THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND THERE
LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND
Although fast-sailing ships, blest with prosperous breezes, have
frequently made the run across the Atlantic in eighteen days; yet, it
is not uncommon for other vessels to be forty, or fifty, and even
sixty, seventy, eighty, and ninety days, in making the same passage.
Though in the latter cases, some signal calamity or incapacity must
occasion so great a detention. It is also true, that generally the
passage out from America is shorter than the return; which is to be
ascribed to the prevalence of westerly winds.
We had been outside of Cape Clear upward of twenty days, still harassed
by head-winds, though with pleasant weather upon the whole, when we
were visited by a succession of rain storms, which lasted the greater
part of a week.
During the interval, the emigrants were obliged to remain below; but
this was nothing strange to some of them; who, not recovering, while at
sea, from their first attack of seasickness, seldom or never made their
appearance on deck, during the entire passage.
During the week, now in question, fire was only once made in the public
galley. This occasioned a good deal of domestic work to be done in the
steerage, which otherwise would have been done in the open air. When
the lulls of the rain-storms would intervene, some unusually cleanly
emigrant would climb to the deck, with a bucket of slops, to toss into
the sea. No experience seemed sufficient to instruct some of these
ignorant people in the simplest, and most elemental principles of
ocean-life. Spite of all lectures on the subject, several would
continue to shun the leeward side of the vessel, with their slops. One
morning, when it was blowing very fresh, a simple fellow pitched over a
gallon or two of something to windward. Instantly it flew back in his
face; and also, in the face of the chief mate, who happened to be
standing by at the time. The offender was collared, and shaken on the
spot; and ironically commanded, never, for the future, to throw any
thing to windward at sea, but fine ashes and scalding hot water.
During the frequent _hard blows_ we experienced, the hatchways on the
steerage were, at intervals, hermetically closed; sealing down in their
noisome den, those scores of human beings. It was something to be
marveled at, that the shocking fate, which, but a short time ago,
overtook the poor passengers in a Liverpool steamer in the Channel,
during similar stormy weather, and under similar treatment, did not
overtake some of the emigrants of the Highlander.
Nevertheless, it was, beyond question, this noisome confinement in so
close, unventilated, and crowded a den: joined to the deprivation of
sufficient food, from which many were suffering; which, helped by their
personal uncleanliness, brought on a malignant fever.
The first report was, that two persons were affected. No sooner was it
known, than the mate promptly repaired to the medicine-chest in the
cabin: and with the remedies deemed suitable, descended into the
steerage. But the medicines proved of no avail; the invalids rapidly
grew worse; and two more of the emigrants became infected.
Upon this, the captain himself went to see them; and returning, sought
out a certain alleged physician among the cabin-passengers; begging him
to wait upon the sufferers; hinting that, thereby, he might prevent the
disease from extending into the cabin itself. But this person denied
being a physician; and from fear of contagion—though he did not confess
that to be the motive—refused even to enter the steerage. The cases
increased: the utmost alarm spread through the ship: and scenes ensued,
over which, for the most part, a veil must be drawn; for such is the
fastidiousness of some readers, that, many times, they must lose the
most striking incidents in a narrative like mine.
Many of the panic-stricken emigrants would fain now have domiciled on
deck; but being so scantily clothed, the wretched weather—wet, cold,
and tempestuous—drove the best part of them again below. Yet any other
human beings, perhaps, would rather have faced the most outrageous
storm, than continued to breathe the pestilent air of the steerage. But
some of these poor people must have been so used to the most abasing
calamities, that the atmosphere of a lazar-house almost seemed their
natural air.
The first four cases happened to be in adjoining bunks; and the
emigrants who slept in the farther part of the steerage, threw up a
barricade in front of those bunks; so as to cut off communication. But
this was no sooner reported to the captain, than he ordered it to be
thrown down; since it could be of no possible benefit; but would only
make still worse, what was already direful enough.
It was not till after a good deal of mingled threatening and coaxing,
that the mate succeeded in getting the sailors below, to accomplish the
captain’s order.
The sight that greeted us, upon entering, was wretched indeed. It was
like entering a crowded jail. From the rows of rude bunks, hundreds of
meager, begrimed faces were turned upon us; while seated upon the
chests, were scores of unshaven men, smoking tea-leaves, and creating a
suffocating vapor. But this vapor was better than the native air of the
place, which from almost unbelievable causes, was fetid in the extreme.
In every corner, the females were huddled together, weeping and
lamenting; children were asking bread from their mothers, who had none
to give; and old men, seated upon the floor, were leaning back against
the heads of the water-casks, with closed eyes and fetching their
breath with a gasp.
At one end of the place was seen the barricade, hiding the invalids;
while—notwithstanding the crowd—in front of it was a clear area, which
the fear of contagion had left open.
“That bulkhead must come down,” cried the mate, in a voice that rose
above the din. “Take hold of it, boys.”
But hardly had we touched the chests composing it, when a crowd of
pale-faced, infuriated men rushed up; and with terrific howls, swore
they would slay us, if we did not desist.
“Haul it down!” roared the mate.
But the sailors fell back, murmuring something about merchant seamen
having no pensions in case of being maimed, and they had not shipped to
fight fifty to one. Further efforts were made by the mate, who at last
had recourse to entreaty; but it would not do; and we were obliged to
depart, without achieving our object.
About four o’clock that morning, the first four died. They were all
men; and the scenes which ensued were frantic in the extreme.
Certainly, the bottomless profound of the sea, over which we were
sailing, concealed nothing more frightful.
Orders were at once passed to bury the dead. But this was unnecessary.
By their own countrymen, they were torn from the clasp of their wives,
rolled in their own bedding, with ballast-stones, and with hurried
rites, were dropped into the ocean.
At this time, ten more men had caught the disease; and with a degree of
devotion worthy all praise, the mate attended them with his medicines;
but the captain did not again go down to them.
It was all-important now that the steerage should be purified; and had
it not been for the rains and squalls, which would have made it madness
to turn such a number of women and children upon the wet and
unsheltered decks, the steerage passengers would have been ordered
above, and their den have been given a thorough cleansing. But, for the
present, this was out of the question. The sailors peremptorily refused
to go among the defilements to remove them; and so besotted were the
greater part of the emigrants themselves, that though the necessity of
the case was forcibly painted to them, they would not lift a hand to
assist in what seemed their own salvation.
The panic in the cabin was now very great; and for fear of contagion to
themselves, the cabin passengers would fain have made a prisoner of the
captain, to prevent him from going forward beyond the mainmast. Their
clamors at last induced him to tell the two mates, that for the present
they must sleep and take their meals elsewhere than in their old
quarters, which communicated with the cabin.
On land, a pestilence is fearful enough; but there, many can flee from
an infected city; whereas, in a ship, you are locked and bolted in the
very hospital itself. Nor is there any possibility of escape from it;
and in so small and crowded a place, no precaution can effectually
guard against contagion.
Horrible as the sights of the steerage now were, the cabin, perhaps,
presented a scene equally despairing. Many, who had seldom prayed
before, now implored the merciful heavens, night and day, for fair
winds and fine weather. Trunks were opened for Bibles; and at last,
even prayer-meetings were held over the very table across which the
loud jest had been so often heard.
Strange, though almost universal, that the seemingly nearer prospect of
that death which any body at any time may die, should produce these
spasmodic devotions, when an everlasting Asiatic Cholera is forever
thinning our ranks; and die by death we all must at last.
On the second day, seven died, one of whom was the little tailor; on
the third, four; on the fourth, six, of whom one was the Greenland
sailor, and another, a woman in the cabin, whose death, however, was
afterward supposed to have been purely induced by her fears. These last
deaths brought the panic to its height; and sailors, officers,
cabin-passengers, and emigrants—all looked upon each other like lepers.
All but the only true leper among us—the mariner Jackson, who seemed
elated with the thought, that for _him—_already in the deadly clutches
of another disease—no danger was to be apprehended from a fever which
only swept off the comparatively healthy. Thus, in the midst of the
despair of the healthful, this incurable invalid was not cast down;
not, at least, by the same considerations that appalled the rest.
And still, beneath a gray, gloomy sky, the doomed craft beat on; now on
this tack, now on that; battling against hostile blasts, and drenched
in rain and spray; scarcely making an inch of progress toward her port.
On the sixth morning, the weather merged into a gale, to which we
stripped our ship to a storm-stay-sail. In ten hours’ time, the waves
ran in mountains; and the Highlander rose and fell like some vast buoy
on the water. Shrieks and lamentations were driven to leeward, and
drowned in the roar of the wind among the cordage; while we gave to the
gale the blackened bodies of five more of the dead.
