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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
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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
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