STRANGERS TO THE SEA 6
How the first Helandman of God was maid,
Of ane Horss Turd, in Argylle, as is said.
The Bannatyne Manuscript (1568), an early anthology of Scottish writing, was collected by an Edinburgh merchant while he was at home, isolating from the plague. It was, according to its text, Ane most godlie mirrie and lustie rapsodie made be sundrie learned Scots poets and written be George Bannatyne in the time of his youth. The heading above is the full title of one of its poems, an anonymous 5½ quatrains of bighting satire.
God and Sanct Petir was gangand be the way
Heich up in Ardgyle quhair thair gait lay
['High up in Argyll, where their path lay']
Sanct Petir said to God in a sport word,
Can ye nocht make a Heilandman of this horse turd?
['Can you not make a Highland man out of this horse turd?']
God turnd owre the horss turd with his pykit staff
And up start a Helendman blak as any draff
['And up stood a Highlander, as dark as (brewers' byproduct)']
Quod God to the Helendman, Guhair wilt thou now?
I will doun in the Lawland, Lord, and their steill a kow.
[(The Highlander replies) 'I will go down to the Lowlands and steal me a cow.]
These two verses capture the prejudice held by Lowland Scots towards people inhabiting the Highlands and Islands of northwestern Scotland. It is an age-old fear of the clansmen as destructive raiders and cattle thieves, translated into contempt for 'rubbish-people', formed from horse manure. The remainder of the poem condemns Highlanders as essentially 'irretrievable', who because of their corrupt origins will never become law abiding citizens.
Fy, quod Sanct Petir, thow wil nevir do weill,
And thow but new maid sa sone gais to steill
['And you, new-made, so soon turning to theft']
Umff, quod the Helandman, and swere by yon kirk,
Sa long as I may geir geet to steill, will I nevir wirk
['So long as may find goods to steal, I will never work!']
The subject of the poem is apparently unrepentant and he remained a threat in Lowland-Scottish minds until after the rebellious clans were defeated at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. The lands above the Highland Line were then occupied by the British Army and the people subjected to martial law. Markers of cultural identity were banned. The Disarming Act (21 George II c.34) proscribed the possession of weapons and forbad anyone not in the Army from wearing Highland clothes ― "plaid, philibeg, trews, shoulder-belts ... tartans or parti-coloured plaid" ― in a Bill truly intended for "disarming and undressing those savages". In addition, military surveyors and engineers began to map the mountain fastness, building roads and bridges. The Highlands became less impenetrable and the Highlanders less exotic.
When, in 1773, the London intellectual Samuel Johnson and his Edinburgh admirer James Boswell made their Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), they observed the Highlanders in a different light.
"There was perhaps never any change of national manners so quick, so great, and so general, as that which operated in the Highlands, by the last conquest, and the subsequent laws. We came thither too late to see what we expected, a people of peculiar appearance, and a system of antiquated life. The clans retain little now of their original character, their ferocity of temper is softened, their military ardour is extinguished, their dignity of independence is depressed, their contempt of government subdued, and the reverence for their chiefs abated. Of what they had before the late conquest of their country, there remain only their language and their poverty."
'A Complete and Final Remedy'
The Highland and Island Emigration Society
This Fund is now exhausted, and the condition of the people remains unimproved. They cannot support themselves in the land of their fathers; and the hardy and loyal Highlander is in danger of being converted into a professional mendicant.
There is need of a complete and final remedy.
Happily there are in other parts of Queen Victoria's dominions, favoured climes, where the labour which at home has no field for its employment will become highly productive and remunerative. They who are a burden in the mother-country will become a support to it when they have transferred to the colonies. Instead of living on our alms, they will give us valuable equivalents for our manufactures; and above all, they will exchange a life of demoralising dependence for one which will abound with the rewards of industry and eneterprise.
It has been ascertained that a large proportion of this redundant population, seeing no other prospect of escape from misery, are desirous of emigrating to Australia, and it is proposed to assist these poor people to proceed thither ... by means of a Fund to be raised by subscription ..."
('Highland and Ireland Emigration Society', Correspondence relating to Her Majesty's emigrant ship "Hercules", [Francis and John Rivington, 1853, London], State Library of Victoria, Catalogue, available Online; also HMS Hercules, Scottish emigrant ship 1853, on Shelf G 942 C558H [Newspapers and Family History Reading Room])
Mr Chant, Recruitment and Boarding Officer, Highland and Island Emigration Society:
"A great deal of misery is to be met within two miles of Portree. I can bear witness to the cadaverous appearance of the children for want of food, and to the raggedness of their body-clothes. I have seen some children at this place and at Sconsor, with only a filthy portion of old plaid tied round their bodies."