But as the dying departed, the places of two of them were filled in the
rolls of humanity, by the birth of two infants, whom the plague, panic,
and gale had hurried into the world before their time. The first cry of
one of these infants, was almost simultaneous with the splash of its
father’s body in the sea. Thus we come and we go. But, surrounded by
death, both mothers and babes survived.
At midnight, the wind went down; leaving a long, rolling sea; and, for
the first time in a week, a clear, starry sky.
In the first morning-watch, I sat with Harry on the windlass, watching
the billows; which, seen in the night, seemed real hills, upon which
fortresses might have been built; and real valleys, in which villages,
and groves, and gardens, might have nestled. It was like a landscape in
Switzerland; for down into those dark, purple glens, often tumbled the
white foam of the wave-crests, like avalanches; while the seething and
boiling that ensued, seemed the swallowing up of human beings.
By the afternoon of the next day this heavy sea subsided; and we bore
down on the waves, with all our canvas set; stun’-sails alow and aloft;
and our best steersman at the helm; the captain himself at his
elbow;—bowling along, with a fair, cheering breeze over the taffrail.
The decks were cleared, and swabbed bone-dry; and then, all the
emigrants who were not invalids, poured themselves out on deck,
snuffing the delightful air, spreading their damp bedding in the sun,
and regaling themselves with the generous charity of the captain, who
of late had seen fit to increase their allowance of food. A detachment
of them now joined a band of the crew, who proceeding into the
steerage, with buckets and brooms, gave it a thorough cleansing,
sending on deck, I know not how many bucketsful of defilements. It was
more like cleaning out a stable, than a retreat for men and women. This
day we buried three; the next day one, and then the pestilence left us,
with seven convalescent; who, placed near the opening of the hatchway,
soon rallied under the skillful treatment, and even tender care of the
mate.
But even under this favorable turn of affairs, much apprehension was
still entertained, lest in crossing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland,
the fogs, so generally encountered there, might bring on a return of
the fever. But, to the joy of all hands, our fair wind still held on;
and we made a rapid run across these dreaded shoals, and southward
steered for New York.
Our days were now fair and mild, and though the wind abated, yet we
still ran our course over a pleasant sea. The steerage-passengers—at
least by far the greater number—wore a still, subdued aspect, though a
little cheered by the genial air, and the hopeful thought of soon
reaching their port. But those who had lost fathers, husbands, wives,
or children, needed no crape, to reveal to others, who they were. Hard
and bitter indeed was their lot; for with the poor and desolate, grief
is no indulgence of mere sentiment, however sincere, but a gnawing
reality, that eats into their vital beings; they have no kind
condolers, and bland physicians, and troops of sympathizing friends;
and they must toil, though to-morrow be the burial, and their
pallbearers throw down the hammer to lift up the coffin.
How, then, with these emigrants, who, three thousand miles from home,
suddenly found themselves deprived of brothers and husbands, with but a
few pounds, or perhaps but a few shillings, to buy food in a strange
land?
As for the passengers in the cabin, who now so jocund as they? drawing
nigh, with their long purses and goodly portmanteaus to the promised
land, without fear of fate. One and all were generous and gay, the
jelly-eyed old gentleman, before spoken of, gave a shilling to the
steward.
The lady who had died, was an elderly person, an American, returning
from a visit to an only brother in London. She had no friend or
relative on board, hence, as there is little mourning for a stranger
dying among strangers, her memory had been buried with her body.
But the thing most worthy of note among these now light-hearted people
in feathers, was the gay way in which some of them bantered others,
upon the panic into which nearly all had been thrown.
