small tradesmen, who, having sold their stock, and hastily collected the

few debts they could, have left it to their creditors to satisfy themselves as they best may; others

are respectable mechanics. With the exception of a very few, they are by no means a set of

people who would improve the tone of society in which they may be cast. The unmarried men

are composed of prodigal sons who are thus drinking the cup of humiliation to the dregs;

vagrants taken from the roadside, and put on board by charitable individuals, young men going

out on speculation, navvies going to the Burra Mine, mechanics, and a crowd of vicious young

men who seem to have no occupation... They lie in their berths till late in the day, sometimes all

the day, poltute their quarters with their oaths and obscenities, and sometimes, as I am credibly

informed, read Tom Paine aloud, and assail the Holy Bible with clumsy jests. From the

appearance and conduct of many of these, I have little doubt that they were London thieves, or

perhaps something much worse.

'23 March: Rose at six as usual, and walked on the poop with naked feet whilst the washing

was going on. Saw an enormous fish swimming astern, attended by two pilot fish of a bright blue

coiour, which seemed to act as his piqueurs, now darting in advance of him, and then retreating

into him or under him, as if for the purpose of communication with him. The monster was a flat

fish of enormous width, with huge side fins, and strange to say, it had no traces of a head. We

could see neither mouth nor eyes. Where the head should have been, there was a semi-circular

chasm, terminating in two horns or feelers, which seemed very flexible. It was a wonderful sight

to see this great creature [a manta ray], weighing, perhaps, five or six hundred weight, slowly

coming on with his two active satellites disporting before him. But we were prepared for his

approach. The stalwart boatswain stood on the verge of the poop, harpoon in hand, waiting till

he should come under the stern. He slowly and majestically advances; pauses for a moment

close to the ship; gets frightened; makes a dart under the keel; the harpoon descends with the

swiftness of a thunder bolt; strikes him through the middle of his back; he turns over in the

water; struggles, plunges, his blood flows; his entrails protrude; he then leaps into the air,

showing the whole of his huge body; and by that great leap forces the harpoon out of his flesh,

and then hurriedly swims away, lashing the sea in pain and anger. The boatswain afterwards told

me it was a whip ray...'

Such a close-up view of a monster of the deep, as with the whales and soon with sharks, must

have excited the passengers' wonderment. But typically the sailors viewed any creatures as

objects of sport or for food.

'Sunday, 24 March: A wet morning and squally. Could not consequently have the service on

deck; and the heat prevented me from having it below. Seven vessels in sight. At evening

prayers, made an addition of several of the church prayers.

'25 March: A fine tropical day, very calm, and the sea rolling in huge swells. One of the

emigrants, who had been bathing, was so exhausted that he

could hardly get up the ship's side, and was nearly drowned by the swell. My school has an

accession of four to-day; so that now all the disposable children attend. Many of the parents,

who considered themselves of the bettsr sort, would not hear at first of their children attending,

alleging that by contact with the others they would catch bad manners and vermin. I studiously

abstained from pressing the matter, knowing what must take place. And now, when the people

find that the school children are dean, well-behaved, and fast advancing into the regions of good

writing and good reading, whilst theirs are obstreperous, disobedient, daily forgetting what they

once leamt, troublesome, picking up bad language, and continually meeting with accidents, they

are glad to allow them to join the class. I cannot express the satisfaction which 1 feel at having

formed my school on board. Nothing can be more ruinous to a child than to be on board an

emigrant ship for 180 days, as we were, without some scholastic control.

'27 March: A hot sun with a refreshing breeze. The sun vertical at noon. All the people puzzled

to know how it was that they were shadowless. in Latitude 2°22"N. The thermometer is 30° in

the cuddy; 31° in the steerage; and 122° in the sun. Got into SE trades, which will carry us

towards the South American coasts. Caught a very small shark, a grim, repulsive-iooking fish, it

was speediiy cooked and eaten - not, however, without much pepper. Had four candidates for

the Holy Communion next Sunday (Easter).

'23 March: At half-past eleven in the forenoon we crossed the Line. Some absurd person

having raised a report that the Line was in sight, many of the people, men, women, and children,

came tumbling hastily up on deck to see it. Examined strictly the four candidates for the

Communion. Ons is most unexceptionable in every way. The three others answered all my

questions satisfactorily. Unfortunately, two are Wesleyan Methodists, and the other is a

Presbyterian... But the mere fact of their wishing to receive the Communion was virtually an

enunciation of their previous religious belief, and an embracing of ours. Moreover, views of

expediency prevented me from rejecting them, Every one who receives the Sacraments at my

hands aboard ship thus guarantees his good conduct during the voyage. He places himself in my

power, as it were, and gives me a right to "teach and premonish" him, to correct and rebuke him

whenever I may think it right so to do; and also to "use both public and private monitions and

exhortations," whensoever necessity may require it.'

After passing the Cape Verde islands, on latitude 15°, the Lady McNaghten had approached

the Equator, latitude 0°. A ceremony known as Crossing the Line was usually enacted on every

ship when this happened, except when it was banned by the Captain or curtailed. No such

ceremony apparently took place on the Lady McNaghten, possibly because the presence of so

many young men among the passengers would have resulted in an excess of lewd and crude

behaviour, drunkenness, and vice. Mereweather would certainly not have approved. Nor was

the ceremony to everyone's liking.

John Fenwick: 'In the evening a gruff voice haiied the ship. Soon the owner of it came on board

- a hoary-headed old man attended by a "barber" and a lot of wretches armed with handspikes.

They made s progress round the ship and held a paiaver with the Captain. They welcomed him

into Neptune's

dominions and Old Nep himseif promised to take us safely across the Line that night. There was

a fine chorus of "Rule Britannia". Some of the men got groggy and there was an end of stupid

ceremony."

John Joseland on the Salsette in 1853, described a more typical performance: 'At ten o'clock

the crew, with their faces blackened, or painted, and dressed in all sorts of colours, headed by

one of the stewards in a red shirt, with a black feather in his cap, part of a newspaper as a

book, a stick as a pen in his hand to perform the part of barber's clerk; then the boatswain

disguised and attired in a most fantastic style, riding on the backs of some of the sailors... in the

character of Neptune, went all round the ship before the performance of shaving, etc,

commenced... The barber stands before the tub, upon which the person sits who is acted upon.

His clerk sits by the side to put down what he says... Clerk: "Where do you come from?" He

opens his mouth to speak and in goes the barber's lather brush! "Where were you bom?" In

goes the brush again... If the person does not answer, the clerk gives him a stripe or two with a

wet "swob" which is a kind of mop they use to dry up the decks after washing them... The clerk

then tells him he must "be shaved" which operation the barber performs with tar and grease

generally... He then gives him a push and over he goes head over heels in a sheet of water a

few feet below... Where there are two waiting to dunk him!'

Those passengers who wished to be excluded paid a fine, in this case a bottle of brandy.

The Doldrums, a wide area of ocean usually beset with calm seas and little wind, covered the

area of the Equator for hundreds of miles.

John Fenwick: 'Still a dead calm - sea literally as smooth as glass, not a ripple on its placid

surface.' Dr Lightoller, in 1878: 'Almost total calm, and a blazing hot sun. The temperature in the

shade is 85 degrees, but it seems as if it was over 100 degrees. Everyone is boiling with

perspiration. The sky is very thick and hazy.' Fanny Davis: 'It is so hot downstairs that we are

afraid to go to bed... We lay and toss about for hours with our clothes dripping wet with

perspiration and of course cannot sleep.'

Men were able to sleep on deck - and go for a swim.

A sailor recorded in 1S53: The mate jumped overboard for a lark after which the passengers

did the same and then the mate put the boys overboard.' A few days later: 'Part of the crew had

a bathe over the side, some with life preservers and life buoys.'

Bathing on deck was also a male privilege. Male passengers were soused by buckets of salt

water, wearing thin pairs of drawers, or in the nude when hidden from female eyes.

None of such activities is mentioned by the Rev John Mereweather as having occurred on

board the Lady McNaghten. But his diary obviously omitted to remark on much of what

happened. From now on the entries are fewer and shorter, as if the heat or some affliction were

sapping his energies and literally laying him low.

'30 March: Saw the Southern Cross. "Midnight is past, the Cross begins to bend." Was much

disappointed with it. One of the four stars is much fainter

than the other three, and not placed opposite its opposite. 1 should hardly have noticed it, if it

had not been so celebrated in prose and verse.

'Easter Day: In latitude 4°22"S. Sea rising. Some rain prevented me from having a service on

deck. Went down below and read the first lesson, the litany and the communion service to the

end of the Prayer for the Church Militant: then baptized two children; and afterwards

administered the Holy Communion to four persons - two men and two women. A cuddy

passenger lent me his cabin (a stern cabin) for the purpose. I dressed altarwise a small table

which I found there, using my own pocket communion service, and spreading out two cambric

pocket hadkerchiefs as a substitute for a "fair, white linen cloth." Although the wind was rising,

and the sea leaping up almost to the windows, yet all was calm, tranquil, and devotional within.

It was Christ moving upon the surface of the waters. Just as the rite was commencing, a woman,

a Wesleyan, applied to be admitted. I quietly but firmly refused on the grounds that she had not

signified her wish to me before, although I had made public my intention a week past; and,

therefore, I could know nothing of her fitness for this blessed sacrament.

'1 April: Find all my clothes, my boots, my keys, knives, and razors incredibly damp, mildewed,

and rusty. This seems to have come on in the last week.

3 April: A fine breeze. In Latitude 12"S. My school goes on admirably.

Catechized ail the children. Young B

, a steerage passenger, one of the

late communicants, has offered to instruct the elder boys in arithmetic. Accepted his offer. A

delicate pretty little boy on board, about six years old, told me he should like to go to God, for

God was good, and perhaps he should see his dear mother there.'

This might have been the second of Jacob Kernot's sons.

'4 April: At about half-past one this morning, there being a smart breeze at the time, the main

topmast came down with a tremendous crash, breaking the main top into fragments, and

bringing with it the mizzen topmast, and the fore topgallant mast. I ran on deck and found a sad

scene of desolation, yards, sheets, and blocks hanging and lying about in hopeless confusion.

Could have no school, in consequence of this catastrophe. All the carpenters on board were

busy at converting a spare spar into a main topmast.

'6 April: The emigrants complain that the water is bad; also, that the beef is not nearly so good

as that which they had between London and Plymouth. All hands busy preparing the new

topmast. The Captain, who was a well-mannered man enough on shore, turns out a great tyrant,

and very passionate at sea. He swore violently today, and used the most unpardonable language

before the emigrants.

'Sunday, 7 April: Although the ship is making good way with her main topsail set on her new

main topmast, the Captain is causing all hands to work through the day at a new mizzen topmast

and a main topgallant mast. Although I had good reasons for considering that this energy was

unnecessary, I thought I might do more harm than good by remonstrating against it; so I was

silent. Catechized my boys for an hour or two in my cabin. Hitherto I had generally omitted the

Lord's Prayer with its admirable little preface "My good child, know this," etc. Today, I asked

the boys to say the Lord's Prayer, and to my great

grief found that one of the boys could not say it, although he knew ail the other part of the

catechism most perfectly. I will never omit this again. Find in the evening that the morning's work

has sadly demoralized the emigrants with regard to their behaviour. Instead of the decent clean

Sunday dress, the tranquil conversation and the religious demeanour usually prevalent on the

Sabbath, the emigrants are strolling about in their working dresses joking coarsely, laughing

loudly, and some even singing. The women even have caught this evil infection.

'8 April: A very lovely day. The breeze that blows seems imbued with all the ripe fervour of

summer, and the delicate vigour of spring.

'10 April: In Latitude 22° 15-S, and Longitude 22° 56" E. We have lost our SE Trades, and

have got a very foul wind with a heavy gloomy sea. At eight am, our jigger boom was carried

away, and soon after the jib was blown out of the ropes. The ship is making water, too; the

pumps are out of order, and the carpenter knows very little of his trade.

'12 April: One of the females on board delivered of a still-born child. She is doing very weil. A

tolerably commodious apartment, called the hospital, is fitted up for sick people. Turned one of

the boys out of the school for sulky behaviour.

'13 April: A glorious day. In Latitude 25° 42'S. In my cabin all the morning reading an article of

Chambers on the History of the Bible. There is much useful information in it... After eight

o'clock prayers, I went into the hospital, and read to and prayed with the woman who was

confined yesterday.

'Sunday, 14 April: A very lovely day, the bridal of the sea and sky. Had service on deck. Read

the prayers and preached a sermon. Duration of all 50 minutes. A good many present and a

great many absent. Had a long conversation with two old men, chiefly on spiritual matters.

Could elicit nothing from them worth recounting. Suspect that very many of the religious

anecdotes with which the public are a times regaled are not much better than legends of saints.

'15 April: A dull unsunny day, with a strong breeze and much motion. In Latitude 30° 21" S.,

and in Longitude 22° 20" W. A great squabble between two of the more respectable emigrants.

They called each other disgraceful and opprobrious names. Many birds are following the ship,

making endless gyrations, and every now and then swooping for the offal which the ship leaves

in her track. There are albatrosses, mollymawks, cape hens, cape pigeons, and stormy petrels.

The albatross is a gigantic bird, sometimes white, sometimes grey, measuring twelve feet from

the tip of one wing to the other. It has a yellow beak of immense power. It feeds on the coarsest

carrion. Why Coleridge made it the hero of his Ancient Mariner I can't think. It is a foul bird of

prey: and the sailors catch it and eat it without the slightest repugnance. It never "perches on

mast or shroud, nor any day for food or play, comes to the mariners' hollo." The Ancient

Mariner, as far as the albatross is concerned, is a very powerful poetical exaggeration.

