However, after three days of meals delivered and eaten around their individual ‘mess’ table with fourteen or so complete strangers, then being required to scour and clean their own utensils; of every morning having to roll up their bedding and sweep out their berths; of being interviewed by the imposing Captain Patey and found to be of ‘good character’; of being medically examined and found fit to travel, they were—ready or not—about to face the great journey of many weeks at sea. The average age of the emigrants was somewhere around the mid-twenties, and at this stage the impending voyage still had the qualities of a great adventure: breathlessly anticipated, but utterly unknowable.
The depot only had space for around 400 at a time, but the Ticonderoga would be carrying twice that number, so a complicated loading timetable was drawn up lasting several days as groups of passengers underwent their processing. At this stage, the democracy of the depot began to come into question. The first to be loaded were the English, all 140 of them, mainly from Somerset and Gloucestershire, who by virtue of their birth right were given the best bunks towards the relatively stable stern of the ship. Next were loaded the Scots, then finally the Irish, who crowded into the poorer quarters in the bow.
Captain Thomas Boyle was proud of his ship, as he was of his contract to carry emigrants to Australia, and the responsibility that entailed. To prepare the Ticonderoga for the longest voyage it had undertaken as well as the largest number of people it had carried, he expended considerable effort and no small expense employing a small army of ship’s carpenters to reconfigure her interior, with a view to achieving the highest possible standards of comfort and hygiene for his passengers. To this end, a number of features had been included. First, no less than twenty newly designed flushing water-closets—toilets—for both male and female passengers were installed at strategic positions on the upper deck. At a time when such innovations were only just beginning to appear in the newest London houses, this was indeed a significant advance on the traditional ship’s ‘heads’, in which people had to position themselves over a hole in a wooden board jutting out from the side of the ship suspended precariously above the water. Instead, the Ticonderoga’s modern devices used gravity-fed seawater tanks to flush away waste, which had to be manually pumped full every day. It was undoubtedly the first time anyone on board had seen anything like them. Another was the inclusion of four lead-lined bath tubs, each measuring a generous 6 feet by 2 feet. Admittedly, they could only be filled with salt water (stores of freshwater would be strictly used only for drinking and cooking), and would be used exclusively by the ship’s male population, but they were an advancement nonetheless.
Under the forecastle, Boyle had sealed off the main deck towards the bow with a solid bulkhead, beyond which were his crew’s quarters. The remainder of the previously open deck was now divided into three sections: a men’s ablution area, a central married quarters and, aft, the area for single women. This also now incorporated two new ‘hospitals’ or sick bays, the women’s situated at the rear of the single women’s quarters and the men’s adjacent to their ablution area near the bow. At equidistant points, narrow gangways led down to the lower deck. This too had been similarly renovated with another single men’s area in the bow and a larger married quarters taking up midship and the stern. The gangways linked the ship’s two main areas for married people and their families, as well as the lower men’s area with the male ablution section. There was also a new ‘teacher’s room’ for group reading and lessons, and a ‘matron’s room’ where the young women could be given their own lessons, though these were of a somewhat different nature to the men’s.
With the prevailing belief, before the advent of modern medicine, that sickness and disease were largely airborne, great care had been taken by Boyle to ensure the flow of fresh, ‘clean’ air throughout his ship. Lattice wooden bulkheads had therefore been installed rather than solid wood, as well as another innovation, wind sails.[1] This basic air-conditioning system was similar to those found in mines, whereby vents on the open upper deck scooped up fresh air and distributed it throughout the ship’s large and complicated interior. In rough or stormy weather, however, when the passengers arguably needed fresh air the most, they would be disengaged.
As well as the gangways, which themselves aided ventilation, extra openings had also been fitted between the decks. One of them, opening the single women’s area to one of the married quarters below it, had steel bars bolted across it at 6-inch intervals to prevent any interaction between the two. Such was the morality of the times. Although believed to be imperative to good health at the time, this deliberate opening up of the ship’s internal passages would, later in the voyage, allow the free circulation of something far more sinister than simply fresh air.
To bring at least some light into the lower deck, Boyle had 10-inch diameter windows or scuttles cut through to illuminate the stern area, with more situated 12 feet apart right around the deck. To enhance what light there was, the ship’s entire interior had been covered in several coats of whitewash. By far the largest task undertaken by Boyle’s carpenters, however, was the fitting of the Ticonderoga’s system of wooden bunks, which needed to be constructed and installed in their hundreds. Like some vast, two-tiered filing system, they were hammered, bolted and dowelled, piece by piece, around the ship’s solid centre, whence they emanated like rows of wooden petals. New straw-stuffed mattresses were provided for each, as were new blankets. For hygiene, passengers were forbidden from bringing on board bedding of their own. These bunks, however, were small and narrow, and separated by just 3 feet from the next. This, in fact, was more space than the mere 2 feet of space between bunks as stipulated by the Passengers Act. A flimsy wooden wall protected modesty to some extent, and a thin curtain could be drawn across the foot of each bunk, but privacy on board the ship barely existed.
The Ticonderoga also exceeded the prescribed headspace between decks, as laid out in the Act that in 1852 had been amended by parliament but that had not come into effect by the time she sailed. A mere 6 feet of headspace between decks of emigrant ships due to sail through the tropics was all that was required by law, but the Ticonderoga exceeded this with a clearance of 7 feet, 10 inches in her main deck, and 6 feet, 11 inches in the lower.[2]
She was, however, still awfully dark. Despite Boyle’s renovations, it was simply not possible for light to penetrate the ship’s interior. Even on bright days, the lower deck in particular was a place of perpetual gloom, the strong but thick glass of the scuttles allowing for little more than a hazy, green-tinted illumination. In particular, those passengers allotted the lower bunk on the lower deck were destined to spend a large part of the voyage in a perpetual night. This is one of the reasons, it has been suggested, that no passenger diaries have survived from the Ticonderoga’s journey. Even among those literate enough, there was little light by which to write them.
Deeper into the ship, underneath her second deck, were the Ticonderoga’s holds, inside which her crew of 48 had been toiling for many days, loading the tremendous amount of stores that would be required to keep nearly 800 people alive for the next three months and more. This being virtually the longest voyage that any ship of the time was capable of undertaking—close to the farthest distance from one point on the globe to another, and with no scheduled stops along the way—provisions were chosen more for their qualities of long-term preservation than their nutrition. Although the Ticonderoga’s journey was expected to last between 80 and 90 days, provisions to last 120 days were taken on board; hence her holds needed to be big. Among the larger items she would carry would be: