 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
'Sunday, 26 May: In Longitude 85° 21" E; Latitude 38° 50" S. The sea is stiil running so high,
that 1 had prayers below. Read the two lessons, the litany, and a sermon. A nice little boy, the
elder brother of the one who died before, is sinking himself. The long voyage and the rough
food are hastening his departure. He seems always to have been a delicate child. He toid me
today that he should like to go to Heaven, because he should find his mother and brother there.
'29 May: A very heavy sea, I saw some of the emigrants have terrible fails.
'1 June: The boatswain harpooned some porpoises. Saw them cut up. Under their thick biack
skin is about haff an inch of a tough white substance, which is the blubber, under that comes the
flesh which looks like beef. The sailors cut steaks of it and pronounce it excellent.
'Sunday, 3 June: In Longitude 103° 27" E; Latitude 37° 34" S. A bright warm day. Had the
morning prayers on deck at eleven, but gave no sermon. I had a numerous and attentive
congregation. After dinner, the emigrants promenaded on deck, very nicely dressed, indeed
scarcely recognizable. At night there was a quarrel down below between two emigrants, family
men, Dissenters, who had hitherto conducted themselves decently. They used the most horrible
expressions one to the other, expressions, which I do not think they could have known of when
they came on board, but which they must, I think, have learnt of the sailors.
'6 June: A terrific gale blowing all day, in the midst of which the poor little boy died. We lay to
under double reefed topsails and staysail. The sea rushed by, a mass of wild foam, as if it were
too hurried to form into billows. It looked as if it were impelled by demoniacal influence. The
white summits of the water flew up in spray al! around, rendering it impossible to leave the
cabin. The people below did not seem frightened, or penetrated with a feeling that God was
exerting, or allowing the Evil Spirit to exert, the power of his might. They were neither praying to
their Saviour, or the Blessed Virgin, or the Holy Saints. But they were grumbling sadly that their
dinners were not nicely cooked... It is blowing an awful gale of wind, though the ship is doing
admirably. The sea, sky, and the winds are all mixed together in mad confusion, producing a
chaos to the eye, and a chaos to the hearing. The cuddy has been full of water ail day.
7 June: The wind having moderated, we set the foresail and got away. At noon I read the burial
service (though much curtailed) over the poor little boy. With one hand I leant upon a gun, with
the other I held the Office book. In the midst of the service a deluge of a sea came over us, and
nearly swept us
72
overboard. But we soon regained our places, and the funeral rites went on as before. We are
now about off Cape Leeuwin.
The boy who died, almost within sight of Australia, was Jacob Kernot's only surviving and older
son.
Robert Poynter, on another ship in 1854, had a teenage asthmatic daughter who died in the
southern Indian Ocean. He wrote: 'She asked me this morning if I thought she would live to
reach Melbourne. I told her i thought she could not. She then said: "I hope I am prepared.
God's will be done, not mine. I do not wish to live, suffering as I have done lately." She called
for most of the passengers and bid them all goodbye.' She died three days later. Her father
wrote: 'Her remains were lowered into the sea, which was raging at the time most furiously... it
was hard to part from her and to dispose of her remains in this way.'
A few of the babies who died or died in miscarriages were disposed of without any ceremony.
Thomas Snell, in 1863: 'A child died at eight o'clock and the father passed us with the little
 |