'Sunday, 21 April: Had prayers down below, as the Captain said that the constant trimming of

the sails would interrupt the service. Read the first lesson, and said the litany: then I asked two

Dissenters who were present to sing "Lo! he comes with clouds descending," which they did

very nicely. Then I preached.

The people present were few, but very attentive. Afterwards I held my school,

and Miss

held hers. The evening prayers 1 prefaced with the epistle and

gospel and the 63rd chapter of Isaiah.'

By now, the passengers had been at sea for eight weeks, and the general inactivity, lack of

privacy, and severance from the world, had begun to bite.

'22 April: The emigrants are getting tired of the voyage - the more so, as it threatens to be very

long. Their private stores are nearly consumed, so that now they complain of the ship's provision

the more. Some careful ones, however, have laid in stores which still hold out. They have

brought hams, bacon, cheese, herrings, flour, yeast, preserves, and these they might sell if they

choose, at an exorbitant price. But they prefer consuming them themselves. These little stores

help to make the voyage endurable to a steerage passenger. One of them has the additional

luxury of a suspension candle lamp, and a packet of Price's candles; whilst another has a naptha

lamp for boiling water, etc. But few have been so provident as this.

'23 April: In Latitude 36° 26" S, and Longitude 5° 17" W. A close damp day with much fog,

and the glass indicative of a gale. It is now discovered that the emigrants' oil is short, so that

their lamps are not to be kept up during the night. This occasions intense dissatisfaction, as some

of the better sort fear that irregularities may occur through this. Saw a young woman who has

hitherto conducted herself most exemplary on board, misbehaving herself. Heard that another,

who professes better things, was playing cards in one of the enclosed cabins last night, while

prayers were going on. The demoralization consequent on a long voyage is enormous, and

affects all grades.

'24 April: Glass very iow, yet a dead calm. In the afternoon an albatross was caught by means

of a hook baited with pork - the usual mode of catching these birds. The moment it was hauled

on the poop, its beak was held tight to prevent its vomiting over this sacred part of the vessel, as

captains consider it. It measured ten feet between the tips of the wings, and although it looked

very large in its feathers, yet when skinned, it was not bigger than a large goose. When washed

and quartered ready for stewing, it was like rabbit, and resembled rabbit in taste.

'Feast of St Mark: A gale of wind is coming on. Could not sleep on account of the motion.

Went on deck at three am, and found them reefing the mainsail and double reefing the topsails.

As my sofa is athwart-ship I feel the rolling motion very much...

'Sunday, 28 April: The sea is so heavy that I have had no service today. Some of the emigrants

had some severe falls. A fall in a heavy roll is a most painful and dangerous matter. A great

fracas between two of the emigrants, because the one will not allow the latter to pay his

addresses to his sister-in-law.

'29 April: One of the women on board brought a giant baby into the world weighing ten pounds

and three quarters. Both are doing well. The sailors caught two or three albatrosses. Had my

boys into my cabin. I intend making them learn the Thirty-nine Articles.'

This baby had either Mrs Richardson or Mrs Chapman as its mother. Chapmans figure larely in

the family history of the Honeycombes in Australia. Perhaps the association started with the

Chapmans on the Lady McNaghten.

'30 April: Saw the beef weighed out to the emigrants. It looks vile carrion. Our slow old ship is

actually going at the rate of nine knots.

¦1 May: In Longitude 8° 15"E; Latitude 39° 28" S. Barometer 29° 37"; thermometer 59°.

After a capital run during the night, the wind at eight this morning shitted right round with the

rapidity of lightning, not an uncommon phenomenon in these latitudes - throwing everything on

board into confusion. The wind is now adverse, and there is a heavy sea. A fine lurid light on the

sea at sunset. One of the passengers told me that some of the denizens in the fore steerage are

well versed in the arguments - if arguments they may be called - of Tom Paine's Age of Reason.

'2 May: Heavy weather still. No sun, consequently no reckoning taken. Made my boys learn the

first, third and sixth Articles. A poor fellow on board was thrown down by the motion of the

ship and had two or three ribs broken. A fight took place forward between two young men,

emigrants. One of the females was the cause of it. Did not hear about it till it was over.

'3 May: Had a long and rather interesting conversation with a young Scotchman, a Presbyterian,

and lent him a book.

'4 May: Longitude 17° 24" E; Latitude 39° 10" S. Off the Cape of Storms, commonly called the

Cape of Good Hope. The southermost part of Africa is Cape Agulhas, which is to the east of

the Cape in Longitude 20° E.

The Lady McNaghten had now been at sea for 70 days since leaving Plymouth and must have

been almost in sight of Cape Town. But the barque did not anchor there to replenish supplies,

effect repairs and give all on board a respite form the crowded, creaking, unsteady and smeily

existence of a sailing ship at sea.

Cape Town had been in existence for nearly 200 years, having been founded in 1652, when Jan

van Riebeeck led a Dutch East India Company expedition of three ships to Table Bay, to set up

a supply base and trading-post. In time, Cape Town became known as the Tavern of the Seas,

and in 1850 was one of the prettiest, cleanest, greenest and most spectacular sea-ports in the

world.

The South African township and the country thereabouts would have seemed like a paradise to

those on board the Lady McNaghten. But the barque sailed on eastwards and into the southern

and stormy Indian Ocean. The passengers were now some 6,000 miles away from England and

more than half way through her voyage.

recollections become a fond reality, which we can meditate on, but not enjoy. Talked at great

length to a young and pretty girl whom a gang of unprincipled fellows on board are trying to

seduce into infidelity, by telling her that the Bible is untrue and the deluge a fable. The poor girl is

in the same mess with some of them, so she has difficulty in escaping from their importunities.

'14 May: In Longitude 51° 37° E. My boys said the first eight Articles perfectly. Began having

evening prayers at naif-past seven instead of eight.

'15 May: Longitude 54° 46" E. Thermometer 54°. Did not go my usua! matutinal rounds. The

sea about the ship is swarming with porpoises.

'16 May: After breakfast I went down into the hold to see the second mate weigh out the

stores. They seemed to be very good.

'17 May: Heard ail the schoolchildren their catechism.

'18 May: A sailor caught three albatrosses in about 15 minutes. They are so greedy that they

will seize a hook baited with a bit of red rag.

'19 May (Whit Sunday): A very calm and lovely day. The sky is blue, clear, and the climate

delicious. The track of the barque through the smooth waters is hardly perceptible. Had the

service on deck at half-past ten, at which all the decent people attended. At night the stars

shone with much brilliancy, and the moon seemed suspended in a black vault.

'20 May: One of the emigrants recounted to me his past life. He had been an underservant in the

stables of a gentleman in Ireland, and there he acquired dissipated habits which led him to the

commission of some crime for which he was discharged. After many wanderings in the labyrinth

of sin, he was at last reduced to such destitution as to be forced to beg his bread in the streets

of London. One evening hungry and tired, without any money in his pocket, and unable to get

any work, he applied for a night's lodging in one of the Refuges for the Destitute, and was

admitted. In the morning, as he was leaving, he attracted the notice of two gentlemen, who were

carefully scrutinizing the poor people as they were departing from the Refuge. They called him

to them, heard his story, felt an interest in his case, appealed to the public in his behalf through

the medium of a Morning Paper; and by that means raised funds sufficient to fit him out and pay

£15 for his passage to Australia. He expressed himseff most gratefully with regard to these two

kind persons who had rescued him from impending ruin (they belonged, I believe, to the staff of

the Morning Chronicle) and said that whereas on his first leaving London he was emaciated,

weak, and almost blind, he was now stout and strong, and had quite recovered his sight. He

requested me to write to his deliverers, and assure them that his future conduct more than his

words would testify his appreciation of their kindness; and he concluded by begging me to pray

that he might have grace sufficient to keep him from his old vice, intemperance, when he should

arrive in Australia. This man's behaviour on board is irreproachable. What a glorious thing -

how practically good was it of these people to attend these haunts of misery, and thus rescue a

fellow-creature from famine and despair. This poor fellow who could get no work in England,

will obtain, as I am told, four or five shillings a day in Australia.

'21 May: Many complaints are made to me of the infidelity which prevails on board. A

Calvinistic Methodist told me that he had a hot argument yesterday with a number of the

disciples of Tom Paine, and that after having exhausted ail

S. Across to Australia

The Lady McNaghten forged eastwards, along the invisible 38th parallel of latitude between the

Indian and Southern Oceans. Heavy seas and gaies were usual here, as other diarists attest.

Celeste de Chabrilian, wife of the French consul journeying to Melbourne in 1854, was on a

ship struck by a gale soon after leaving Cape Town. She wrote: 'Three sails were torn as if they

had been made of paper. Their shreds beat against the masts with dreadful violence; the wind

alternately crowed like a cock or hissed like a nestful of serpents; that night seemed to last a

hundred years.'

Those ships sailing the Great Circle route went much further south and experienced the worst of

the weather.

John Fenwick: 'Have had a very squatiy tempestuous night - going at a fearful rate at times... All

day weather ditto - Lee scuppers a long way under. Sea very high... 9pm the ship seems to be

going faster than ever... and every now and then dashing into a sea with a shock that makes

every plank tremble.' A day later: 'We had a very heavy wind till 8.0 pm and much rain. During

these squalls the sea had risen considerably. The waves were tremendous and yet magnificent.

The first really heavy sea came over about seven o'clock - with a shock as if we had gone

ashore - every light forward, and the galley fires, were put out.1

Fanny Davis: 'Of all the days we have had for wind since we sailed this is decidedly the worst; it

blows a perfect hurricane. We have only two sails up and the sea seems to move all in one huge

mass.' Dr Lightoller: 'Blowing a gale of wind and a very heavy sea, wind abeam... I was on my

way back to the poop when I saw a tremendous sea coming up. I rushed into the sailors' deck

house just in time to save myself, when bang like a clap of thunder came the sea; the vessel

shook and trembled as if she were coming to pieces and a soiid mass of water came over, filling

her decks up to the bulwarks... ripped open the covering to the main hatch and sent gallons of

water pouring down between decks... I never saw such a sea in my life... The people below

are in a deuce of a funk; singing hymns and praying is the order of the day.'

On the Lady McNaghten, the Rev John Mereweather recorded a disaster involving a loss of

life.

'About 5.0 pm one of the ship's apprentices, a fine and good iad, the son of a widow, was

hauled from the rnizzen mast into the sea by a very heavy roll of the ship. The two buoys were

immediately thrown towards himr but he could catch neither on account of the heavy sea

running, although he struck out boldly. The lifeboat was then lowered with the two mates and

two sailors in it, as volunteers, but the tackle being rotten, broke at the end, and the four were

launched into the water. With great difficulty they were drawn by ropes up the vessel's side, but

the boat floated away and was not recovered. No sooner were they on deck again, than three

out of these four very brave men insisted on being

lowered in the other quarterboat to go in search of the poor fellow. With immense risk and

difficulty they got away from the ship. But, alas! Too much time had been lost. They could see

nothing of the poor boy, surrounded as he was by mountainous biilows; and so in half an hour,

just as it was growing dark, they returned dispirited and exhausted, and ran innumerable risks

before they could be got on board. I caught one glance of the poor lad after he feli from the

ship; with one hand he was striking out, with the other he was endeavouring to scare away the

fou! birds of prey which were swooping over his head with their heavy wings. His haggard

looks were directed with terrible despair towards the ship and those standing on the poop. A

liquid mountain then rolled over him, and concealed him for ever from our view. 1 shal! never

think those albatrosses "sweet birds" after this. The Captain did not offer a word of thanks or

encouragement to the poor feilows who risked their lives to save their shipmate.

'Sunday, 5 May: In consequence of the heavy sea I had service below at half-past eleven. Read

the two psalms in the burial service; and then the communion service; and then gave a sermon.

Prefaced the service with the morning hymn, which was nicely sung by the children. After

evening prayers, 1 addressed the people on the catastrophe of yesterday. They all listened to

me with marked and individual attentions.

7 May: In Longitude 28° 7" E; and Latitude 39° 11 "S. A heavy sea still. The emigrants

compiain sadly of the scuttles leaking. Some of their mattresses are saturated with water,

consequently they rise in the morning with severe colds. They deserve to find Australia an El

Dorado, for they suffer very much morally and physically in getting there. My boys can say well

the first six Articles.

'3 May: In Longitude 35° 27" E. A heavy westerly gale all day. Deadlights up and the sea

running in iiquid mountains. At one am, during a thunderstorm, the main brace slipt out of the

block with a terrible whiz. At eight am the main royal was blown to pieces. At half past nine the

main royal mast was carried away and two poor fellows who were on it at the time escaped

destruction in a miraculous manner. This is the third main royal mast we have lost already. Lent

my cloak at night to two young women to sleep on. They spread it over their reeking mattress.

'Sunday, 12 May: In Longitude 44° 31" E. A very lovely sunrise and morning. The sun as high

priest seemed to be blessing the nuptials of the sky and waves. Had prayers on deck. All except

the mauvais sujets attended. Read the two lessons, the litany, and gave a sermon. Had a

conversation with one of the ship's apprentices, a Madrassee. He tells me that he reads the four

lessons every day. Talked to a rough-looking man, who had been what is termed a "navvy" in

England. He told me that the day looked like an English Sunday, it was so calm and so bright.