(As above, p 6)
Letter from Mr Adam of Portree regarding "the total failure of the potato crop this autumn", dated December 28, 1852:
"The deplorable condition of not a few of our poor people (not the parochial poor), here and in distant parts of this parish, urges me to make the facts known to you ... Some families are entirely destitute, having neither food nor clothes, their body-clothes mere rags, and their bed-clothes equally, if not more, wretched. Some families in the village are now compelled to sell daily so much of winter and spring firing (peats) as will enable them to purchase a little meal to keep them alive. Typhus fever has broken out in several families in this quarter ― an effect of cold and scanty diet, our medical men say. I have not seen so many cases of typhus here for the last ten years at once. I visited one of these families today, about two miles from Portree ... The house is a black hut on the moor, consisting of one small compartment. There is only one bed, in this the sick daughter lay. The father and son sleep during the night on a bunch of straw in a corner of this wretched habitation. The poor mother has not put off her body-clothes for the last twelve days ... Three years ago the parents could not read or write, they knew not the ABC. They are now able to read the Scriptures without any help ..."
(As above, pp 4-5)
Letter from Miss IL Bird, Wyton Rectory, Huntingdon:
"In the beginning of July I came from Portree to Oban with 300 emigrants, who sailed for Australia in the ship Georgiana. During a passage of twenty-two hours, exposed as they were to a broiling and July sun, and enduring all the miseries of sea-sickness, I never heard one murmuring word ... The Coollen mountains were in sight for several hours of our passage; but when we rounded Adnamurchan Point, the emigrants saw the sun for the last time glitter upon their splintered peaks, and one prolonged and dismal wail rose from all parts of the vessel; and fathers and mothers held up their infant children to take a last view of the mountains of their fatherland, which in a few minutes faded from their view for ever."
(As above, p4)
Mr Chant to the Emigration Commissioners, from Birkenhead Depot, January 3rd, 1853
"I decided ... to take the Harris emigrants and those from ... North Uist, numbering 266 souls. The embarkation was effected in boats in about three hours during a heavy storm of wind and rain. We left Finsbay at half-past two and reached Lochmaddy at four o'clock.
... The leave taking was the most painful scene I ever witnessed, sturdy Highlanders grasped each other by the hand, whilst the muscles of their faces quivered with emotion. Women hung on the neck of friends, and were in some cases removed by force, to say they sobbed aloud would faintly express their sorrow. It would be difficult perhaps impossible, to describe it. As the vessel steamed out of the bay they stood on the poop, threw their arms into the air, giving full vent of their grief, as they gazed for the last time on the black peaty glen and bleak rocky hills, over which they had long been accustomed to roam, and to which they were so devotedly attached.
The embarkation at Lochmaddy commenced about twelve o'clock on Wednesday. The emigrants arrived slowly, and apparently with much reluctance. It was with great difficulty I could collect them to embark. At the close of the day I found that I had only 104 on board from Uist, sixty less than I expected ...
On Friday morning, the 9th of December, we left Lochmaddy at 10 o'clock with 350 passengers of all ages, wind W.S.W. blowing a gale with a heavy sea on the beam."
(As above, pp 14-15)
A Slow Sailer : H.M.S. Hercules
According to Basil Lubbock (The Colonial Clippers, 1968) the "ordinary steerage passenger" travelling to Australia had to content him- or her-self with "a ship that was little better than a hermetically sealed box". Both convict transports and early emigrant ships were dumpy looking vessels: "Their hulls were full and round. They could sit almost bolt upright on the mud of a tidal harbour. Their bows were blunt and they pushed a lot of water in front of them as they went through it." (Greenhill & Giffard, 1972, Travelling in the Nineteenth Century).
Even with the advent of lighter faster clipper ships in the 1850s and 1860s ― sharp raked bows and sleek stream-lined hulls, masses of extra sail hung on taller masts and longer yardarms ― emigrants of the "assisted passenger" class often missed out on the shorter voyage times. "For every fast ship there were ten or twelve very much slower ones. During the years 1858-1863 the Director of the Flagstaff Observatory in Melbourne recorded 300 passages between Europe and Melbourne. Only one of the 300 bettered 70 days; seven completed the voyage in 70 days; fifty in 71 to 80 days; eighty in 81 to 90 days; sixty-eight in 91 to 100 days; and ninety-four, the largest group by far, exceeded 100 days." (Don Charlwood, 1981, The Long Farewell).
It can be seen from the image below that H.M.S. Hercules was of the earlier, slower tradition. Built by the Royal Navy in 1815 at Chatham Dockyard on the Thames estuary, this ship was on her way in 1852 to Hong Kong to serve as a hospital for troops on station there, when she was diverted to carry 756 destitute Scottish Highlanders to Adelaide and Melbourne.
