Transatlantic travel
Although passage on a steamer in 1867,
for example, cost about three times as much as on a sailing ship, more and more
chose to travel by steam each year. The steamship companies could tempt
passengers with a safer and quicker crossing, with food included in the price.
Steerage fares from Liverpool to New York, Boston or Philadelphia in 1891
ranged from £3 16s to £6 6s depending on the day or on how desperate the agent
was to fill his quota. Ships left every Wednesday, called at Queenstown in
Ireland next day and arrived in America a week to 10 days later. It was all as
regular as clockwork.
Accommodation
It was not until the 1850s that a
passenger to America would have embarked on a vessel that specialized in
passenger traffic. Big advances in ship design did not begin to take hold
until the mid-1860s, when mass migration
took off.
Before the 1850s, ships were very
cramped, with much of the available space being jammed with cargo as well as a
few live animals to provide fresh meat during the voyage. Each family would be
allocated tiny living quarters, sometimes only divided from their neighbours by
a canvas curtain. Fresh air was ducted in from above or through small portholes
which, in rough weather also allowed the ingress of salt water. Bunks were
about 1 metre wide and one above the other. There were bench seats and the
dinner tables would be pulled up under the deck above to allow more floor space
when not needed for meals. When heavy seas were running - almost every day and
night - everything rolled around.
The steerage on a
North German Lloyd steamship
In good weather, it was easy for
passengers to exercise on deck, but when stormy conditions prevailed, the ships
were ill-equipped for emergencies. Passengers could be victims of poor food,
damp conditions and illness. Particularly on longer voyages to the Southern
Hemisphere, deaths occurred from illnesses such as typhoid fever, tuberculosis,
diarrhoea, and scarlet fever. Illnesses were exacerbated by the damp and cold
conditions of the Roaring Forties or the sapping heat of the tropics. Many
families consisted of six to ten children, and each ship carried men and women
who were ill, homesick and nursing some of their families.
The interior of the early steamships
was not very different from that of the sail ships. The steerage was usually
divided into two or three large sections. On board the Wilson Line steamer SS
Angelo, for example, the bunks were described as two-story shelves. These were
not long enough for a person to stretch out completely. An inspector reported
in 1881 that the emigrants slept in whatever clothing they were wearing. He
also saw several people who slept with their hats on and no one removed their
shoes. One man even slept in his raincoat. The food the emigrants required
during the crossing was included in the ticket. Toilet conditions were nothing
to brag about and were often up on deck. The crossing could be very rough in
bad weather and many people suffered from seasickness. As a rule, passengers were
not permitted on deck when it was dark or during bad weather. Reports state
that even passengers accustomed to the sea would get sick, not because of the
sea, but because of the terrible stench of vomit. On some of the ships there
were spaces between the deck boards along the sides of the ship so that the
deck could be hosed down and the foul water removed with pumps. On other ships,
the deck was doused in carbolic acid and covered with sawdust. The sawdust was
removed and replaced each day. Both ventilation and illumination was generally
better on the steam ships than on the sailing boats.
On the SS Arabic, a combination sail
and steam ship built in 1881, there was a conscious effort to separate the
different classes of passengers. The steerage was divided into three sections,
each with its own entrance and a water closet. Single men were quartered on the
lowest forward deck, with a salon between them and the deck for married
couples. The section for single women was aft and was completely separated from
the other passengers, with matrons to keep an eye on the ladies. It sometimes
happened that families were separated on board because passengers were divided
according to sex. For seasick and bedridden passengers, there was a physician
and a sick bay in each of the sections. There were also two sick bays on the
top deck to be used for passengers with contagious diseases. Beds were made of
canvas (passengers had to supply their own bedding) and could be removed when
not in use during the day, making room for tables and chairs. The sections were
each equipped with a little kitchenette where the passengers could make tea or
coffee. There were separate forward and aft promenade decks for the steerage
passengers, while the midships section was reserved
for saloon passengers.
This
method of transporting steerage passengers, remained more or less the same
until the end of the 1890s. As competition grew between the shipping companies,
conditions gradually improved for the passengers. Strangely enough, there were
few complaints from the emigrants concerning conditions on board these ships,
perhaps because they were not accustomed to much comfort. As the companies
built new ships, standards were raised and conditions improved.
During the 1890s, most companies began
selling tickets in three different class categories, and the steerage
disappeared. The majority of emigrants that earlier had travelled as steerage
passengers, were now placed in third class. The large rooms in the steerage
where passengers had previously eaten their meals, slept, and spent much of
their time on board, were replaced by cabins, dining rooms and lounges. The
ships were bigger, faster and more comfortable for the passengers. Competition
was keen between the companies - the goal was to cross the Atlantic in the
shortest time possible. The ship that held the record had a blue strip painted
on the smokestack. This strip, known as The Blue Riband,
was a sign of great prestige. In addition to being constructed exclusively for
transporting passengers, the ships incorporated new technology such as electric
light, heating, telegraph equipment and new navigational devices. The large
steamships had passenger decks several storeys high. On the four stacker SS Aquitania of 1913, third class passengers could choose
between cabins for two, four, or six persons. The ships were now equipped with
separate dining rooms, smoking compartments for the men, a saloon for ladies, a
party room with a piano, covered and open promenade decks, a sick bay and a
drugstore. Later there were also playrooms for the children. The size of the
ships gave them greater stability in rough seas so that seasickness was no
longer as great a problem as before. The ships had doctors, interpreters and
both male and female crew. Hygiene and food on board were considerably
improved. Both the captain and the ship's physician inspected the ship each
day, and passengers with complaints could express them directly.
Cross-section of the Cunard
Line giant steamship S/S Aquitania built in 1913.
Emigrants who travelled third class were placed in the lowest decks of the
ship, just above the cargo hold, where there was room for 2,052 passengers. Second
class passengers were placed on the decks above them, with room for 614. First
class passengers were placed in the upper decks, where there was room for 597.
Both first and second class passengers could enjoy luxurious saloons. Food Passengers
could drink all the water they wanted. Advertisements by the Anchor Line promised that
passengers would receive the following during the entire passage to New York: . . . so
much of the best food, properly prepared, as they could eat, namely: Breakfast
9 am: Tea, coffee or hot chocolate, sugar, bread and butter or biscuits and
butter. Dinner, 1 pm: Soup, beef or pork with potatoes, with plum pudding on
Sundays. Supper 6 pm: Tea, coffee or hot chocolate, sugar, bread and butter or
biscuits and butter. However, a
Norwegian emigrant who travelled with the company described the food on board
in a letter he sent home in 1869: . . . for supper there was always at sea sweet tea
without milk in it and dry hard biscuits or Ship's bread, and the same for
breakfast. There was butter, but it was so rancid that we could not digest it.
For dinner, meat, but their was no taste to the soup or for us Norwegians it
had a disgusting taste, and the meat was as salty as herring. One day we had
salted fish with a dash of soup, but it was inedible for most of us and it was
just to dump our portions into the sea. Another
emigrant wrote the following account about his journey to America with the Guion Line steamship Idaho from Liverpool in 1869: . . . You
can imagine what an unpleasant journey it was with over 1,100 emigrants crammed
together; most of us were treated worse than wild animals. We hardly ate
anything at the start of the journey since we are not pigs, but when we began
to understand the situation and our own provisions were not enough, we had to
accept the food that the pigs ate . . . when we walked on deck the muck went
over our shoes and into the meat container; one should wash it but the Irishmen
had washed their children's messes and night pots first . . .