Ah, what can be compared to a bright English Sunday in the country, with the walk to church

across the fields., and the getting over the stiles, and the picking the way because a little rain

may have fallen during the night; and the people sitting on the gravestones chatting, and the low

thick walls of the church rising from a little wilderness of dry roses and honeysuckle. And all this

to the sound of the musical belts "calling in." This tone of feeling may seem sentimental and

poetical in England. But at sea, in that wild waste of waters stretching away between the Cape

and Tasmania, such

his knowledge of scripture texts to prove his position, they turned round on him and said: "Don't

quote your Bible to prove your Bible. We must have other arguments." He then spoke of their

scoffing, insulting mode of argument. I told him that as infidels argue for victory rather than for

truth, it was but lost labour to do anything but pray for them...

'23 May: In Longitude 74° 41" E. We are making good way now, and expect to pass St Paul's

Island very soon. The poor people below are getting very tired of their voyage, and well they

might, for many of them have been on board since January, living on salt provisions. As beer

and wine are not included in the allowance, those who are too poor to buy these have nothing

but water to drink. Many are getting pale and emaciated and irritable; others slovenly and

neglectful of themselves and their children; whiist some of the wearied passengers who have

hitherto behaved iike decent, moral men, endeavour to dissipate their ennui by playing

continually at cards and for high stakes too. This long voyage has a most demoralizing tendency

on all. I cannot shut my eyes to it. I consider the great length of the voyage as the great

drawback on emigration to Australia.

Halfway across the Indian Ocean the Lady McNaghten passed south of the barren volcanic

peaks of the islands of Amsterdam and St Paul, and drove on into the southern winter through

tremendous seas.

Dr Lightoiler, on an 800 ton barque, wrote in September 1878: 'Blowing harder than ever f

have seen it. The sea is one mass of foam: I cannot get to sleep, too much noise, heavy water

comes on board every now and then.' The next day - 'Running before the wind... The sea is like

so many immense mountains. At any one moment the water seems as if it were bound to tumble

on the top of us. For when we are in the trough between the swells, the water is towering far

above us. The top of the most of these immense swells breaks like an ordinary wave on the sea

shore - it is a wild but magnificent sight... 10.30 pm. Blowing a hard gale, the sea one white

sheet of foam... 1 did not think it possible for the water to be lifted with such tremendous swells,

as we seem to be completely buried every two or three minutes.' Three days later - 'When shall

we have some fine weather? Everything is very wet beiow... clothes, bedding, etc... We cannot

open the hatches or the people would be simply drowned.'

The Rev Mereweather wrote on 24 May, 1850: 'A heavy sea getting up. Had my boys in my

cabin. They are getting on very well with the Articles. Baptized the baby which was born some

time ago. The mother has been putting off its baptism from day to day. Now it is ill. Still she

hesitated, until I told her that if it died I would not read the buriaf service over it. How sad it is

to be obliged to use such a threat. Now that I am thrown into a mixture of all classes of society,

t find with regret, that in this heterogeneous mass there are very very few who seem to have

fixed notions of what religion is. There seems to be no rational confession of faith amongst them.

They have no idea of the nature of the Sacraments. Some think that religion consists in not being

an absolute infidel; others in not being a Papist; others in allowing their neighbour to be of what

creed he likes. Al! their ideas on religious subjects seem imbued with a coid vague negative

Protestantism...

'25 May: Had a sea into my cabin. The people as they come aft from the cook's galley with their

cooked messes, get thrown down by the heavy rolls of the ship, and lose their dinners, it is

astonishing to find what a prejudice they have against soup and bouilli, which is served out to

them once or twice a week, it is a nutritive, warming, and palatable dish, but they cannot bear

it. ! suppose the French name arouses their Anglo-Saxon antipathies.

'Sunday, 26 May: In Longitude 85° 21" E; Latitude 38° 50" S. The sea is stiil running so high,

that 1 had prayers below. Read the two lessons, the litany, and a sermon. A nice little boy, the

elder brother of the one who died before, is sinking himself. The long voyage and the rough

food are hastening his departure. He seems always to have been a delicate child. He toid me

today that he should like to go to Heaven, because he should find his mother and brother there.

'29 May: A very heavy sea, I saw some of the emigrants have terrible fails.

'1 June: The boatswain harpooned some porpoises. Saw them cut up. Under their thick biack

skin is about haff an inch of a tough white substance, which is the blubber, under that comes the

flesh which looks like beef. The sailors cut steaks of it and pronounce it excellent.

'Sunday, 3 June: In Longitude 103° 27" E; Latitude 37° 34" S. A bright warm day. Had the

morning prayers on deck at eleven, but gave no sermon. I had a numerous and attentive

congregation. After dinner, the emigrants promenaded on deck, very nicely dressed, indeed

scarcely recognizable. At night there was a quarrel down below between two emigrants, family

men, Dissenters, who had hitherto conducted themselves decently. They used the most horrible

expressions one to the other, expressions, which I do not think they could have known of when

they came on board, but which they must, I think, have learnt of the sailors.

'6 June: A terrific gale blowing all day, in the midst of which the poor little boy died. We lay to

under double reefed topsails and staysail. The sea rushed by, a mass of wild foam, as if it were

too hurried to form into billows. It looked as if it were impelled by demoniacal influence. The

white summits of the water flew up in spray al! around, rendering it impossible to leave the

cabin. The people below did not seem frightened, or penetrated with a feeling that God was

exerting, or allowing the Evil Spirit to exert, the power of his might. They were neither praying to

their Saviour, or the Blessed Virgin, or the Holy Saints. But they were grumbling sadly that their

dinners were not nicely cooked... It is blowing an awful gale of wind, though the ship is doing

admirably. The sea, sky, and the winds are all mixed together in mad confusion, producing a

chaos to the eye, and a chaos to the hearing. The cuddy has been full of water ail day.

7 June: The wind having moderated, we set the foresail and got away. At noon I read the burial

service (though much curtailed) over the poor little boy. With one hand I leant upon a gun, with

the other I held the Office book. In the midst of the service a deluge of a sea came over us, and

nearly swept us

overboard. But we soon regained our places, and the funeral rites went on as before. We are

now about off Cape Leeuwin.

The boy who died, almost within sight of Australia, was Jacob Kernot's only surviving and older

son.

Robert Poynter, on another ship in 1854, had a teenage asthmatic daughter who died in the

southern Indian Ocean. He wrote: 'She asked me this morning if I thought she would live to

reach Melbourne. I told her i thought she could not. She then said: "I hope I am prepared.

God's will be done, not mine. I do not wish to live, suffering as I have done lately." She called

for most of the passengers and bid them all goodbye.' She died three days later. Her father

wrote: 'Her remains were lowered into the sea, which was raging at the time most furiously... it

was hard to part from her and to dispose of her remains in this way.'

A few of the babies who died or died in miscarriages were disposed of without any ceremony.

Thomas Snell, in 1863: 'A child died at eight o'clock and the father passed us with the little

corpse in his arms going to put it out at one of the port-holes.'

Cape Leeuwin was on the southwesterly edge of the coiony of Western Australia, which had

been established as recently (and its capital, Perth, founded) in 1829. Still sailing eastwards, the

Lady McNaghten moved into and across the Great Australian Bight. Even far out at sea, with

no land to be seen, there were scents and signs of land.

William Howitt, a Quaker, wrote in 1852: 'A gentleman coming into the cuddy said: "Come on

deck and smell the land!" People could not at first believe it, but there it was, strong and

delicious... The wind is blowing strong off the shore, and the fragrance continues. Something like

the scent of a hayfield, but more spice... This evening another sign of our approach to land - a

hawk.'

James Robertson: 'This inert mass of cooped up beings became galvanized into a new life by - a

butterfly!'

The Rev JD Mereweather wrote in his diary on 11 June: 'We have made a very good reckoning

since yesterday. As we are now approaching the Terra Austraiis, I assembled all my scholars,

and distributed books to them, according to their deserts. The children listened with much

attention to the address I gave them on the occasion; and the parents thanked me most heartily

for having done no more than my duty. Gave some larger books also to the grown-up people.

'12 June: The married people complain that the young men who have an enclosed cabin in their

part of the ship, invite unmarried men from the fore part of the vessel to pass the evening with

them; that they make much noise, and manage to leave just as the women and children are

undressing. This enclosed cabin is so situated, that it is necessary to pass through the whole

length of the saloon to get to it.

'13 June: The first mate thought he saw land, but it was an illusion. The emigrants are very much

excited at the idea of being on land after so long a voyage. At night something occurred which

occasioned very great talk and

scandal. This is entirely owing to the charterers allowing unmarried men to have berths aft. To-

day I examined all the children. Find that they have made much progress during the voyage, in

spelling, reading, and scripture knowledge, but not much in writing. In fact, now every chiid who

is of an age to read, can read; and all, except the very little ones, can answer easy questions on

religious subjects. The elder ones can say the Church Catechism word for word, and seem to

understand the nature of the Holy Sacraments. Throughout the voyage they have been in the

habit of learning the collects of the Sundays and other holydays. My two boys can say by heart

20 out of the 39 Articles, and prove them pretty well by texts from scriptures. They can also say

many of the church prayers. 1 hope that, by the blessing of God, the children have not morally

deteriorated during the voyage, though I am sure that the parents have.'

There is no knowing whether this was true of the Honeycombes. But it would be nice to think

that the youngest, John, was a recipient of one of Mereweather's books and that he kept it for

some years, as a souvenir of the voyage. Perhaps Mereweather also inculcated some idea of

learning in the seven-year-old- For in later life John would write lucidly and well. In this

connection we should also note that John's older sisters, Elizabeth and Martha, also wrote a

good hand when they signed their marriage certificates.

On the ship, excitement grew as the ship neared journey's end, and no doubt there were more

occasions of scandalous behaviour, though better concealed. John Mereweather conceals his

emotions as ususal, but is much enamoured with the weather.

'13 June: In hourly expectation of seeing land. At night the sea was a blaze of phosphoric light;

and a shoal of porpoises that were plunging round the ship, darted along like phantoms of fire.

'14 June: At two am, we came in sight of Kangaroo Island, which forms the right side of

Investigator Strait as you enter from the west. The coast of this island is high, rocky, and

undulating, and higher land is to be seen farther inland. They tell me that there is so much

ironstone in this island that the needle of the compass wili not traverse there. In the afternoon,

turning to the left, and leaving the island behind us, we sailed up the Gulf of St Vincent, on which

Adelaide is situated. Before dark we passed the Troubridge shoals. The climate is delicious,

although it is in the depth of winter; the atmosphere is very translucent, and the sunset has been

most gorgeous. During the day the second mate told me that he had sold £100 worth of ale,

porter, and wine during the voyage, all of which was paid for in cash. To my certain knowledge

there is a great quantity of gold among the emigrants on board. One man told me that he has

500 sovereigns with him.

'15 June: Saw a very glorious sunrise. The coast lies on our right, a low tract of land extending

about seven miles inland, and bounded by a range of lofty and picturesque hills, which stand out

from the sky in clear and mellow relief under a pure Australian sky. The climate is delicious,

finer than that of Italy in winter, there being no piercing Tramantona. During the day I was much

gratified by receiving a letter of thanks signed by nearly all the passengers. It was thus: "Dear

and Rev Sir - We feel that it would be a source of great regret to us, were we at the termination

of our voyage together, to part from you without tendering

our thanks and ackowledgments for the great kindness which you have shown us, both as a

minister in nightly joining with us in prayer; and as a Christian friend, in advising and assisting us

in our doubts and difficulties. This we feel doubly bound to do, as we have had no reason to

expect it at your hands, who came on board merely as a cuddy passenger. We bid you farewell

with regret, and pray that you may meet with a full recompense both here and hereafter for the

kindness you have shown us."

'At three pm, we got abreast of the lightship, an old French whaier of beautiful mould called La

Ville de Bordeaux. Soon after a steamer took us in tow and towed us into the Torrens Reach to

Port Adelaide, a confused collection of buildings built in a swamp at the edge of the water.

Adelaide lies about seven miles inland, at the base of the hills.1

9, Adelaide

To reach Port Adelaide the Lady McNaghten would have been towed northwards up the coast,

around a headland, and then southwards into the swampy, islanded inlet or Torrens Reach.

It seems the passengers remained on board that night, those who were disembarking at

Adelaide, and not going on to Port Phillip, leaving the Lady McNaghten on 17 June.

The Rev John Mereweather remained on the ship until 24 June, when he and his luggage were

transferred to the Sea Queen. He wrote: 'The London ship goes no further than Adelaide and

has contracted with the Sea Queen to take on to Port Phillip the Melbourne passengers.'

Presumably the Honeycombes also stayed on the Lady McNaghten for a week, until they too

changed ships.

We do not know much about what John Mereweather thought of his first views of Australia - let

aione what the Honeycombes thought. But a vivid picture has been painted by another diarist,

William Deakin, who arrived on the Samuel Boddington three months before the Honeycombes.

The port', he wrote, (as distinct from the town) 'is very similar to a thriving English village near

London, although some few things give it a foreign aspect, such as buliock drays, the difference

in foiiage and the prevalence of straw hats and pipes and a kind of Yankee independence of

manners... The general appearance of the locality indicates great sterility to a stranger. But yet

when you get into town you wonder where all the fine fruits come from, grapes, tomatoes,

plums, peaches, apples, etc... We have not found it at all unpleasant excepting the dust in the

roads, being of such a light sandy character, is thrown up by the traffic on it.'

Adelaide was stili in some disorder, having been founded but 13 years earlier. Like ail the other

state capitals it was situated a few miles inland, on a piain bounded on the south and east by the

Mt Lofty range. The site was chosen and the city carefully surveyed and planned by Col William

Light. It was named after the then Queen, wife of William IV.

