Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Imperial Seas: Cultural Exchange and Commerce in the British Empire, 1780–1900
- 2 From Slaves to Palm Oil: Afro-European Commercial Relations in the Bight of Biafra, 1741–1841
- 3 ‘Pirate Water’: Sailing to Belize in the Mahogany Trade
- 4 Cape to Siberia: The Indian Ocean and China Sea Trade in Equids
- 5 Aden, British India and the Development of Steam Power in the Red Sea, 1825–1839
- 6 The Heroic Age of the Tin Can: Technology and Ideology in British Arctic Exploration, 1818–1835
- 7 The Proliferation and Diffusion of Steamship Technology and the Beginnings of ‘New Imperialism’
- 8 Lakes, Rivers and Oceans: Technology, Ethnicity and the Shipping of Empire in the Late Nineteenth Century
- 9 Making Imperial Space: Settlement, Surveying and Trade in Northern Australia in the Nineteenth Century
- 10 Hydrography, Technology, Coercion: Mapping the Sea in Southeast Asian Imperialism, 1850–1900
- 11 Pains, Perils and Pastimes: Emigrant Voyages in the Nineteenth Century
- 12 Ordering Shanghai: Policing a Treaty Port, 1854–1900
- 13 Toward a People’s History of the Sea
- Select Bibliography
- Index
11 - Pains, Perils and Pastimes: Emigrant Voyages in the Nineteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Imperial Seas: Cultural Exchange and Commerce in the British Empire, 1780–1900
- 2 From Slaves to Palm Oil: Afro-European Commercial Relations in the Bight of Biafra, 1741–1841
- 3 ‘Pirate Water’: Sailing to Belize in the Mahogany Trade
- 4 Cape to Siberia: The Indian Ocean and China Sea Trade in Equids
- 5 Aden, British India and the Development of Steam Power in the Red Sea, 1825–1839
- 6 The Heroic Age of the Tin Can: Technology and Ideology in British Arctic Exploration, 1818–1835
- 7 The Proliferation and Diffusion of Steamship Technology and the Beginnings of ‘New Imperialism’
- 8 Lakes, Rivers and Oceans: Technology, Ethnicity and the Shipping of Empire in the Late Nineteenth Century
- 9 Making Imperial Space: Settlement, Surveying and Trade in Northern Australia in the Nineteenth Century
- 10 Hydrography, Technology, Coercion: Mapping the Sea in Southeast Asian Imperialism, 1850–1900
- 11 Pains, Perils and Pastimes: Emigrant Voyages in the Nineteenth Century
- 12 Ordering Shanghai: Policing a Treaty Port, 1854–1900
- 13 Toward a People’s History of the Sea
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘There is nothing more agreeable to picture and nothing more pathetic to behold’ wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in 1879, reflecting on his crossing of the Atlantic in the steps of his mistress and future wife, Fanny Osborne. His fellow passengers he described as ‘a company of the rejected; the drunken, the incompetent, the weak, the prodigal’. Yet, rather incongruously, he continued, ‘it must not be supposed that these people exhibited depression. The scene . . . was cheerful. Not a tear was shed on board the vessel. All were full of hope for the future, and showed an inclination to innocent gaiety.’1 Stevenson’s juxtaposition of image and reality was replicated in many other accounts of emigrant travel in the nineteenth century, and the relationship between expectations and experiences is a recurring theme in this analysis of the voyage, viewed primarily through the eyes of emigrants from Scotland to North America, Australia and New Zealand.
By the time Robert Louis Stevenson went to America, steam had eclipsed sail and transatlantic travelling times had been slashed. Nevertheless, a voyage in an emigrant ship was still a test of endurance rather than a luxury cruise, and did nothing to build up the passengers’ strength for the challenges of the new life that lay ahead. Modern perceptions of the privations of the emigrant voyage have been neutralised by generations of airline travel which, for all its discomforts, has certainly shrunk the globe, making it difficult to appreciate the tedium and the trials of overseas travel in the nineteenth century, particularly by sailing ship, but also in the faster, more reliable age of steam and rail.
A wealth of sources
Our lack of comprehension is certainly not attributable to deficient evidence, for the actual process of emigration was always a subject of great interest.It generated innumerable eye-witness accounts, since keeping a diary was, if nothing else, a strategy for coping with boredom during a long sea passage, at least for cabin passengers. Emigrants’ journals can be supplemented by captains’ logs, along with instructions and advice frequently offered in pamphlets and guidebooks and the evidence of official enquiries that exposed fraudulent practices or picked over the pieces of shipping disasters.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Maritime EmpiresBritish Imperial Maritime Trade in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 159 - 172Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004
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