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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.'
46
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.'
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