The town Adelaide probably made a poor impression on the Honeycombes, being chaotic,

dusty, fly-infested, and when it rained (the rainy season was about to begin) a morass of mud.

But the autumn there was not unlike a breezy English summer. And the settlement was curiously

full of miners: its port area was stacked with copper ore.

The first copper mine in Australia had in fact, been opened at Kapunda, 70 km north of

Adelaide, in January 1844; that at Burra was begun the following year. Many of the miners

were Cornish. William and his family when on shore may well have come across a family or two

from Calstock itself, who would

answer their many questions about work and wages and weather, about aborigines,

accommodation, prices and poisonous snakes.

It is at Adelaide that the Honeycombes enter the Australian records, the South Australian

{'W Honeycombe wife and four children'), and adding: Two children named Kernot died, and

two were born, named Richardson and Chapman.'

There is no mention in the Register of the apprentice who feil overboard or of the still-born

child.

The day before this (16 June, a Sunday) all the passengers were allowed on shore for the first

time. Of this momentous event John Mereweather says nothing, except: 'Went to the church at

Port Adelaide to return thanks to Almighty God for having extended his fostering protection

over me during a long and perilous voyage.'

Did he also give thanks that all his ship companions were also saved? But as many of the

emigrants accompanied him to church, he may have assumed they would give thanks on their

own behalf. The Honeycombes might have gone along, for it was a special occasion; and

perhaps the younger children, Martha and John, had prospered in Mereweather's shipboard

school.

He continues: 'For 138 days we had been exposed to the chances of "lightning and tempest; to

plague, pestilence, and famine." But He who sits above in grandeur inaccessible, had of his

tender mercy delivered us from them all. Unfortunately the holy communion was not celebrated

on that day, so that we did not receive his holy mystery, nor offer and present to the Lord at his

altar, ourselves, our souls, and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice. But all who

were present assured me that they would offer up their sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving at the

first communion which they could have the opportunity of attending.'

The description of MereweatherJs week in Adelaide, which was shared by William

Honeycombe's family (at least the weather was) is fuller than usual and begins a second diary,

the Diary of a Working Clergyman in Australia and Tasmania, which was published in London

in 1854.

'17 June, 1850: Today, though in midwinter, we have a gfowing sun, modified by a balmy

breeze. All the deck is in confusion, for the emigrants, who go no further than Adelaide, are

getting out their baggage. I, at the request of the passengers, drew out a testimonial for the

doctor, which was unanimously signed; and he deserves this mark of attention, for,

professionally, he has been most assiduous, and socially, he has behaved as a gentleman should.

Many of the surgeons on board of emigrant ships are disreputable characters in every way. In

the course of the day I went with two passengers to Adelaide. [Possibly his cabin companions

Mr Rogers and Mr Wildman.] We travelled in a public conveyance, which was a Whitechapel

cart, drawn by two horses, tandem fashion. The drivers of these vehicles carry as many

passengers as they can get. We were said to be lucky, for there were only six besides us three.

The road, which passed through a desolate tract of country, was full of large holes, which by

recent rains had been converted into round ponds. These ponds we

had to coast round, making a great halfcircie, so that instead of travelling seven miles, the

distance between Port Adelaide and Adelaide, we travelled at least ten miles.

On our way we met and passed innumerable bullock-drays, drawn by eight, or ten, or 12

patient, hard-tugging bullocks. We also saw several of the aborigines, clothed in dirty blankets

and kangaroo and opossum-skins. They looked half-starved, like the dogs that followed them,

and were hideously dirty and ugly. Adelaide strikes me as a very miserable, squalid place. Wide

streets are laid out, but there are few houses in them, and those few are mean and wretched: the

roads are full of holes, receptacles of dust in summer and mud in winter; public-houses abound,

and drunkenness seems everywhere prevalent. There is a substantial Change for the merchants

to congregate in, but ail the business of Adelaide seems done at a noted public-house, kept by a

man called Coppin. Here is to be seen a strange mixture of merchants, newly arrived

immigrants, squatters, bullock-drivers, shopkeepers, loose characters, trafficking, blaspheming,

laughing, singing, yelling, and drinking innumerable nobblers. Everybody goes there, for every

business rendezvous is made at Coppin's.

'As I could get no conveyance to the port in the evening, I slept at an inn there. Each bed-room

has three very plain sofa-couches, and I was told that if I didn't wish companions, I must pay for

all three. The guests here live table d'hote fashion, and their breakfasts, dinners and teas, are

served with a monotonous prodigality. At every meai there are beef sausages, mutton-chops,

beef steaks, roast mutton and boiied beef, good potatoes, and most delicious bread; and of

these three substantial meals the guests partake with the most perservering elasticity. The table-

talk is of bullocks, highly flavoured with oaths, and each person seems bent on making his

fortune as quickly as possible. I can imagine the early Puritan settlers in North America to have

been a very different set of persons.

'A young woman at table, speaking contemptuously of some newly-arrived immigrants - "Jimmy

Grants," I think, was the slang term she applied to them -1 asked her how long she had been

out herself? "Oh," she said, "I have been out six weeks, and I feel quite colonial already." I told

her I could well believe her. But the affectation and pretension of these people is to me very

extraordinary. To hear them talk, you would suppose they had held important social positions in

their fatherland, instead of which, three parts out of four have been driven out of it by hunger, or

by crime.

'18 June: I returned to the port almost blind with the dust. Walking out with the doctor in the

evening, I saw ever so many of our passengers drunk, some of whom had during the voyage

made many promises of amendment of life. Now I am quite sure that these men were sincere

when they made those promises, and if they were to renew them tomorrow I should believe

them sincere, although perfectly conscious that they would relapse at the first temptation... After

all, perhaps, evil may not be without its uses: the moral world would become flat, stagnant, and

inactive, if the acid of sin were not introduced into its composition to cause fermentation, and

subsequently purification. As in the political world, so in the moral world, fermentation is more

wholesome than stupid stagnation.

'20 June: Tomorrow is midwinter, and it is very hot. What must the summer be here! Went to

Adelaide in a Whitechapel cart as before. Saw a monument erected in memory of Col Light: it is

ugly enough. Walked over to Kensington to call upon the Bishop of Adelaide, who lives in a

charming cottage nestling in a flower garden. I had a cordial reception from this excellent

prelate, who combines the dignity of a high ecclesiastic with the simpiicity and good nature of an

English country gentleman.

'22 June: A very beautiful day again, cloudless and warm as an English August day. In geniality

the climate here far exceeds that of Italy in winter. There is no wind approaching to the piercing

Tramontana. But i understand that the heat here during the summer months is frightful. At that

period, during a hot wind, the thermometer will range from 100° to 120° in the house.

'Visited the schoo! of the aborigines, where I found 33 boys and 17 girls. I examined them

before the inspector and master, and they answered me correctly some simple scriptural

questions. I was shown their writing, and one of their copy-books was presented to me, which I

have now. The penmanship is capital. They sang one or two hymns very nicely, and if I had not

had before me their swarthy faces and restless, flashing eyes, I could have fancied myself in an

English parish school. But these Australian aborigines are a very unsatisfactory race of people.

They slip away from the grasp of civilisation in the most extraordinary manner; and as to

permanent religious impressions they are, as far as I can judge, incapable of them. With very

acute pereptive faculties, they are absolutely without reflective faculties, and it is next to

impossible tc create the simplest religious impressions in the breast of a being who can't think.

These people, too, are pure atheists; they do not even worship idols. But they have a childish

fear of some harming spirit, equivalent to what our children call Old Bogie, and of the influence

which the spirits of the dead may have over them. They believe, too, in magical powers. They

cling to their boundless plains and their forests with a tenacious animal instinct which nothing can

quench, neither good masters, good clothes, good food, nor the most excellent religious

instruction...'

On Sunday, 23 June, the Rev Mereweather read the litary and preached on board the Lady

McNaghten. In the afternoon he went ashore to see Jacob Kernot, who was very ill, and

bedded in the Commercial Hotel. Nothing more is mentioned about Jacob, whose sons had

died on the voyage out and who was probably suffering from the same disease (tubercufosis?)

that killed them. One hopes he survived, having come so far and endured much.

Meanwhile, a group of passengers from the ship strolled upon the sea-beach, the other side of

the headland, and brought back pieces of coral, beautiful shells, bits of sponge and pretty

pebbles.

Were the Honeycombes among them? If only we knew what Mereweather thought of them and

they of him. Because he must have had some dealings with them: William, aged 53, was a

respectable craftsman, perhaps a master mason, and an intermediate passenger. Both men had

lived in Bristol, where Mereweather was bom. And now William and Mereweather were about

to set out on the second leg of their voyage.

The Sea Queen, another barque and smaller than the Lady McNaghten, had reached Adelaide

from Liverpool (having left on 27 January) on 25 March 1850. She then sailed for Launceston

in Tasmania on 11 April, arriving there on 20 April.

That island, still called Van Piemen's Land - it would not officially become Tasmania until 1856

- had been a penai colony since 1803; nearly 70,000 convicts were shipped there before

transportation ended in the eastern states in 1852. Launceston was in the north of the island,

some 40 miles up the navigable Tamar River. To get to Tasmania, the Sea Queen would have

had to traverse the stormy Bass Strait, by-passing King Island, a voyage of nine to fourteen

days.

The Launceston Examiner notes that the ship was a barque of 404 tons, that RJ Wood was the

master, and that apart from two unnamed passengers in the steerage, two (cabin) passengers

were Mr Nicholas Barker and Mr PB Cogiin. The ship's cargo was very light - a keg of cherry

brandy.

From 27 April advertisements appear in the Launceston Examinerior cargo and passengers and

the Sea Queen's sailing date is given as 10 May. She finally left Launceston on 15 May, with

Wood as master, and with Mr PB Cogiin, Mr Board and Mr JF Bennett as passengers. Her

cargo, apparently ordered by PB Cogiin, consisted of 1,175 posts and rails, 304 pieces of

quartering, 86 planks, 1,000 spokes, 17 beams, 5,000 shingles, 135,000 palings, 13 bags of

oats and 16 boxes of fruit. It seems that Mr Cogiin, who must have had a quantity of ready

money, was purchasing materials to fence a farm and build a home. Or else he was a merchant.

The Sea Queen returned to Adelaide on Wednesday 29 May, her arrival being noted in the

South Australian Registerthe following day. She must have had bad weather, for this trip took

two weeks.

The Register said on 30 May: The Sea Queen from Launceston. This barque, with a full cargo

of building materials and merchandise, and three passengers, arrived yesterday from

Launceston, May 15th.' This entry was expanded on another page under Shipping Intelligence -

'Arrived. Wednesday. May 29... The barque Sea Queen, 404 tons, Wood, master, from

Launceston 15th May. Passengers - Mr Board, Mr JF Bennett, and Mr PB Cogiin.'

So she was already docked at Port Adelaide when the Lady McNaghten arrived and remained

there for almost a month, a stretch of time possibly accounted for by the need for repairs or

because she had to be refitted for passengers. Before departure she was moored alongside the

Lady McNaghten,

The Mr Cogiin named in the Register as one of the three passengers from Launceston may have

been an emigrant from Liverpool. He seems to have taken the opportunity to visit Van Diemen's

Land and do some shopping before rejoining his family in Adelaide. For a Mr, Mrs and Miss

Cogiin are listed among those who departed from Adelaide on the Sea Queen on 25 June.

On 24 June, John Mereweather noted that although it was midwinter 'yet it is a lovely day, with

a hot sun, as in August with us.'

He went on: 'Transferred my effects on board the Sea Queen, Captain

, a very fine barque, originally intended for the opium trade... Before

starting I took tea with my good friend, the surgeon of the ship which brought me

from London... At night one of our passengers, who was very drunk, passing from one ship to

the other, fell between the two, and was drowned. His brother, who was, if possible, more

intoxicated, abused the captain in unmeasured terms for his want of proper precautions. All was

confusion on board the two ships. Lights were waving to and fro amidst the baggage and down

in the holds; boats were lowering to endeavour to find the drowning man, women were

screaming and crying, men were shouting and swearing, whilst in the midst was the brother,

sobering by degrees, mingling strong hysterical sobs with his imprecations. The body was never

found.'

Mereweather doesn't give the man's name. But as he had a brother, and is 'one of our

passengers', we may surmise that he was either James or J Lawrence (John or Joseph?), and

would have left two or five children fatherless. Or that he was W Andrews, perhaps brother of

John Andrews who had a wife.

This death would have unsettled all those departing on the Sea Queen and seemed like a bad

omen. But Mereweather makes no further account of it, nor says much about the departure on

25 June except: 'We were towed down to the lighthouse at daybreak, and anchored there. The

poor people were huddled below without comfort, and almost without, decency. Provisions for

a fortnight are put on board.' That took three days.

There were 92 passengers on the Sea Queen, including the children, but not ail those listed at

Adelaide on 17 June as being bound for Port Phillip left Adelaide on the Sea Queen. This may

have been because all the passengers listed in the Melbourne Argus on arrival there are classed

as intermediate - apart from two cabin passengers. Presumably those who had travelled as

steerage on the Lady McNaghten could not afford the extra cost of being upped to intermediate

and would have continued onto Port Phillip as steerage passengers on another ship, not the Sea

Queen.

Those who now travelled onwards with the six Honeycombes on the Sea Queen were the Rev

Mereweather and Mr George Rogers (minus Mr Wildman) in the cabin. Classed as

intermediate were Mr and Mrs Andrews; Mr and Mrs Gee and two sons; Mr and Mrs Ball; Mr

and Mrs Dunn; Mr and Mrs Cadwallader and Master Cadwaflader; Mr and Mrs Richardson,

now with three children; and Mr and Mrs Lawrence, now credited with six children.

