Osborn, was struck by his first encounter with the rations. In his lecture to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of the settlers, he said: ‘I remember … the hard salt junk and harder biscuit of 1820 and how salty the puddings were that the cooks boiled in sea water.’
The gentlemen, for some of whom deprivation was an unknown phenomenon, brought their own supplies or bribed the officers who controlled the rations, so they were generally able to enjoy the culinary standards they were accustomed to. The entry in Thomas Philipps’s journal on 29 January reads: ‘We ate a hearty breakfast of coffee and chocolate, toasted cheese and a rasher of ham, the females are the greatest devourers of the latter delicacies … Anything agrees with us that has a sharp taste, mustard, pepper and pickles are grand requisites.’
That was early in the voyage, however, and there is no doubt that food was a major challenge on the ships. Its preparation was difficult: on most vessels the cooking facilities were insufficient for the number of passengers and they could not be used at all in bad weather. One warm meal a day was the most the passengers could hope for. Incidents involving water and food and its preparation were the greatest flashpoints in the relationships between individual settlers and between the social classes. Jeremiah Goldswain observed such a confrontation between the gentlemen and the lower-class settlers on the Zoroaster: ‘The passengers were allowed three quarts of water per day for everything. One morning, when they were called up to get their boiled water they hurried joyfully, as usual, and filled their teapots.’ But then, Jeremiah wrote, ‘if you had been present and heard the cries from fore and aft of the ship by the poor women in particular’… ‘Who had put vinegar into the coppers? If they knew who had done it they would join all hands and give him a good flogging.’
The vinegar in the water flushed the gentlemen out of their saloon. Out they came – Messrs Wait, Thornhill, Barker, all the Dyasons, Bennet and Hougham Hudson. By this time the cooks, John Badger and William Bear, had dumped the polluted water overboard and begun making the pea soup that they were going to dish out to the settlers at dinnertime. The gentlemen ordered the cooks to throw the pea soup out and boil more water for the ladies’ morning tea.
Bear and Badger stood back from their work. “Well, Sirs,” Badger said. “We don’t know what to do, for if we did do so we should disappoint all the other people of their dinners as it is now so late.”
The gentlemen told them in no uncertain terms that they would have it done. There could be no argument about it.
While this conversation was going on more men had come up to the deck. Some of them were pretty vocal in defying the gentlemen. They told the cook that as they had had their breakfast spoilt they were determined that they should not lose their dinners as well. The pea soup would stay.
The two sides were squaring up to each other now and the cooks were doing nothing. The gentlemen were outraged. They sent for the captain.
The captain was a no-nonsense man: he was not going to allow any disruption on his ship. He immediately set about identifying the most vocal of the settlers and labelled them ringleaders of the “mutiny.” He ordered them aft on to the quarter deck. He read them the Mutiny Act and informed them of the consequences of their actions in terms of the Act. He ordered a boat to be lowered and designated a crew to man her. He ordered six of the “ringleaders” to step into the boat. He pointed to another settler ship some distance away and said that he had instructed its captain to put them ashore on an island. He then gave the word for the boat to be lowered.
One of the wives, Sarah Allen, came forward. At great risk to the baby she was holding she dropped on to the deck at her master, George Dyason’s, feet. She begged him to intervene. She said that she didn’t know what she would do if her husband were put ashore on an island. What would become of her and her child?
Dyason didn’t look at her. Stoney faced, he said: “I can do nothing in this as the captain is determined to punish them.”
She then turned to the captain but he wouldn’t be moved.
So off the boat went and the settlers watched until it disappeared from view.
That particular incident had a happy ending, however. Soon after, one night when there was a full moon, a sailor called from the crow’s nest indicating that there was a small boat approaching. The word went round and the settlers left their beds and crowded against the rail to see. For some reason – and Goldswain does not explain why – the six mutineers were coming back. They approached amid loud cheering. Mrs Allen was particularly joyful when she was able to make out the figure of her husband. She hugged baby John and told him that his father was coming home.
Everyone remained silent as the mutineers related what had happened to them. They had been received aboard the other ship as honoured guests and its settlers had shared their rations with them. When they heard about their guests’ ‘crime’, they expressed their surprise and, to a man and woman, declared that they sympathised with their plight. The mutineers spent four happy days with them. Sam Allen had participated in the holiday atmosphere that prevailed but maintained a slight distance. As he’d said repeatedly: ‘I only wish that I had my wife with me and then I should be happy too.’
As well as the hazards of rough seas, disease and food poisoning, there were the further dangers of shipwreck and fire. Perhaps the settlers’ worst fear was that at any moment disaster could strike in one of those forms. It was up to the captain and crew to prevent shipwreck to the best of their ability, but as regards fire, every passenger bore the responsibility for preventing it. On a wooden ship lighted candles and open cooking fires posed a constant hazard. The ships’ list of instructions included a time for lights to be put out and the captains dealt harshly with anyone found breaking that rule.
But even so, there were people who placed everyone around them in jeopardy by breaking even the most sensible of rules. Tom Stubbs spotted one of the women sewing at night-time: ‘When one night the word to douse the glim was given … [she placed] the candle on deck and cover[ed] it with her clothes, standing over it until all was quiet then [began] her sewing again.’
There were countless incidents of fires breaking out on board. They were usually dealt with by a crew member trained to act swiftly and decisively, but there was one settler ship where the crew was unable to do anything.
The Abeona caught fire and sank near the equator on 25 November 1820. A late departure, she had sailed from Greenock, carrying the Glaswegian party led by William Russell. Only forty-nine of the 160 crew and settlers survived. Mr Duff, the first mate, had gone into the storeroom to look for something and, disregarding the safety rules, had removed a candle from its lantern to help him search more effectively. The most feared consequence occurred.
Just after noon, the alarm was given that the ship was on fire: smoke and flames were coming from its stores and provisions. The sailors were quick to pass buckets of water to the first mate and the mariners who were down there, but their efforts were in vain.
In the meantime, the passengers had been driven up from below by the dense smoke and rapidly spreading fire. In ten or fifteen minutes from the first alarm the case was hopeless, and the ship was ablaze from the mainmast on the lower deck. The passengers crowded onto the upper deck and, judging by the excessive heat, they were expecting the fire to penetrate it at any moment. The flames rushed up from the hold, spread to the main rigging and flew up the masthead like lightning.
The scenes that followed were recorded by eyewitnesses. The Philanthropic Gazette of 24 January 1821 published a letter written by a surviving crew member: ‘The panic and confusion were such that the longboat proved too heavy to be launched by the few who were sufficiently collected to attend to the orders given, and on the falling of the main arm yard she was stove. Seeing now all was over, and the people were throwing themselves overboard,
