despite the government-inspired pressure on people not to emigrate, the exodus from Yorkshire continued. The numbers peaked during the three-month period from March to May 1774 when the ships Two Friends, Albion, Thomas and William, Prince George, Mary, and Providence carried around seven hundred Yorkshire emigrants to Nova Scotia. John Bulmer, who sailed with his wife and family in the Two Friends, said that he had left “on account of their rents being raised” by Beilby Thompson, MP; Christopher Harper from Rillington, who sailed in the same ship, made the same complaint about his landlord, William Weddell, MP.31 Both landlords contributed unwittingly to the peopling of Nova Scotia, with substantial numbers leaving from Thompson’s estate just south of York and Weddell’s estate near Ripon (see Map 3). Both groups were among the 103 passengers who sailed in the Two Friends from Hull. It had clearly been a very difficult crossing. An unnamed young woman said it gave her “great pleasure to see land after being nine weeks at sea, and the ill-treatment that we met with. I assure you that our usage was as bad as though we had been transports, not being permitted to go on deck when the weather permitted, but as the captain pleased.”32
Those who sailed in the Albion included the former tenants of the Duke of Rutland, Lord Cavendish and Thomas Duncombe, and they, too, complained of increased rents. In fact, “rents being raised” was the repeated refrain of people who were asked why they were leaving England. Some men, like Thomas Lumley from Rillington and William Chapman from Hawnby, both farmers, and William Trueman, a miller from Bilsdale (near Thirsk), were probably sufficiently affluent to have afforded higher rents, but preferred emigration to lowered living standards. Nathaniel Smith, a farmer from Appleton-by-Wisk who came with his entire household, including servants, certainly had considerable means. Complaining that “Hull and York have lightened our purses,” he had to finance lodgings for his large contingent at the exorbitant rate of a guinea a day while awaiting the Albion’s departure from Hull. Captain James Watt added to their woes when he said “to our comfort, if I may use the expression, he shall think himself well off if one third of us survive our journey.”33 Enduring seasickness, an outbreak of smallpox, and dreadful storms, the ship’s 188 passengers finally reached Halifax: “When we came nigh the shores we thought it prudent to take a pilot up the Bay as our captain was altogether a stranger to the place.” They anchored two miles from shore, with the governor’s schooner blocking “our people from landing” for fear of spreading the infection.34
In the same month that the Albion had sailed, the York Chronicle claimed that three ships carrying emigrants from Sutherland in Scotland to North America had suffered serious fatalities: “One was wrecked on Shetland, and most of the people perished; another is thought to be totally lost, no account being received of her arrival; and the third arrived after a dismal passage of three months with the loss of 70 people.”35 However, anti-emigration campaigners sometimes resorted to rumours and scare stories, and the reporting of such faraway incidents in a Yorkshire newspaper, whether true or not, was clearly intended to focus attention on the perils of an ocean crossing. But Yorkshire people were impervious to such tactics.
Agents working for Michael Francklin in the East Riding had clearly been deluged with requests for places on ships.36 Samuel Pattindon, captain of the Thomas and William, reported that the ship would be leaving late in order to give people time to raise the necessary funds, but the delay gave scaremongers the time they needed to sow doubt and confusion:
[A]s persons who … intend to remove their habitations to this land of liberty, not being judges of a proper ship to accommodate them for such a passage, have been intimidated by threatening advertisements, and in doubt how to proceed — The owner of the abovenamed ship [Thomas and William] begs of such persons as intend to take their passage to Nova Scotia this season, that they will make inquiry at Scarborough of any interested persons, who are conversant in maritime affairs, and hopes they will go on board of such ship, as they shall be advised is properly fitted, and sufficient for the performance of the voyage.37
The Prince George,38 which was also due to sail from Scarborough at this same time, suffered equally bad press:
Some evil-disposed person or persons have maliciously reported that the ship, Prince George, advertised for taking passengers from Scarborough to Nova Scotia, is totally unfit to perform the voyage, and that therefore the persons going therein must do so at the hazard of their lives and fortunes. The owner of the said ship takes this method of informing the public in general, and particularly all such persons who have engaged to go in his said vessel, that the said report is without the least foundation, and merely intended to draw all such passengers from him, for the emolument of some other owner, the above-named ship being in not only good condition, but as well calculated for the above purpose as any other vessel advertised for such voyage.39
The Thomas and William and Prince George were hardly the best of ships, both being rated by Lloyd’s of London as “E1” (seaworthy but only second class). The real issue though was not the quality of the ships but the extent of overcrowding. As a correspondent to the York Chronicle noted, “few of them had considered the consequences attending so large a number of people being, for at least two months, crowded together four in a bed and the beds one upon another three deep with not so much room between each to admit even the smallest person to sit up on end.”40 Many people had wanted to leave from Scarborough and shipowners had met the demand. They offered affordable fares, but to maximize profits they had packed passengers like sardines into the holds of their ships.
The actual number of passengers carried in the Thomas and William and Prince George is difficult to assess. The confusion may have been deliberate, since the suffering endured in overcrowded ships often generated adverse publicity for shipowners. A list of 193 people who had sailed from Scarborough in April 1774 was provided to British customs officials, but the ship carrying them was not recorded.41 Presumably this was done on purpose to conceal the fact that 193 people had actually sailed in the three-hundred-ton Thomas and William,42 when the captain claimed the smaller total of 105 passengers on reaching Halifax.43 Meanwhile, the crossing of the 150-ton Prince George was mysteriously left out altogether from the British customs register. On arrival in Halifax, the captain claimed that she had carried 143 people, but according to John Robinson, one of the passengers who kept a meticulous account of his journey to Nova Scotia, there were 170 people onboard.44 Robinson’s figure is probably the more reliable. If that number did sail, the overcrowding must have been unbearable. Apart from slave-trade regulations, there were no enforceable legal limits at the time restricting passenger numbers in ships. Later, with the passing of the Passenger Act of 1803, a formula was introduced allowing only one person for every two tons burthen.45 Applying this ruling to the Prince George, she should have had a maximum of seventyfive passengers, when in fact she carried 170.46
The Thomas and William’s passengers were reported to be “all well” on arrival after a five-week crossing, with their number increasing by two — “two women being safely delivered in the passage.”47 But a more negative spin was given to the Prince George’s arrival. Yorkshire people were told that all of her passengers had returned to England “and many more would have gladly returned, but could not pay for their freight, the country not being in any respect equal to the favourable idea they had formed of it.”48 This was utter nonsense, but it did illustrate the serious concerns being felt over the growing loss of people, some of whom were surprisingly affluent. One large family, probably the Harrisons from Rillington, were reported to have taken £2,200 with them.49 Fares alone in the Thomas and William for two adults and nine children would have cost between twenty-five and thirty-three pounds, and the Harrison family probably spent far more besides on lodging costs.50 Having come laden with many household possessions, they were almost certainly among the