As there was also a Lawrence among the single men, who might have been a teenager, this

would account for all the chiidren (seven in all) who are iisted as arriving at Adelaide. The

disappearance of the other Mr and Mrs Lawrence may be explained by the fact that he was the

brother who was drowned and that his widow remained in Adelaide, hoping his body would be

found, while her children continued on their journey with the other Mr and Mrs J Lawrence.

The Silvers, Brinsmeads, Davises, Wrays, and Jacob Kernot, who were all scheduled to leave

the Lady McNaghten, along with some single men, did so. So did Harriet Hill and Eliza Vivian.

And the Chapmans. But they may have gone on to Melbourne or Sydney on another ship.

Most of the 92 passengers on the Sea Queen had not in feet travelled on the Lady McNaghten.

There were 18 married couples on board, 30 single men,

and three unaccompanied or single women; Mrs Haniey, Miss Penny and ivliss Brooks, who

was very likely related to the Mr and Mrs Brooks and a single male Brooks also on the Sea

Queen.

Apart from the loading of provisions, a new cargo was taken on board. It was noted in the

South Australian Register, under Exports, as - '85 coils rope, J Newman; 2 bags coffee,

Younghusband and Co.' This was enlarged by the Argus on the ship's arrival at Port Phillip to -

'Sea Queen, from Liverpool, via Adelaide. 85 coiis Coir rope, 2 bags coffee, 5 quarter casks

brandy, Order.'

While the ship was at anchor off the lighthouse at Cape Jervis on 26 June, waiting for Captain

Wood to come on board, some passengers did some fishing over the side.

Mereweather wrote: 'One of the emigrants caught a strange fish, as big as a large sole, prickly

all over, with two lateral and two dorsal fins, which has the power of swelling itself out like a

toad... Some called it a sea-porcupine, others a devil-fish, others a sea-toad. All the three

names are applicable.'

Another day passed before the ship set sail, delayed further by the weather.

Mereweather wrote on Friday, 28 June: 'Weighted anchor at day-break, and stood down the

Gulf at eight knots. When we got to the entrance of the Backstairs Passage, the wind became

so foul that we were obliged to let go anchor for the night. Continue giving religious instruction

to some of the passengers. My two boys said by heart the catechism and ail the more important

Articles. Where we anchored was in Kingscote Bay, Kangaroo Island.'

Kangaroo Island was south and west of Cape Jervis. The Backstairs Passage was in between.

Antechamber Bay, where the ship was next forced to anchor, was in the northern tip of

Kangaroo Island's eastern end.

Wrote Mereweather on 29 June: 'Fine weather, but the wind foul as it can blow. Were beating

through Backstairs Passage all day, and at night got no further than Antechamber Bay in

Kangaroo Island, where we found good shelter and good anchorage. We have already

consumed five out of our 14 days' provisions. An old woman, of at least 75 assured me that she

was just turned 58.

'Sunday, 30 June: A very fine, calm day, and inexpressibly warm, considering it is midwinter.

Left Antechamber Bay at daybreak, and got well out to sea before nightfall. Could have no

service in consequence of the confusion which predominated down below.'

And so, at last, after being towed out of Port Adelaide five days ago, the Sea Queen set out

with the Honeycombes and the Rev Mereweather on the final leg of their transoceanic voyage.

10. Arrival

The mood on the ship would have been different this time, but the passengers would have been

seasick again. The easterly coastal journey was hazardous, and winter gales would have made it

more so as the Sea Queen sailed southeast, past Capes Bridgewater and Nelson, past Port

Fairy, and the huge cliff-stacks called the Twelve Apostles.

South of Cape Otway, on the ship's starboard side, lay King island. It was here, in 1835, that

the Neva, transporting female convicts and their children from Cork in Ireland to Sydney, struck

a reef - only 15 of the 241 on board survived. And it was here that the Cataraqui struck in

1845, with the loss of 399 lives.

The Sea Queen had fair weather. John Mereweather wrote: '3 July: A wonderfully bright day, of

uncommon brilliancy, but no wind. The emigrants are looking serious, and speculating as to

whether the water and provisions will hold out. For we are only victualled for 14 days, and

already, the ship not having made half her passage, we have entered upon the ninth day. We

were told that the voyage would probably last no longer than a week.

'5 July: A fair wind sprung up during the night, which took us abreast of Cape Otway, which lies

about 80 miles from the entrance of Port Phillip. In the afternoon the Captain caught a shark, six

feet long, with my hook. After he was hooked he was partially lifted out of the water; a running

noose was then run down the line, over his head and under his fins. He was then hoisted by this

on to the deck.1

Cape Otway was the turning-point: it lay to port. A lighthouse had been erected there in 1848.

At night, when passengers and crew saw its flash, they cheered. During the day when they saw

the Cape, they were silent: huge cliffs rose out of the ocean, surf breaking at their base with a

roar. On their summits and beyond, stretching inland, were forests of sombre trees. No

habitations or fields were to be seen.

But once past Cape Otway the Sea Queen was only a few days' sail from Port Phillip Bay and

her passengers' final destination, Melbourne.

'6 July: A calm day and a foul wind. The land seems to be flying from us as we advance. Our

water and provisions will be entirely out tomorrow or next day. We caught two barracootas,

long fish, lean, and hungry-looking, and full of bones. They are, however, very eatable. The sea

here is fuil of them. A captain of a trading vessel between Port Phillip and Van Diemen's Land

had so great a renown for catching these fish, and giving his passengers nothing else to eat, that

he was called "Barracoota Jack."

'Sunday, 7 July: A fair wind having sprung up during the night, we found ourselves off Port

Phillip Head at early morning. At the entrance of the magnificent sheet of water called Port

Phillip stand two points, Point Lonsdale and Point Nepean. Between these two points a strong

tide runs, with great force, through a narrow channel two miles wide. As we entered, the wind

blew from the

south, and we had the tide against us, so that the water was turbulent and much agitated, and

numerous were the vortices through which the ship ploughed her way.'

This narrow strip of water that led to Port Phillip was called the Rip. Diarist John Fenwick

described the approach as seen from his ship.

The land tapers down to the Entrance, where it is very low... The first appearance of the shore

was not so very inviting... It was sandy, rocky and barren-looking, although there was

somewhat of green and furzy-looking hills. The lighthouse and fine white cottages of the signal-

station perched on the heights looked very pretty. After getting through the Heads, we appeared

again as it were in the open sea.1

Away to their left, beyond the Bellarine Peninsula, lay Geelong. Across the bay was Melbourne.

Wrote Mereweather: 'Pleasing was the sail up this beautiful bay, which has a length of 45 miles

and a breadth of 40 miles. The blue sky smiled above us, and the blue water beneath us

responded with its shimmering reflections. The atmosphere which we breathed was as pure as

the purest Italian, and ail felt that elasticity of spirits which springs from clear fine air passing

through the lungs. On our left rose boldly against the sky the picturesque summit of Station

Peak; in front of us the Mount Macedon range of blue mountains mellowed into the bluer sky;

whilst on our right the distant Alps, stretching away into GippsSand, completed a scene of

beauty which ! had then never seen surpassed, nor have ! yet, writing this as I do after a lapse

of many years, and after much travel.'

Now was the time of affirming friendships, of remembering the good, more than the bad of the

voyage; of wondering what lay ahead, what would happen tomorrow, next week, next month.

Some could hardly wait to leave their floating home. Not so with others. Wrote one lady diarist;

'Although glad to see dry land, I shall bid adieu to my snug little berth with regret - as long as I

am in the ship i feel in Old England. How then can 1 say farewell without a tear when the last

link be broken which binds me to the land I love?'

Slowly the Sea Queen laboured across the bay. Slowly the shore before Melbourne, other

ships, some houses, shacks and jetties, came into view. The main township was a few miles

inland. There was the thrill of arrival, of solemn achievement: great distances had been crossed

and much endured.

What would the future hold?

Boxes and cases would have been brought up from below, so that the passengers could put on

clean clothes that had not been spoiled by sea-water. The ship herself would have been scoured

and cleaned, with new sets of sails secured on the masts and the anchor tested and made ready

to drop.

When at last it was loosed and, plunging down, tied the ship to the floor of Hobson's Bay, the

hearts of emigrants ieapt, or sank, and their eyes turned again to the shore with more anxious or

eager surmise..

Mereweather wrote; Towards the gloaming of the evening we anchored in Hobson's Bay, at the

entrance of the Yarra Yarra (flowing, flowing or ever flowing) River. Stayed on board all that

night'

It depended on the weather, and the time of year, as to the passengers' immediate impressions,

while they tried to avoid obstructing the crew's activities.

'Scenery: mud and swamp, swamp and mud,' wrote Mrs Clacy. William Rayment: 'Clouds of

dust rising from Melbourne so thick as to impede the view of the background.' Both wrote in

1852, Rayment in summer.

Baron Menyansky wrote in 1848: The flat shore - the town marked out, and not yet built - the

temporary huts - the naked landscape without vegetation... I could never get rid of the idea I

conceived at first that the work of creation had stopped short in Australia, for everything seems

but half emerged from chaos, and life to be scarcely developed.'

But six years later John Fenwick would enthuse: 'No account of this bay that I have seen is

exaggerated - it is magnificent, both as to its scenery and capability - a fine fleet of large ships -

the elite of all nations were lying in it. The sides were beautifuily wooded and studded with

ornamental residences - in front lay Sandridge, the beach like a busy town - over its tops you

could see the steeples of Melbourne and rising again behind it the Dandenong Hills, upwards of

20 miles off. To the left lay Williamstown - the mouth of the Yarra, with a fine stone lighthouse.

Now and then boats from the shore came alongside, and soon a steamer... Now we were

actually at our destination and in the evening, it was very pleasant on deck.'

That was in August 1854. Melbourne in 1850, like Adelaide, was still something of a mess,

much like a Wild West town, with wooden shacks, huts and tents, dotted about or crammed

together. Stone buildings were few; the few wide streets were unpaved; trees for miies around

had been felled. Sited two and a half miles inland on the Yarra River by John Batman, a sheep

farmer from Van Diemen's Land, in 1835, it had been surveyed two years later and named

Melbourne after the British prime minister.

The Sea Queen would have anchored off Sandridge in Hobson's Bay, an indentation of Port

Phillip Bay that contained the mouth of the Yarra. Beyond was a promontory overbuilt with the

marine warehouses and shanties of Williamstown.

It was Sunday, 7 July, 1850, and the Honeycombes had arrived.

They left the ship on Monday, 8 July.

Like most if not all of the passengers they would have paid to be rowed with their possessions

to a jetty at Williamstown or Sandridge, from where most would then clamber onto a small

steamer that would take them up the nine miles of the curving Yarra to Melbourne, to one of the

many wharves that jammed the river's north bank, beside the grid of congested streets that

formed the nucleus of the muddled, messy new town.

Edward Webster wrote in 1857: 'A steamer came and took us with our luggage up the Yarra to

Cole's Wharf at Melbourne... It was an amusing sight to see us all assembled on the wharf, our

luggage around us. looking for all the world like so many birds who had escaped from their

cage, and did not know

where to fly to: each stood asking advice of his neighbour, one proposing this thing and another

that'

John Mereweather wrote on 8 July: 'Left the Sea Queen, after bidding farewell to the amiable

Captain, and went aboard a small river steamer at 8 am. Steamed up the Yarra Yarra, whose

banks are very ugly. They are low, covered with sad-looking, short scrub, and studded with

boiling-down establishments, which circumfuse most fetid odours. In about a couple of hours

we arrived at Melbourne, a considerable town, sufficiently well situated on two hills and the

intervening valley. The main streets are wide - too wide, if anything - and the drainage ought to

be perfect. The river is spanned by a handsome stone bridge of one arch. The streets are

infested by enormous dogs, who thrive here on the cheap butchers' meat Went to a very

excellent hotel called the Prince of Wales, where I dined and slept.'

The Honeycombes' lodging would not have been so comfortable. Where did they go? Where

did they spend their first night in Melbourne?

Or did they already have a local person's name and an address? They had to find a lodging for

that wintry night, and for the next few weeks, while they accustomed themselves to their

whereabouts and to the strangeness, not only of being ashore, but of attending the birth of a new

city and a colony, and a new way of life.

There was much to do, to learn, to organise; and William and Henry, stonemasons, must find a

job. Or did they already have one? Then there was food to cook, a fire to light, damp clothes to

be dried, damaged goods to discard, and time taken for a drink and a rest.

At some moment that night, by candle-light, they would have looked at each other, like all new

arrivals, with doubt and some regret. Why had they come here - all that way? And for what?

And what would now transpire? For a moment, thinking of England and home, they would have

remembered the Lady McNaghten and the Sea Queen, so long their home, their last link with

home, the latter now bereft and empty, benighted and silent out on Hobson's Bay.

Outside, on Flinders Street and Coilins Street and Bourke Street, unfamiliar sounds assailed the

new arrivals, unknown voices in a foreign land.

Many men had already made of nothing a new reality, and given every aspect of the new world,

every piece of nature and of their own creations a name - like Flinders, Collins and Bourke.

These names and others would be commemorated in cities and towns and hamlets as yet

undeveloped and now nothing more than a stretch of native bush.

William and his family, alone in Melbourne that night, wouid never have dreamed, in a hundred

years, that in a hundred years a street many miles away to the north would one day bear their

name.

11. Melbourne and the Three Elizabeths

Although we have no knowledge of the activities of the Honeycombes in their first months in

Melbourne, we know that they were living there until at least the end of 1852.