'The Voyage of the Hercules' State Library Victoria Blog
<blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/family-matters> 12 August 2020
"One ship that had a particularly perilous voyage to Australia was the H.M.S. Hercules, which departed Campbelltown, Scotland in December 1852 ... and arrived in Melbourne August 1853 ― 8 months later!
... In December 1852 emigrants were transported [by steamer] from Skye, Harris, and North Uist in the Outer Hebrides to Campbelltown [Argyll, Scotland], where they boarded the Hercules.
... The Hercules departed on December 26, 1852, carrying 756 passengers, and sailed for four days through a fierce storm, before anchoring in Rothesay [Isle of Bute, Firth of Clyde, Scotland] to make repairs. Passengers had been confined below deck during the journey, and many were extremely distressed and unwell. Two men died of sickness ...
Two weeks later the Hercules set sail and hit another severe storm. She docked in Queenstown [Cobh, County of Cork, Ireland] on January 20, 1853, by which stage over 50 cases of Small Pox and an outbreak of Typhus fever was discovered. Fifteen of the crew were taken to the Naval Hospital on Haulbowline Island, but an attempt to land the passengers in Queenstown was met by opposition by the townsfolk, health officers, and the Irish government...
... Discussion raged for weeks, by which time several hundred passengers were infected. Eventually a hulk was brought to the harbour where it acted as a floating hospital for the fever patients. Small pox patients were housed in the hospital on Haulbowline Island, where a large shed was built for healthy passengers.
The ship remained in quarantine for three months, during which time 56 people died, including Laurence Carey, the ship's doctor, and Mrs Innes the matron. Seventeen children were orphaned and returned to Scotland ...
... on April 14 the Hercules finally set sail for Australia, carrying only 380 of the original 756 passengers. The remainder of the passengers were relocated to other emigrant ships - in many cases families were separated - never to see each other again.
From all accounts, the voyage to Australia was fairly uneventful. She docked in Adelaide on 20 July [95 days at sea], leaving 194 emigrants, and finally arrived in Melbourne on 3 August, when 183 disembarked ..."
Comparing the Consignments
Emigrant Ships 1 ― 29
"... together, the Highland and Island Emigration Society and the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission mobilised 4,910 Highlanders between 1852 and 1857 ... just 848 embarked for South Australia and 391 for Tasmania, while the largest portion, 3,134 sailed for Victoria. New South Wales was the destination of only 537 ...
"... 53 % of the HIES emigrants embarked in the first year of the society's operations, when seventeen ships carried 2,605 Highlanders ... only four ships carrying 628 emigrants, including 189 children under 14, departed in 1853. By 1854 only 1,132 ... had embarked on five ships ...
"Of the 29 ships between 1852-57, each carrying 2 to 747 HIES emigrants, all but four weighed anchor at Liverpool. Of the remaining four, one carrying 372 sailed from Greenoch [the Georgiana in 1852], one carrying 747 left from Campbelltown [HMS Hercules], and two carrying 184 and 2 passengers respectively, departed from Plymouth.
"Only six of the 29 ships carried a full complement of HIES emigrants. The others also carried government assisted emigrants from England, Ireland and[Lowland] Scotland."
(Robin F Haines, 1997, Emigration and the Labouring Poor: Australian Recruitment in Britain and Ireland, 1831-60, Macmillan Press, London, p. 220)
THE CONTRASTING EXPERIENCE OF TWO VESSELS LOADED IN SCOTLAND
The experiment of sailing the Highlanders direct from Scotland was only applied for the first two ships and was stopped after the disastrous voyage of the Hercules. If there was a lesson learned it was to take the time required to muster and adequately feed and cloth the emigrants before embarking them on the Australian transports. The new Emigrants Depot at Birkenhead was key to this thinking. This organised the flow of passengers and ensured that the appropriate medical checks could prevent disease being carried on board by the passengers themselves.
In hindsight this was probably correct. Nevertheless, the outcomes of heathy passage versus fever ships was probably more to do with the miserable physical state of the emigrants from different Highland estates. An un-referenced sentence in the Wikipedia entry for 'HMS Hercules (1815)' alleges, "Many of these were emigrating under duress from the trustees of the Boreraig, Suishnish and North Uist estates of Lord Macdonald". The rush to get these desperate and destitute people out of the Scottish winter, and the unfortunate belief that any signs of measles and typhus among them would heal once they put to sea, were contributing factors to the death of at least 58 souls ( and a further 6 between Queenstown, Ireland, and Melbourne, Victoria).
