Description

Below decks in the airless steerage
trying to keep clean
Men, women, children living
together.
Your bedding spread on the
wooden shelf
At night the smell of vomit and
urine
The swill of water beneath the
floor beams
The lanterns swinging from the
posts
The creaking play of hull timbers
and masts
Women comforting their children's
terror
The cholera victims carried out in
the morning
Drinking water going foul, flour
spoiling
Blisters from dampness in the
sheets
Children crying with the first
typhoid pains
Women looking at their husbands
unable to do more
Despairing of reaching the new
world alive.
—From "Emigrant Ship 1830s"
by Douglas Stewart