We also know what the Rev Mereweather was doing, some of the time. And as his views,

impressions, and brief descriptions coincide with the Honeycombes' stay, his diary entries may

still pertain to them.

The day after he left the Sea Queen and settled into the Prince of Waies Hotel, he Galled on the

Anglican Bishop, and the Governor, but found neither at home. He noted that they lived in

'pretty cottages surrounded by grounds and gardens, on the banks of the Yarra.'

Two days later, on 11 July, he was invited to become an honorary member of the Melbourne

Club and dined there that night with a man, unnamed, who introduced him to the club, and six

others. Mereweather was impressed - with the-Club and the town, with where he-was, and

with himself.

He wrote: 'We sat down at six o'clock at a well-appointed tabie, Sighted by many wax-lights,

and we were waited upon by two menservants, one in dress livery and the other out of livery.

At night, as I lay in an excellent bed at the hotel, I couid not help making the following

reflections. Here am I, after a voyage of 13 or 14 thousand miles through the great ocean,

arrived on a vast continent, the existence of which was unknown to the world until 200 years

ago, and which was not inhabited by white men until 62 years ago. More than that, I have been

partaking of an excellent repast, served in a way which would be considered creditable in

London or Paris, in the society of educated and wealthy men, in. a portion of that continent

which was only discovered 17 or 18 years ago, and in a city which 16 years back was a savage

waste, trodden by savage men in chase of the emu and the kangaroo. In this city there are

25,000 inhabitants, surrounded by ali the necessaries and comforts of life; there are well-built

houses; shops filled with everything one can require; two churches, besides chapels; active

ministers of all demoninations; a well-managed custom house, gaol, and post office; numerous

colonial trading vessels clustering at the river quays; whilst at the mouth of the Yarra, by

Williamstown, lie at anchor fourteen or fifteen full-rigged ships. What wonderful civilising

tendencies the Anglo-Saxon race seems to have! Instruments are they of an all-wise providence

to substitute in the remote extremities of the world humanising Christianity for savage paganism,

a pure code of morals for abominable impurities, government for anarchy, peace for bloodshed,

industry for idleness, the certain fruits of agriculture for the precarious yield of the chasei An

Englishman is never content to do anything that he undertakes, by halves; he will pull all

surrounding influences up to his level; he never descends to them. It is the genius of the British

colonist to reproduce in the most distant regions, and under the most unfavourable auspices, the

minutest details of early associations, to surround himself at the antipodes with the atmosphere

of home.'

!t seems to have rained a lot in Melbourne about this time, as 'rnucT is mentioned twice in the

next three days.

'12 July: Breakfasted with Mr N

, the truly excellent incumbent of St

Peter's Church. He lives in a pretty house, quite close to the church. The mud renders the

streets almost impassable; it rears itself up above the boots.

'13 July: Saw the Bishop of Melbourne (Dr Perry), a thin and very acuie-!ooking prelate.

Bought a Queen's head for a letter. The portrait of her Majesty is a wonderfully coarse

production of art, very much like a public-house sign reduced.

'Sunday, 14 July: Waded to church through mud four inches deep. St James's is the first church

that was built in Melbourne. Its external architecture is very hideous; internally it is, if anything,

worse. The prayers are read, and the sermon preached, from two lofty desks of polished wood

in front of the chancel. The font is placed between these, so as to impede the view of the

communion table. The service was celebrated with great decorum, and the Bishop preached a

clear, logical, and impressive discourse, of what is termed the low-church school...

'16 July: Mr La Trobe, the Superintendent or Deputy-Governor of the Colony, did me the

honour of calling on me. This gentleman is a Swiss by birth, and has distinguished himself by

publishing several amusing and instructive works, such as "The Alpenstock", "Travels in

Mexico", etc. It requires a great dea! of temper to be governor of a colony. The game of

"ministerial" and "opposition", "Conservative" and "Liberal", is played out here just as in the

mother-country. But it is done in a coarser and rougher spirit. The head of the government is

always the butt of the most personal and virulent attacks from the opposition journals, which,

like mosquitoes, are always buzzing about his ears, and sometimes they sting very sharply. A

nervous, irritable, or a refined, fastidious man, had much better stay at home than accept such

an office.

'17 July: Hear that the climate is very variable. Last autumn influenza was very prevalent in

Melbourne, and all the blacks retreated from the city and immediate neighbourhood into the

bush. When questioned on their reasons for leaving, they replied: "No good stay. White man too

much sniffle." Hear that shepherding is such a solitary, idle life, that some of the men become

half-witted and foolish. Walked to Richmond, a pretty village, partly seated on a gentle

eminence, close to the Yarra. In going I passed a stately house, haif-finished, which is being built

as a palace for the Bishop. In Richmond abound weatherboard cottages, nestling in flower

gardens.

'20 July: Walked over the fine bridge to a pretty village on the shores of the bay called St Kilda,

about three miles from Melbourne. Bathing would be delicious here, if the locality were free of

sharks. Formerly, there were none here; but now so much offal floats down the river from the

boiling-down establishments, that these monsters prowl about everywhere. Wherever the

carcase is, the vultures congregate.

'21 July: A most brilliant, elastic day. I attended divine service at St Peter's Church, a plain,

unpretending building, not ugly and not handsome. There is no regular reading-desk there at

present; the prayers are read from inside the aitar rails. In the afternoon I visited the Cemetery.

It is a melancholy

bit of ground, of about 10 to 12 acres, laid out in poor taste and wretchedly kept. A few dismal

trees attempt to flourish among the graves; long coarse grass springs up in rank luxuriance, and

the paths are overgrown with weeds. Some of the inscriptions, both Latin and English, are

misspelt...'

In time, Honeycotnbes would be buried there - one the following year.

On 30 July 1840, the Rev Mereweather walked the seven miles to Heidelberg, and back. He

was visiting another clergyman, whose church was in the process of being built of stone. Land

thereabouts, Mereweather noted, was costly. He walked back by sunset - The air is so

transparent and elastic that no amount of exercise seems to tire.' He also noted the temperatures

for the previous week: the lowest, at sunrise and sunset, was 38°; the highest, at 2.3Gpm, was

58°,

It is probable that, apart form clerical contacts, Mereweather had some relatives in Austraiia.

An Edward Mereweather, who died in 1896, became Secretary of the Royal Geographical

Society, and Francis Mereweather wrote some reminiscences in 1898.

John Mereweather's account of central Melbourne, written on 4 August, described the

surroundings in which the Honeycombes were living at that time.

'Rambled about Melbourne, and was astonished at the well-being which seemed to prevail

everywhere, at the weil-fiited stores, at the number of butchers' shops, at the independent,

contented, young look of the population. The scarcity of old people is very striking. The chief

streets in Melbourne are Collins Street, Bourke Street, and Lonsdale Street, running east and

west; and Elizabeth Street and Swanston Street, running north and south. These are very fine,

wide streets, but the east and west streets have a little street running parallel with them, a sort of

diminished double, all of which are Nl-kept and have miserable buildings in them. The

inhabitants are low and dirty, and these localities, seeming as they do the very centre of the city,

are so many nuclei of bad smells and disease, At the first laying out of the town it was intended

that these streets should be appropriated as mews to their big brothers; but as land increased in

value, men, not horses, came to inhabit them. The west end of one of them, cailed Little Collins

Street, is nicknamed Chancery Lane, on account of the great congregation of lawyers in that

locality.'

William Honeycombe, his wife Elizabeth, and their four children were living in Little Bourke

Street.

A Victorian directory for 1851 lists him as being at number 3, and gives his occupation as

'stonemason'. In those days the odd numbers were on the north side of the Melbourne streets

and they numbered in this case from Elizabeth Street, going east as well as west. So 3 Little

Bourke Street (East or West) was in the centre of the town.

Four streets to the east was Spring Street and the first Parliament House-Behind it was St

Patrick's Cathedral, whose foundation stone was laid in 1850. Perhaps William and Henry were

employed as masons on the building of the first Cathedral. After an, William had worked for a

London company in Devon constructing or renovating bridges and other major public works.

But wherever they were, they would not have lived far from their place of work, whether their

employers were public or private companies.

It was probably in 3 Little Bourke Street that William's wife, Elizabeth Honeycombe, died -

within a year of her arrival.

In fact the earliest record we have of the family in Melbourne is of her burial on 30 April 1851.

The funeral sen/ice, a Wesleyan one, was performed by John Harcourt. No other information is

given on the certificate, nor the place of burial, apart from the fact that Elizabeth's abode was

Melbourne and her age 53.

We do not know the cause of death, but the voyage out may have weakened her constitution.

Perhaps the unaccustomed 100 degrees heat of some days in her first Australian summer may

have been a contributory factor. Perhaps being in Melbourne distressed her, and she dreamed

of going home, of green fields and of Devon where she was born. She died ten months after

reaching Australia, with but four of her eight children with her when she died, the other four

13,000 miles away.

We know little about her, just a few dates. She wandered with William in England from town to

town, bearing children along the way, and then went with him to the other end of the world. She

suffered and perhaps was silent, never witnessing the weddings of any of her children, nor

seeing her grandchildren, nor sharing in their progress and that of the new nation. She died in

what was still called New South Wales, before the gold-rush began and the colony of Victoria

was born. She remained tied to the old country and, buried in an unknown grave in Melbourne,

has remained unhonoured till now as the mother of all the Australian Honeycombes.

William, although he might live without her, could not do without her, not with four children to

feed and clothe. His eldest daughter, Elizabeth was 13 two months before her mother died.

Martha would be 11 in May; and John nine in June. Five months after Elizabeth died William

remarried again.

It seems to have been a mistake, from everyone's point of view.

The marriage took place in Melbourne on 22 September 1851, in the parish of St James,

Melbourne. The vicar was Augustus Strong; the witnesses were George and Matilda Young.

William, described only as a widower and with no address given, signed himself 'Wm

Honeycombs'. His bride also signed her name. She was about 40 years old, a spinster, and her

name was Elizabeth Hicks.

We leam her age, approximately, from her death certificate, written out many years later, which

states that she, a widow ('other particulars not known') died in the Benevolent Asylum in North

Melbourne on 12 January 1898, when she was 86. The cause of death is given as 'Inanitia, 2

months'. In other words, she was out of her mind.

Her parents' names are given as William and Rebecca Hicks ('other particulars not known'). But

another, earlier document tells us much more - a form detailing her first admission to a

Benevolent Asylum in Dunwich (on Stradbroke Island east of Brisbane) on 22 February 1869.

In this her age is given as 60; the cause of admission as debility; her place of birth as Waltham

Abbey, Essex, England; her father's profession as baker; her mother's maiden name as Hudd;

and her own profession as schoolmistress.

ft seems that back in 1851 William Honeycombe married a teacher. Did he meet her because

she taught his two daughters? Or because she lodged in the same house? It was probably not

because they attended the same church, although both he and his second wife were at that time

C of E.

The marriage did not last long. The Dunwich Asylum's invaluable form of admission records

what happened to William's second wife over the next 22 years - evidently in her own words.

It says, beside the sub-heading History - 'Came to Melbourne in 1851 as a poor immigrant.

Remained in Melbourne three or four years and married there. Left Melbourne on account of ill

health and went to Tasmania for two or three years. Then came to Sydney and afterwards to

Queensland. I kept a school in Ipswich for some time and then engaged as teacher at Mr

Conneli's Station. Stayed there two years, and then returned to Ipswich. Have maintained

myself up to the last three months' - that is, until she was admitted to the Asylum in February

1869 suffering from debility.

What untold toil, travails and tough travelling and teaching around Australia underlie that simple

account!

Why did she leave William? Or did he abandon her? She bore him no children, and perhaps her

role as a surrogate mother was soon played out and the marriage seen to be a mistake. At any

rate, after a few years - possibly in 1854 and 'on account of ill health' - she went to Tasmania,

calling herself Mrs Honeycombe and claiming, if not then but certainly later that her husband

'died at Ballaraf.

He didn't of course, and very probably she and William were in fact never divorced. But why

say that he died at Ballarat, unless he went gold-mining there and indicated that he never wished

to see her again? The 20 minute battle of the Eureka Stockade, in which 28 gold-miners,

soldiers and policeman died, happened in Ballarat on Sunday 3 December 1854. Did Elizabeth,

as a middle-aged teacher, romanticise her alleged widowhood by claiming that her husband died

in Ballarat in a mining accident - or even at the Eureka Stockade?

It is more than likely that William did become a gold prospector, for a while. For when he

married the 'poor immigrant', Elizabeth Hicks, in September 1851, the'Yellow-fever', as the

Argus called it, was at its peak, the town in a turmoil, prices haywire, and many shops, farms,

houses, businesses, factories, surgeries, ships and even churches empty of men. Victoria now

had its own gold-fields, near Clunes and Bailarat, and in December gold was found at Bendigo.

Back in 1850, when the Honeycombes came to Melbourne, two matters of general concern

were in the minds and conversations of its citizens. One was convict transportation; the other

was the establishment of the Port Phillip district as a separate colony.

Transportation to New South Wales (and to the rest of the Australian continent) had ended in

1840. although convicts continued to be sent to Norfolk Island and Van Diemen's Land. But in

1849 the British Government tried to revive the system under a new guise - prisoners would

serve some of their

sentence in Britain (in jail and engaged on public works) and the rest 'in exile' -and four ships full

of 'exiles' were sent to New South Wales. They were met by outrage and demonstrations.

