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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
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