Shipping people overseas
The
transport of goods by sea on scheduled services has been a necessary maritime
activity for centuries but also the carriage of people by sea has been a much
smaller but nevertheless important part of maritime trade.
The
Vikings did it in the first century and before that the Romans, the Greeks also
travelled around their new lands they conquered. However, there is no sign that
the ships they used were specially built for passengers. Warships and cargo boats
were common, but ships and boats primarily built for passengers are difficult
to find.
However,
the word passenger is often interpreted as travelling freely and perhaps in
some state of luxury. This was not always the case and therefore the term “Human
cargo” seems a more appropriate title for many of the early maritime
ventures.
Therefore
we differentiate between those that travel of their own free will and those
that are part of “forced travel” such as troops, convicts under
“transportation” and slaves.
The
types of “passenger trade” and the ships that carried people are quite
different. We will focus on the era of the sailing ship in this article.
Emigration
 |
| Figure 1 - Copy of the Mayflower |
of around 26m in length sailed across the Atlantic with 102 passengers intent on settling in this new colony that became the USA. In a voyage of around 10 weeks with 30 crew members they landed at Cape Cod as the "Pilgrims" to establish a colony with freedom to express their religion.
The
slave trades
 |
| Figure 2 - Slave carrack |
Of all the shipment of people by ship, the slave trade was the most repugnant. It has a long history linked to the colonies established overseas by European maritime nations. The Portuguese took slaves from West Africa to Brazil in the 16th. century.[2] In small ships called “carracks of 36m loa. and around 400 tons. They were able to moor in the creeks of West Africa and slaves were [3]brought from the interior to be loaded as “cargo” in these small vessels. The ships were not adapted for the carriage of people and each slave was crammed into the holds of the ship. Many died on the voyage to Brazil.
As the colonies grew ships became bigger as they crammed more slaves into the
ships to maximise profit, so the conditions deteriorated. In this classic
diagram of a slave ship, it is possible to see the inhumane conditions.[4]
 |
| Figure 3 - layout of a slave ship |
The
room allowed for each slave was:
Men:
6 ft (182.9cm) by 1ft 4 inches (40.6cm)
Women:
5ft 10 inches (177.8cm) by 1ft 4 inches (40.6cm)
Boys:
5ft (152.4cm) by 1ft 2 inches (35.6cm)
Girls:
4 ft 6 inches (137.2cm) by 1 ft (30.5cm)
Thus,
a ship of nominal tonnage 297 tons with a crew of 45 could carry 609 slaves.[5]
It
is said that a chained slave took less room than a dead man in his coffin.[6]
Transportation
Banishment
of undesirable persons to a foreign land was also a major shipping trade and as
early as 1717 the UK sent around forty thousand men and women to the USA over the
next 60 years to work on the plantations. However, as the slave trade started
from Africa the transport of convicts from the UK to America ceased and the UK
needed a new place to continue their transportation.
Emigration
to Australia
Following
the “discovery” of Australia by Captain Cook in the early 1770’s, emigration to
Australia started with the transport of convicts from overcrowded prisons in
the UK in 1788 when the first penal settlement was created.
 |
| Figure 4 - Convict ship Alexander |
One
ship, the Alexander[8], a
three masted barque was built in Hull in 1783, so she was a relatively new ship
for her first voyage to Australia in the first fleet of ships to arrive in
January 1788. She was 35 m in length, a beam of 9,5m weighing 460 tonnes. With
a crew of around 30 and 37 marines she transported 213 male convicts.
However,
as in the case of the Mayflower with emigrants fleeing to America, so famine
and stories of a better life overseas started a new trade, that of persons
freely wishing to emigrate. Michael Stammers in his book “Emigrant Clippers to
Australia” [9] provides
an insight into this service in the 19th century.
For
the convict voyages the ships were chartered by UK government commissions and in
the case of emigration generally, the vessels were also chartered by Government
Commissions that enabled the shipowner to offer subsidised fares to passengers.
There
were generally three classes of service, first class, second class and
steerage, each quite distinct.
On
a Black Ball Line ship from Liverpool first class passengers paid between £45
and £75, second class £25 to £35 and steerage £14 to £18 in the middle of the
1800’s.
The
ships offered a type of liner service but as sailing ships the schedule needed
to be flexible. So, the ships sought return cargoes that often required them to
sail to China or India to pick up homeward bound cargoes thus increasing the
round voyage time considerably to around 8 months.
 |
| Figure 5 - Black Ball Line "Champion" |
One of their largest clippers was “Champion of the Seas”[10] built in 1854 she was the second largest ship in the Black Ball fleet. In this period of wooden ships the Americans were the dominant builders of fast commercial ships, and “Champion of the Seas” was built and registered in Boston but operated mainly between Liverpool and Australia. With a gross registered tonnage of 2447, 77m in length and a nearly 14m beam she was impressive. A full rigged ship with over 5200 m 2 she covered 465 nautical miles in one day on her maiden voyage.
She
also was a troop carrier for a while taking 1000 troops to Calcutta during the
Indian Mutiny of 1857.
However,
it was as a passenger ship she plied her trade.
Conditions
on the three-month voyage to Australia varied and passengers were segregated by
class of travel.
 |
| Figure 6 - Cross section of an emigrant ship |
First class passengers could expect permanent individual cabins aft amongst the officer accommodation, a dining saloon and free access on deck. Second class passengers had small temporary cabins at the after end of the tween decks below or in a deckhouse on the main deck. They had a separate dining saloon.
Steerage passengers had a very different
experience as Stammers explains. They were accommodated below deck either in
the tween decks or the upper part of the cargo hold. The need to segregate
single men and women meant that dormitories were established with married families
been quartered between these two groups. Bunks and straw mattresses were
provided for sleeping and for eating the passengers were divided into messes of
eight persons who received meals from the ships cook, did some cooking
themselves and then distributed the food.[12]
 |
| Figure 7 - Passenger layout in an emigrant ship |
All the steerage passenger accommodation was temporary and had to be dismantled for cargo space on the return leg of the voyage to Liverpool.
However
all this was to change as Stopford[13]
explains.
“Between
1833 and 1914 every aspect of ship design changed. 137 tons to 45,647 tons. switched from wood
to iron in the 1850s, from iron to steel in the 1880s, Triple expansion steam
engines arrived in the 1880s and turbines from 1900.Speed increased from 7
knots per hour in 1833 to 25 knots per hour in 1907, and fuel consumption from
around 20 tons a day to 1,000 tons a day.”
This
would have a profound effect on the passenger and liner trades.
[1] Keleher, Mayflower II.
[2] MSW, ‘Slave Carrack’.
[3] MSW, fig. Replica of the carrack ‘Santa
Maria’.
[4] ‘Diagram of a Slave Ship’.
[5] Atlantic Slave Trade.
[6] Lubbock, Coolie Ships and Oil Sailors,
page 11.
[7] ‘Convict Journey’.
[8] North, Convict Ship Alexander.
[9] Stammers, Emigrant Clippers to
Australia.
[10] Southworth, Champion of the Seas.
[11] Stammers, Michael, ‘Emigrant Clippers to
Australia’.
[12] Stammers, Emigrant Clippers to
Australia.
[13] Stopford, Martin, Maritime Economics.
References
Atlantic Slave Trade. 22 August 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Atlantic_slave_trade&oldid=1106036570.
Brookes. ‘Diagram of a Slave Ship’. Accessed 14 August 2022. https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large106661.html.
‘Convict Journey’. Accessed 10 August 2022. https://www.eastridingmuseums.co.uk/museums-online/convict-connections/convict-journey/.
Keleher, Paul. Mayflower II. 29 May 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mayflower_II&oldid=1090385269.
Lubbock, Basil. Coolie Ships and Oil Sailors. Brown, Sons and Ferguson, 1935.
MSW. ‘Slave Carrack’. Weapons and Warfare (blog), 8 July 2010. https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2010/07/08/slave-carrack/.
North, Jamie. Convict Ship Alexander. Accessed 13 August 2022. https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/stories/first-fleet-ships/alexander.
Southworth, Hawes. Champion of the Seas. 26 February 2022. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Champion_of_the_Seas&oldid=1074157804.
Stammers, Michael. ‘Emigrant Clippers to Australia’. Mielpost Research, 1995.
Stammers, Michael. Emigrant Clippers to Australia: The Black Ball Line, Its Operation, People and Ships 1852-187. s.l: Milepost Research, 2013.
Stopford, Martin. Maritime Economics. page 29-30. Accessed 5 May 2022. https://asp.bibliotekservice.no/sjofart/title.aspx?tkey=55207.
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