For several years the colony had been trying to forget its penal origins and elevate its social and

political status. Since 1832, subsidised or assisted immigration had provided a steadily

increasing flow of cheap labour and settlers, and convict labour was less required. It was much

needed, however, in the struggling settlements in Western Australia, founded in 1829 by two

naval captains, Charles Frernantle and James Stirling, and in 1850 Western Australia began

receiving the sweepings of British jails, continuing to do so until January 1868.

Anti-transportation agitation continued in the east throughout 1850, with much lobbying, and

protest meetings in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart, culminating in the Australasian

League for the Abolition of Transportation, formed in Melbourne in January 1351. A month

later the discovery of goid near Bathurst changed ail that and much of Australian life.

Agitation of another sort in 1850, concerning the Port Phillip citizens' desires to be a separate

colony, resulted in the British Government passing a bill in November that year, four months

after the Honeycombes arrived, which separated Port Phillip from Sydney and gave the new

colony, as well as South Australia and Van Diemen's Land, their own legislative councils, like

that in New South Wales. Three years later all four colonies were invited to draft separate

constitutions.

Victoria came into official existence on 1 July 1851, under Lt-Governor Charles La Trobe. Sir

Charles Fitzroy became the first Governor-General of all Australia, two-thirds of which at ieast

was still unexplored and unknown. The white population was about 410,000 - 80,000 of whom

were in Victoria, along with, it is said, six million sheep.

Wool, once Australia's chief export, would be overtaken by gold in 1853.

Curiously, gold had been found near Bathurst 30 years earlier. But news of the discovery was

suppressed, as the authorities thought the whole penal system would collapse and anarchy

result, if convicts were seized with gold-fever and broke their shackles to stage a gold-rush.

It was Edward Hargraves who first struck it lucky, in February 1851. He had just got back

from California, whither he had been drawn by the first great gold-rush in 1849. From what he

saw there of gold-bearing rocks, he concluded that simiiar formations existed in Australia.

Setting out from Sydney in January, he trekked across the Blue Mountains to Bathurst and on

down the Macquarie River, accompanied by a bushman, John Lister, who thought him mad -

the more so when Hargraves declared on reaching a certain creek that gold lay below their feet.

To prove it to Lister he panned some soil in a water-hole and there it was -gold!

Hargraves cried: 'This is a memorable day in the history of New South Wales! I shall be a

baronet. You will be knighted. And my old horse will be stuffed, put in a glass case and sent to

the British Museum!'

Within two months. John Lister was with the Tom brothers when they found gold at Ophir.

Word spread, and rumour was confirmed when the discoveries were published in the papers.

'Scores have rushed from their homes,' said the Sydney Morning Herald, 'provided with a

blanket, a "damper" and a pick or grubbing hoe, full of hope that a day or two's labour would fill

their pockets with the precious metal.' This report also appeared in the English North Devon

Journal that September.

Then gold was found on 14 June, again near Bathurst, on the Turon River. Thousands of men

descended on the new gold-fields, deserting their places of work in town and country. The

ethos and occupation of the digger was born. For some it soon became a way of life.

Great was the excitement in Melbourne, also, in June, when gold was found near Ciunes, north

of Ballarat - at Castlemaine - and yet more at Bendigo.

Mining licences were instituted by the governments of New South Wales and Victoria. Costing

30 shillings a month they were much resented: non-payment resulted in a fine. Licences were

also imposed on storekeepers on the gold-fields, who were required to pay as much as £50 a

year

The Melbourne Argus summed up the situation in October 1851: The Yellow-fever rages to an

extent that would be incredible to ears which have not become somewhat gradually accustomed

to the sound. On all sides the sole topic of conversation is Gold, Gold, Gold. The most absurd

reports are bandied about on all sides, and tidings of ounces become pounds as they travel from

one street corner to the other. Men of all sorts, sizes, countries and callings, are either going, or

are already gone... Melbourne threatens to be fairly depopulated.'

By the end of the year, news of the bonanza had spread around the world. Thousands of gold-

seekers emigrated from England and elsewhere, invading the infant colony of Victoria,

populating it more immediately than assisted emigration or transportation had ever done.

The Rev JD Mereweather had something to say about this, not in a diary, but in a letter to an

unknown friend written on 12 December 1851.

By this time he was in the back of beyond, at Moulamein in New South Wales, having spent

about six months (until March 1851) in Tasmania, where he found 'such a numerous and well-

organised body of clergy that I thought it would be much more in accordance with the motives

which I had for leaving England, to devote my services to a diocese in which there should be a

greater lack of labourers in Christ's vineyard.'

It was a move he would regret. The Bishop of Sydney sent John Mereweather, as a government

chaplain, to Moulamein, to cover a vast tract of sheep country between the Murray and

Murrumbidgee Rivers. He hated it - his duties were 'accompanied by a very considerable

amount of physical labour, and by no little personal danger1, and the population were 'reckless

and very depraved.'

In September he wrote: 'I have a very immoral set of people to deal with. For many have lived

terrible lives in utter defiance of God and man, and at last have retreated into the far bush either

to elude justice, or because they are

satiated with vice and crime. I am happy to say that many of these denizens of the bush are now

married, and consequently partially reclaimed. The heats of summer in these parts are

inexpressibly oppressive; and as the hot winds preclude from us the possibility of growing any

vegetable, the mode of living is totally inconsistent with our requirements. The dwellings are so ill

arranged also, that it is cooler to be in the full heat of the sun than to remain in doors. The soil is

a light coloured heavy clay, which bears rank herbs rather than grass during two months of the

year. For the other ten months all would be an arid desert, if it were not for innumerable bushes

which are studded over the plains. They are called salt bushes, because the leaf is of a strong

salty flavour. These shrubs have a perennial verdure during the hottest summer, and the sheep

thrive upon it amazingly, indeed, the stock in the salt bush country, as ours is called, throve

perfectly well during the last disastrous summer, when in other parts of Australia it was

decimated. You may imagine, my dear Sir, that nothing but a stern sense of duty could induce

me to remain in such a country as this. I look forward with great pleasure to returning home in a

year or two, and settling down quietly in England.'

Generalising, he added, in that same September letter: 'It is impossible to conceive a more

restless, fickle, selfish, cunning, noisy, untractable, democratic set of people than are gathered

together into this great Refuge of the Destitute, Australia - this Workhouse of England. My

opinion is that if convicts are to be the pioneers of colonization, they should be withdrawn as

soon as their services are no longer required, for they undoubtedly exercise a very deleterious

influence on surrounding society.'

In December 1851 he wrote: These gold discoveries are throwing the whole colony into

confusion. Last week half a ton of gold was brought into Melbourne from the Mount Alexander

Diggings alone, and there are good reasons for believing that the surface ground of a large

portion of the colony is teeming with the precious metal. The consequence is that (to use an old

phrase) "beggars are now set on horseback," and are riding to perdition very fast. The ripe corn

has no one to reap it; servants are leaving their places, clerks the banks and government offices,

policemen their beats, and even tradesmen are shutting up their shops, and leaving a certainty to

embark in all the labour and uncertainty of gold finding. There seems to be an intention among

the denizens of the gold-fields to return to Melbourne and Geelong at Christmas to "enjoy

themselves" during the sacred season. This means that they will give themselves up to the most

brutal inebriety and licentiousness. You will be glad to hear that I am well, and that I am

pursuing the duties of my vast charge with content to myself, and, I trust in God, with profit to

my flock. I hope to visit the far-off regions of the Darling in a month or two. The summer heats

here are scarcely endurable.'

A few months later, however, Mereweather was back in Melbourne, having suffered from 'an

attack of virulent ophthalmis' (inflammation of the eyes), which was accompanied by fever,

weakness and depression. The prescribed cure was some sea-bathing, which seems to have

been effective. He now had time to observe what changes had occurred in Melbourne since the

discovery of gold in Victoria.

He wrote, on 4 February 1852: 'About September last the precious metal was found in large

quantites at a place called Ballarat lying to SW of Melbourne about 60 miles. The effect of this

news on Melbourne and Geelong was, as you may suppose, the speedy disappearance of

nearly all the male population. Shops were shut, business, legitimate business, I mean, was

despised; and one thought alone - gold - seemed to usurp the attention of every one, to the

exclusion of all other more exalted considerations. But the gold at Ballarat seemed at last to be

exhausted. Numbers of the disappointed came back weary and ill to their respective

occupations, and everything again assumed a more healthy aspect. Then in November last, a

gold-field was discovered at Mount Alexander, 68 miles to the N of Melbourne, which seems

to be inexhaustible in fertility, and almost boundless in extent.

When I visited that locality on 6 November, with Mr Powlett, about 3,000 people were

working there, but not as I then thought, with any great success. But soon after fresh ground

was broken up, and is now being broken up, yielding enormous quantities of gold, far greater

than have ever been discovered in any equal extent of ground in California. We are glutted with

gold in Melbourne, and ships are leaving here carrying tons of it (two ships have lately left here

bound for London each carrying more than two tons of gold).

'And one prominent feature of this gold-field is, that every one who chooses to work there is

successful. No one makes less than £1 a day, whilst many, and these of the lower classes, have

made £1,600 in three months. You can hardly find a labouring man who has been at the

diggings, who is not worth £100. i have heard of men giving away nuggets of gold to children in

the streets. I knew an instance of a digger who ater paying his bill at an inn, threw the servant

girl who waited, an ounce of gold for herself. I think I am speaking correctly when I say that at

this moment there are hundreds of men of the lowest stamp who are worth £1,000 or £1,800.

In fact all the great prizes have fallen to the lowest... Such prizes account for the massive golden

stirrups which a bushman ordered a goldsmith to make for him about six weeks ago; and for the

costly velvet mantillas and delicate French bonnets which brawny women have clothed

themselves with, over their dirty gowns, that they might tramp up and down the chief street in

heavy walking boots, and attract notice as female representatives of "the new aristocracy."

'You would hardly imagine the social and commercial convulsion which has ensued on this gold

finding. The neighbouring colonies of South Australia and Tasmania have been almost entirely

depopulated as regards the labouring classes. Land and houses in Adelaide have at present only

a nominal value; the colony is on the verge of ruin. Burra Burra shares are fallen from £250 to

£30 in consequence of the miners having let. In Tasmania all the free servants have left their

places. A gentleman there whom I well know, has been deserted by his five menservants. His

eldest daughter is acting as cook, his second as housemaid. In Melbourne matters are as bad.

¦Although a population is pouring in at the rate of 3,000 to 4,000 a week, there is no available

labour, all being at the diggings, where about 20,000 are now congregated. Flour is very cheap,

about £12 to £15 a ton, and yet the quarter loaf is 1s 4d merely from the want of bakers. Sheep

are selling 4s to 6s

each, and yet mutton is retailed at 4d a pound, from the lack of butchers. Milk is selling at 1s a

quart; boots at £3 a pair; water 5s a load; wood £2 the load, instead of 8s 6d; whilst at the

present time they are charging 30s for shoeing a horse. House rents too are rising enormously.

Thus these gold-fields are inflicting great injury on persons of limited income. Many government

clerks and professional men have assured me that they cannot pay their way at the present high

price of neccessaries.

'At this moment there are assembled at the mines a very lawless set of persons, some of whom

have already organized themselves into gangs of banditti and infest the roads leading to the

diggings; and not only that, but I am sorry to find that the new monied class look upon the better

educated people, their late employers, with a certain malignant feeling, which in time to come

may not confine itself to words. I have heard of a labouring man saying to a squatter, the

magistrate of the district, in siang terms; "You have flashed it long enough, it is our turn now!

We'll see if we can't smash you swells before long!" And this feeling is by no means uncommon.'

The Rev JD Mereweather endured in Australia for another year, returning to England in 1853,

after a stint in Sydney. He travelled by way of Java, Singapore, India, Ceylon and Egypt. He

arrived in Southampton early in 1854. Nothing is known of his whereabouts after this except

that he was a chaplain in Venice in 1884, some 40 years ater being ordained as a priest. Not

much of an advancement. But his diaries have preserved his name and provided us with an

invaluable account of the voyage he made to Australia with the Honeycombes, and of the

emergent nation.

When the Rev Mereweather was back in Melbourne in February 1852 and feeling far from

well, it seems likely that William Honeycombe joined the fortune-seekers in the gold-fields.

He may have taken his second wife and four children with him - not unlikely, as his daughter,

Elizabeth, would marry a gold-miner before very long, and his youngest son, John, would be a

gold-miner all his adult life. Perhaps they all decamped from Melbourne to Mt Alexander (which

was the old name for Castlemaine), a very productive gold-field between Bendigo and Ballarat.

We know that Henry Honeycombe was at Mt Alexander for some time in 1852, as in a list of

unclaimed letters for that year, one was addressed in May to Henry at Mt Alexander; another

was addressed to William at Melbourne the month before.

Henry may not have been gold-mining at Mt Alexander - his skills as a stonemason could have

been employed in the construction of the new town. But seemingly he and his father were away

from Melbourne for several weeks, if not months. Both letters were in due course collected, for

they do not appear again in the list.

Were they sent by Jane and Richard? Were they written at Christmas 1851 in response to

William's announcement of his second marriage? Was Richard's full of questions about gold and

job opportunities? One would dearly like to know. Any nugget of family news would be

invaluable now, and any letter a golden mine of information and fact.

Life on these gold-fields was a basic round of hard labour, simple meals and sweaty sleep,

mosquitoes, flies, short tempers, thirst and shortages, burning sun or drenching rain. The men

worked six full days every week from dawn to dusk, with a rest on Sunday. But, as Geoffrey

Blainey writes in The Blainey View: 'Every digger had a chance. Here, far more than in

California, the gold-fields were sub-divided into tiny claims or lots, and on some fields

thousands of diggers shared the shallow gold. The simplest equipment was needed to dig the

holes and extract the gold... A rich natural resource was made available to everybody - old

colonist or new chum, labourer or gentleman, scholar or illiterate.'

