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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.
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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
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