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Fred Aldridge was a 29-year-old carpenter and had married Hester Hands in Bristol in 1850,
at St Mary Redcliff. They had two very young children. The Aldridge family came to
Southampton from Bristol by train and spent two days in the Southampton emigration depot.
Jane probably did likewise. Another couple from Bristol were the Adlams, Henry and Sarah,
who had married two months ago - he was also a carpenter and 20 years old. Other carpenters
on board came from Somerset and Devon, as did several agricultural labourers, diary-maids
and servant girls. Jane probably got to know some of them, those of a similar age and
background.
The ship that would be their home for the next 1O1£ weeks was brand new. Weighing just over
1,000 tons and commanded by Captain T Brown, she had been built in Sunderland by John
Hay. She was coppered and copper-fastened and had begun her voyage at Gravesend,
docking at Southampton in fine spring weather to take on West Country emigrants. Several
days there were spent in medica! examinations, the allocation of bunks and mess-kits.
The Maria Hay left Southampton on 17 April, being towed down the Solent and cut past the
Needles on the Isle of Wight. We can only imagine what several sorrows were Jane's as the Isle
of Wight and the Hampshire coast diminished and disappeared as night fell. She surely wept.
But any pangs of guilt or regret may have been relieved by private or communal prayer.
Prayers must have redoubled and even a brief panic occurred when the Maria Hay ran into
another ship, the Harbinger, about 9,0prn that night.
The Harbinger, an auxiiary steamship, was homeward bound, having left Sydney earlier that
year. Both ships were slightly damaged, the damage on the Maria Hay being to her bowsprit,
jib-boom and smart new figurehead. Captain Brown would not have been pleased.
The collision meant that Jane Honeycombe unexpectedly saw Devon and Plymouth again. For
the Maria Hay put into Plymouth Sound for repairs, anchoring in the Cattewater, at the mouth of
the River Plym between Plymouth and Plymstock. Passengers were allowed to go on shore.
Perhaps Jane did not choose to do so, having severed all her links with England. But perhaps
there were necessitites she was advised to buy, given the chance. There would not have been
time to call on any family friends or relatives. But there must have been some nostalgic
satisfaction in seeing Devon once again, though for the last time, ilsington and the Haytor
quarries were only a few miles away inland.
An event that filled all the passengers with patriotic feelings was the departure of troopships
bound for the Crimea, to cannon fire and cheers from all the vesseis in the Cattewater and
Plymouth Sound.
On 23 April the Maria Hay resumed her interrupted voyage, being towed out to sea and into
cold weather btown from the north, and at 4.0 am any emigrant, sadly awake or sea-sick,
would have heard the sailor on watch call out that the lights at the Lizard were to starboard and
that England was falling astern.
Jane's voyage was not too eventful, according to Fred Aldridge, but full of incident and interest.
The Maria Hay came within hailing distance of several other ships, one being a warship, HMS
Teazer, which passed them on 3 May, somewhere between the Canary and Cape Verde
Islands. On 22 May, at daybreak, another ship homeward bound from Java passed perilously
close: loud cries on deck aroused the steerage passengers below.
The weather varied from warm, balmy days and moonlit nights to such high winds and heavy
seas that the helmsman had to be lashed to the wheel and the hatches battened down, leaving
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