And since, if the extremest fear of a crowd in a panic of peril, proves
grounded on causes sufficient, they must then indeed come to
perish;—therefore it is, that at such times they must make up their
minds either to die, or else survive to be taunted by their fellow-men
with their fear. For except in extraordinary instances of exposure,
there are few living men, who, at bottom, are not very slow to admit
that any other living men have ever been very much nearer death than
themselves. Accordingly, _craven_ is the phrase too often applied to
any one who, with however good reason, has been appalled at the
prospect of sudden death, and yet lived to escape it. Though, should he
have perished in conformity with his fears, not a syllable of _craven_
would you hear. This is the language of one, who more than once has
beheld the scenes, whence these principles have been deduced. The
subject invites much subtle speculation; for in every being’s ideas of
death, and his behavior when it suddenly menaces him, lies the best
index to his life and his faith. Though the Christian era had not then
begun, Socrates died the death of the Christian; and though Hume was
not a Christian in theory, yet he, too, died the death of the
Christian,—humble, composed, without bravado; and though the most
skeptical of philosophical skeptics, yet full of that firm, creedless
faith, that embraces the spheres. Seneca died dictating to posterity;
Petronius lightly discoursing of essences and love-songs; and Addison,
calling upon Christendom to behold how calmly a Christian could die;
but not even the last of these three, perhaps, died the best death of
the Christian.
The cabin passenger who had used to read prayers while the rest kneeled
against the transoms and settees, was one of the merry young sparks,
who had occasioned such agonies of jealousy to the poor tailor, now no
more. In his rakish vest, and dangling watch-chain, this same youth,
with all the awfulness of fear, had led the earnest petitions of his
companions; supplicating mercy, where before he had never solicited the
slightest favor. More than once had he been seen thus engaged by the
observant steersman at the helm: who looked through the little glass in
the cabin bulk-head.
But this youth was an April man; the storm had departed; and now he
shone in the sun, none braver than he.
One of his jovial companions ironically advised him to enter into holy
orders upon his arrival in New York.
“Why so?” said the other, “have I such an orotund voice?”
“No;” profanely returned his friend—“but you are a coward—just the man
to be a parson, and pray.”
However this narrative of the circumstances attending the fever among
the emigrants on the Highland may appear; and though these things
happened so long ago; yet just such events, nevertheless, are perhaps
taking place to-day. But the only account you obtain of such events, is
generally contained in a newspaper paragraph, under the shipping-head.
_There_ is the obituary of the destitute dead, who die on the sea. They
die, like the billows that break on the shore, and no more are heard or
seen. But in the events, thus merely initialized in the catalogue of
passing occurrences, and but glanced at by the readers of news, who are
more taken up with paragraphs of fuller flavor; what a world of life
and death, what a world of humanity and its woes, lies shrunk into a
three-worded sentence!
You see no plague-ship driving through a stormy sea; you hear no groans
of despair; you see no corpses thrown over the bulwarks; you mark not
the wringing hands and torn hair of widows and orphans:—all is a blank.
And one of these blanks I have but filled up, in recounting the details
of the Highlander’s calamity.
Besides that natural tendency, which hurries into oblivion the last
woes of the poor; other causes combine to suppress the detailed
circumstances of disasters like these. Such things, if widely known,
operate unfavorably to the ship, and make her a bad name; and to avoid
detention at quarantine, a captain will state the case in the most
palliating light, and strive to hush it up, as much as he can.
In no better place than this, perhaps, can a few words be said,
concerning emigrant ships in general.
Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such
multitudes of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let
us waive it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they
have God’s right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her
miseries with them. For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole
world; there is no telling who does not own a stone in the Great Wall
of China. But we waive all this; and will only consider, how best the
emigrants can come hither, since come they do, and come they must and
will.
Of late, a law has been passed in Congress, restricting ships to a
certain number of emigrants, according to a certain rate. If this law
were enforced, much good might be done; and so also might much good be
done, were the English law likewise enforced, concerning the fixed
supply of food for every emigrant embarking from Liverpool. But it is
hardly to be believed, that either of these laws is observed.
But in all respects, no legislation, even nominally, reaches the hard
lot of the emigrant. What ordinance makes it obligatory upon the
captain of a ship, to supply the steerage-passengers with decent
lodgings, and give them light and air in that foul den, where they are
immured, during a long voyage across the Atlantic? What ordinance
necessitates him to place the _galley,_ or steerage-passengers’ stove,
in a dry place of shelter, where the emigrants can do their cooking
during a storm, or wet weather? What ordinance obliges him to give them
more room on deck, and let them have an occasional run fore and
aft?—There is no law concerning these things. And if there was, who but
some Howard in office would see it enforced? and how seldom is there a
Howard in office!
We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of
_them,_ go to heaven, before some of _us?_ We may have civilized bodies
and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world;
deaf to its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that
one grief outweighs ten thousand joys, will we become what Christianity
is striving to make us.