But there was no warning of calamity from the experience of the Georgiana, which sailed before the Hercules in 1852. When this first ship landed her consignment of 237 adults and 138 children, all from Skye, at Geelong, her captain and surgeon reported the loss of just 2, both infants. In some way then, the people who shipped out on the Georgiana were in much better condition then those who followed them on the Hercules in 1853. One explanation may be as simple as the weather. The first shipment was gathered and set sail in the summer months. These people had time to recover a little from their straitened circumstances and be prepared for their journey. The latter shipment, on the other hand, had little opportunity to benefit from improved food and clothing before being loaded on board their Australia-bound vessel. And so they took their poverty-inflicted infections with them.
(Public Records Office Victoria, Assisted Passenger Lists for Georgiana, Arrived 16 October 1852 at Geelong, VPRS 14 (Reel VPRS 3502), Book No 6, pp 56-66
Archives South Australia, Abstract of Certificate of Final Departure for Hercules and Return Of Emigrants 53/8, Arrived at Adelaide 17 July 1853, GRG3J-48.1-53-8-Hercules.pdf
Public Records Office Victoria, Register Assisted Immigrants for Hercules, Arrived at Melbourne 3 August 1853, VPRS 14, Book No 9, pp 219-224)
EXTENDING THE COMPARISON TO SHIPS LOADED THROUGH BIRKENHEAD
The contrast between the HIES vessels loaded in Scotland, the Georgiana and HMS Hercules, is clear enough. This variation in Highland emigrant voyages, between high rates of disease and virtually nil losses, was not unusual, even when the presumed benefits of the Birkenhead Depot were factored in. The following comparisons concern four Liverpool departures, dedicated Highland and Island ships, destined for Port Phillip ― Geelong and Melbourne ― in the peak emigration years of 1852, 1853 and 1854.
A major problem shared by the Araminta, Allison, Priscilla, and Hornet, was that most of the impoverished passengers were Gaelic-speakers. They did not understand English, or Lowland Scots for that matter. Adapting to their quite rapid transfer from traditional Black-houses on land (essentially low walled, turf covered holes-in-the-ground, with a reeking muck-heap of household and human waste immediately adjacent to the dwelling entrance) to the confined and crowded accommodation below decks at sea (dormitories containing rows of narrow bunk beds, a shared central space for meals, and small inside toilets) was already asking a lot. But in the midst of hundreds of other confused individuals, the need for accurate and culturally empathetic translators was especially urgent.
On the Araminta, 10 volunteers or assistants were drawn from the general emigrant population ― six Constables to maintain order and four Interpreters to manage language difference. Despite these modest efforts, the examining Immigration Board at Geelong had no hesitation in condemning the state of the emigrants on arrival. The medical officer in particular was shocked. WA Baylie, D. Surgeon, wrote "I ascribe the Diarrhoea principally to the unsound quality of the flour and biscuit and I must say to the neglect of cleanliness on board ship (a more dirty vessel than the Araminta I have never inspected). In addition to Diarrhoea, Measles prevailed and two cases of Fever were clearly attributable to neglect of cleanliness ['on inspection some of the immigrants were crawling with lice']."
Compounding the "very leaky" water closets on deck and "wet and dirty" conditions below, was an "irritable, hasty, petulant" Superintendent Surgeon with "infirmities of temper" and "a want of judgment and discretion", and an ineffective Matron who "owing to her ignorance of Gaelic, proved of but small use". These failings are reflected in the ship's List of Deaths.
The Araminta carried 393 emigrants on a crossing that took 110 Days. Losses were 27 dead . Diarrhoea and Dysentery were contributors to 23 of these fatalities, with the seriously contagious diseases of Measles and Typhus Fever present in at least 9 cases.
Similar tragedies played out on the Allison (305 emigrants, 146 Days including Quarantine, 21 Deaths including 10 Diarrhoea/Dysentery and 8 Typhus) and the Priscilla (261 emigrants, 131 Days including Quarantine, 41 Deaths including 24 Dysentery/Diarrhoea and 26 Measles).
A radically different experience was enjoyed by the fourth and fastest vessel, the Hornet, which arrived at Geelong in 1854. It carried 434 emigrants, took 86 Days, and suffered only 1 Death.
In summary, of these four Highland and Island Emigration Society chartered vessels to Port Phillip, three were what the colonial press called Fever Ships. That meant that they were sufficiently contagious to represent a threat to the local inhabitants, and the Immigration authorities put them into Quarantine. Only one shipload, emigrants on the Hornet, escaped the ignominious fate of weeks in tents at Point Nepean.
(Public Records Office Victoria, Assisted Passenger Lists, VPRS 14 [Microform VPRS 3502];
'Araminta' arrived 1852, Book No 5A, pp 250...; 'Allison' arrived 1852, Book No 9, pp 10...;
'Priscilla' arrived 1853, Book No 9, pp 46...; 'Hornet' arrived 1854, Book No 10, pp 370...)
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