Manning Clark, in A Short History of Australia says: 'Those who were well-equipped, who

worked hard for three or four months and who put up with the hardships were often very

successful. The men of brawn and muscle succeeded, while the educated and refined

succumbed before the ordeal... By December (1851) large numbers had discovered the life of

the digger was not for them and had drifted back to their positions... More and more the

diggings attracted the adventurers... By January of 1852 enough men had returned to

accomplish the season's shearing and by March there were enough men to bring in the harvest'

Thousands still came and went, however, on the gold-fields, their numbers swelled by fortune-

hunters arriving in Melbourne from around the world, including the first of many from China. In

1852, 42 ships arrived in Victoria with some 15,500 people on board, 5,000 of whom were

children.

On one, the Kent, was William Howitt, who described how the pilot was mobbed when he

came on board. 'A hundred questions are put to him at once. "What of the diggings? Do they

keep up? Is there plenty of gold? Are they likely to last? Do people really make fortunes in a

few weeks? How are the holes? Can we get easily up the country?" etc, etc... The news oozed

out rapidly... Abundance of gold - new diggings discovered - High market price of gold -

Wonderful instances of good luckl Hurrah followed upon hurrah. Then came inquiries about the

price of provisions; of freight; of carriage; of horses and bullocks.'

These prices were a shock. Horses, costing £10 to £15 before the immigrants left England,

were now selling at £70 to £100. Pairs of bullocks, once £5, now sold at £40. The carrying of

freight from ship to shore now cost £3 a ton, and the price of lodgings had soared. Some

passengers had hardly enough money to get themselves, their families and luggage taken ashore,

and a shanty town of tents and shelters multiplied by the beach.

The new Governor of Victoria, Charles La Trobe, remarked in October 'It is evident that

amongst the newcomers not one in ten is prepared to encounter the crush and labour of the gold

fields, and that the great majority are probably totally unfitted and unsuited by previous habits,

occupation or temperament to surmount the difficulties which must beset them.'

William Honeycombe was not like them. He had been in Melbourne for over a year. He had

asked his questions and assessed the answers. Perhaps he felt like a young farmer from Devon

who said: 'I cannot stand the temptation of the diggings', and set off on horseback in a group of

four or six, with a signed

agreement avowing the group would work as a team for three or more months, divide the

spoils, and touch not a drop of wine, spirits or beer.

But, although a fortune could be made in a day, it could all be spent in town in a week. Gold

was a major element in the making and unmaking of men, and in the making of Australia - its

economy, character, topography, towns and myth. And like the voyage out, gold was a great

leveller. Sn its pursuit many were destroyed, but many prospered: store-keepers as well as

diggers, speculators, officials and the government's coffers. While on the roads bushrangers

flourished - gangs of ex-convicts, sailors and labourers, robbing coaches, individuals and banks.

Were William and Henry diggers for a while in 1852 - in Castlemaine and Ballarat? While in

sleepless Melbourne the second Mrs Honeycombe looked after the younger children, Elizabeth,

Martha and John? These four seem to have been resident there in 1852. For in Melbourne, in

October that year, there occurred the second, surprising marriage of a Honeycombe in

Australia; that of Elizabeth Honeycombe - aged but 14 and a half.

It was perfectly legal, although her bridegroom, Charles Frankiin, probably neither knew or

cared about her real age. They were married by the Dean of Melbourne on 4 October 1852, by

license, in the parish of St James. There is no mention of her parents' consent Both signed the

probably two friends of the bridegroom. As none of the bride's family was a witness, none was

probably there - which suggests that the marriage was sudden and performed without the

knowledge, or approval, of Elizabeth's father, stepmother or older brother. Maybe both of the

men were out of town.

However, we find from Charles Franklin's death certificate that there may have been a family

connection. Aged 31 when he married, he was bom in Bristol. His parents, George and Mary

Ann Franklin, were therefore contemporaries if not actually Bristol acquaintances of William

Honeycombe. It was perhaps through William and George Franklin that Charles and Elizabeth

Honeycombe met. The younger man may even have been a mining associate. But unlike Jane,

this daughter wedded the man who bedded her, and she had no bastard child.

Like William, as we shall see, Charles Franklin was a gold-miner in the Bendigo area and he

lived there from 1856 to 1872 at least. For six of the couple's children were bom there during

those years. He also appears in the Bendigo Rate Book for 1859, having a house in Golden

Gully rated cheaply at £5. Their second child was born about that time and christened Mary

Ann Furneaux Franklin.

It is interesting that Elizabeth chose to commemorate her mother's maiden name. Possibly she

did so because it had a pedigree: Tobias Furneaux, remember, had some islands off Tasmania

named after him. Or because she loved her mother and could not forgive her father for marrying

again and so soon.

Her life was a hard one, it seems, and brief. She had her first child when she was 18. Her

husband, Charles, died aged 51 in 1872, leaving her at the age of 34 with six children. She

remarried two years later, in 1874. Her second husband was William Thompson, a Scot from

Galloway, who was a miner living in Golden Gully. In 1879 she bore him a child, a boy, who

died within 24 hours.

Some three months later she also died in hospital of pyaemia (blood-poisoning). Elizabeth

Franklin, nee Honeycombe, was buried in the Wesleyan section of Sandhurst Cemetery on 25

April 1879. She was 41.

It is probable that after her marriage in October 1852 Elizabeth saw very little of her younger

sister and brothers. For later that year, or early the next, they all moved out of Melbourne - to

Geelong.

Indeed they may already have been there when she married, and thus were prevented,

deliberately or not, from attending the ceremony. We know that William was a householder in

Geelong in 1854, and we may reasonably deduce his presence there a year or so earlier from

the date of his son's departure from England.

Richard Honeycombe in fact left Liverpool with his family in May 1853 - for Geelong. So he

must have been directed by his father thither, and not to Melbourne - by letter before Richard

left. That letter would have taken about three months to reach England. So it must have been

sent (from Geelong?) in January 1853, at the latest. It was probably sent months before this, in

1852. For Richard had to find and book a passage on a ship with Geelong as its destination and

sort out much before he left England for good.

Why did William move to Geelong? Apparently without his second wife. Why did Richard, and

then Jane, decide to join their father there?

Richard was a stonemason, like his father, who may have assured his son by letter that work

and wages were good there, even better than in Melbourne, and that Geelong was a better

place to live. Yet there was much more going on in Melbourne. Grandiose stone buildings were

being put together and planned: the Public Library opened there in 1853, and the Town Hall the

following year. Bridges, churches, banks, businesses and homes were being profusely built.

There was plenty of work for a stonemason, as Richard would find out in due course. So why

Geelong?

William may have been unhappy in Melbourne, and eager to dump his second wife. He may not

have liked the place or the people he met, nor its erratic weather, nor felt inclined to suffer the

press of people and soaring prices caused by the gold-rush and every kind of excess.

Geelong was likewise affected, but less so. A sea-port on Port Phillip Bay, and further south, it

was then on a trading par with Melbourne. It was then in fact the commercial capital of

Victoria, its exports exceeding Melbourne's. It was also more British than Melbourne, less

chaotic, and the countryside more pleasing to an English eye. Its leafy lanes, hilly slopes, oak

woods and streams, were more reminiscent of the rural charms of ancient English counties.

Scottish immigrants were agreeably reminded of the Scottish Border Country, and the English of

Sussex and Devon. To most it was more of a comfortable country town than Melbourne, and a

pleasanter place to be.

The Rev John D Mereweather visited Geeiong in August, 1850, a month after he came to

Melbourne. As Geeiong wouid become the Honeycombes' home for the next 20 years, his

description of Geelcng a few years before they settled there provides us with a picture of the

town and countryside they came to know.

Mereweather wrote: '5 August: Having received an invitation from a wealthy squatter in the

neighbourhood of Geeiong, the second city of the colony, I embarked on board a small steamer

at the Melbourne Wharf at eieven o'clock, and reached Geeiong at haff-past four. The Yarra

banks were as desolate-looking as ever, the boiling-down establishments defiled the air with

their usual smells. When we reached Hobson's Bay a breeze sprung up, and carried us gaily

onward in a southerly direction. In about two hours we bore westward, and entered the fine

sheet of water called Geeiong Harbour. We soon crossed the Bar, and steamed alongside of

the wharf. In a few minutes I entered a fine freestone palace-looking place, called Mack's

Hotel, where I slept, partially interrupted in my slumbers by the drunken roarings of a rich

proprietor in the neighbourhood, who was trying to force his way into somebody else's room.

'6 August: As I sat at breakfast in the coffee-roome of Mack's Hotel, a coarse-looking person,

well-dresssed, entered into conversation with me. He told me that he was one of the early

settlers in that part of the country, and that he had several sheep-runs, which he was about to let

for two or three years, that he might make a visit home to England. He said that his property

was worth to him from £2,500 to £3,000 a year; and did I think that he could get on in England

with that? I asked him if he was a married man. He said, No. I answered him that, as he was a

single man, I thought he might, with strict economy, make two ends meet in England on £3,000

a year. I don't think he quite liked my answer. I afterwards leamt that he was as rich as he

represented himseif to be, that he came to the colony very poor, that his character did not stand

very high, and that he was much given to boast of his wealth. This being so, I am giad I

answered him as I did.

'After breakfast, took a survey of Geeiong. This city, which from its situation is more worthy to

be the capital of a colony than Melbourne, is built on a steepish declivity, which commences

from the water. It has fine wide streets, and the houses are for the most part freestone. Behind

the city, a mile or two away, runs the river Barrabool, which sometimes makes sad

devastations. From every part of Geeiong is an exquisite view of the harbour: on the right are

high downs, with a soil of wonderful fertility; turning round, one sees in the background the

picturesque summit of Station Peak, which some one told me bears evidence to being an extinct

volcano. And all the time ! was looking about, there was a glowing sun and a cloudless sky, and

a pure elastic air quite fife-giving. In Geeiong, I hear, there is a great deai of dust in summer and

inexpressible mud in winter. For morality, Geeiong is no worse than its bigger neighbour. The

crying vice is drunkenness, and that arises from the filthy adulterations practised by the publicans

more than from the quantity drunk. The tobacco that should be in the

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cigars which they sell, is put into weak rum and water, to give it flavour and force and make it

intoxicating. It may be supposed how pernicious such intoxication is.

My hospitable friend came into Geelong expressly to meet me. So at two o'clock in the

afternoon we mounted, and rode over the elastic turf 19 miles, without drawing bridle, in two

hours and a half, till we came to his station near the Anakie Hills.

7 August: My friend's place is situated at the commencement of a forest, which extends over a

hill at the back. The gum-tree, the sheacke, vulgarly called the she-oak, and the mimosa, flourish

abundantly there. The house in which he lives is rather a collection of many houses or huts,

accumulated as necessity required. It is, however, rendered very comfortable, and as he has a

good garden, his table is well served. The annual income which he derives from the wool of his

sheep cannot be less than £2,000 sterling. After breakfast read a little of the Canterbury

Pilgrimage, which I found in his library, then mounted on horseback, and rode to the base of the

left-hand peak of the Anakie Hills. It consists of enormous fragments of rock in grotesque

shapes, which seem to have been belched up from the plain by volcanic agency. A great deal of

soil has accumulated amid the interstices of these rocks, and there are to be found rare plants,

and shrubs, and heaths.

'8 August: Returned to Geelong.

'9 August: Intended to return to Melbourne, but the day was so transparently lovely, and the

bay smiled so brightly, that I determined to stop to-day. Wandered on the banks of the river,

which meanders prettily through the valley after emerging from the Barrabool Hills. The soil

seems of indescribable fertility, but the sad-coloured foliage of the trees throws a dusky veil

over an otherwise brilliant landscape. And the leaves of the trees do not droop, but stick out

quite stiff. They are small, too, and give little shade. As scarcely any of the trees in Australia are

deciduous, every landscape is saddened at all seasons by this dull green tint everywhere

prevailing. All is monotony. With us, on the contrary, the changes of our foliage keeping pace

with the seasons, the annihilation in winter, the new birth in spring producing the radiant green of

youth, mellowing into the rich summer tint, followed up by the "sere and yellow leaf of autumn,

bring forth those strong contrasts which so much delight the lovers of

nature. Called on a Mr C

, the worthy incumbent of the church here, who

received me with much hospitality. This excellent clergyman has laboured in the cause of his

Master as a missionary in South Africa.

'10 August: Returned to Melbourne in a little steamer called the Vesta. The voyage took us six

hours. The bay looked as brilliant as ever. The mornings are crisp and cold. The thermometer in

the sun at noon is 105°.

'11 August (Sunday): Assisted the incumbent at St Peter's Church, Collingwood, a suburb of

Melbourne. I read prayers in the morning and preached in the afternoon. The behaviour of the

people was as perfect as could be - no whispering, no fidgeting, no sleeping. They joined

heartily in the singing and responding. I could hardly realise to myself that I was out of England.'

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Before leaving Melbourne for Sydney and the bush, the Rev John Mereweather wrote a

pamphlet entitled The Type and Anti-type on Circumcision and Baptism. But there we leave

him, in St Peter's Church, glorying in his vocation and English values.

Who knows - perhaps he advised William Honeycombe, at a chance or arranged meeting,

about the better situation of Geeiong? Perhaps he was instrumental, in part, in the Honeycombes

making Geeiong their first Australian home.