Redburn: Chapter 58

Chapter 58

THOUGH THE HIGHLANDER PUTS INTO NO HARBOR AS YET; SHE HERE AND
THERE LEAVES MANY OF HER PASSENGERS BEHIND

Although fast-sailing ships, blest with prosperous breezes, have
frequently made the run across the Atlantic in eighteen days; yet, it is
not uncommon for other vessels to be forty, or fifty, and even sixty,
seventy, eighty, and ninety days, in making the same passage. Though in
the latter cases, some signal calamity or incapacity must occasion so
great a detention. It is also true, that generally the passage out from
America is shorter than the return; which is to be ascribed to the
prevalence of westerly winds.

We had been outside of Cape Clear upward of twenty days, still harassed
by head-winds, though with pleasant weather upon the whole, when we were
visited by a succession of rain storms, which lasted the greater part of
a week.

During the interval, the emigrants were obliged to remain below; but
this was nothing strange to some of them; who, not recovering, while at
sea, from their first attack of seasickness, seldom or never made their
appearance on deck, during the entire passage.

During the week, now in question, fire was only once made in the public
galley. This occasioned a good deal of domestic work to be done in the
steerage, which otherwise would have been done in the open air. When the
lulls of the rain-storms would intervene, some unusually cleanly
emigrant would climb to the deck, with a bucket of slops, to toss into
the sea. No experience seemed sufficient to instruct some of these
ignorant people in the simplest, and most elemental principles of
ocean-life. Spite of all lectures on the subject, several would continue
to shun the leeward side of the vessel, with their slops. One morning,
when it was blowing very fresh, a simple fellow pitched over a gallon or
two of something to windward. Instantly it flew back in his face; and
also, in the face of the chief mate, who happened to be standing by at
the time. The offender was collared, and shaken on the spot; and
ironically commanded, never, for the future, to throw any thing to
windward at sea, but fine ashes and scalding hot water.

During the frequent hard blows we experienced, the hatchways on the
steerage were, at intervals, hermetically closed; sealing down in their
noisome den, those scores of human beings. It was something to be
marveled at, that the shocking fate, which, but a short time ago,
overtook the poor passengers in a Liverpool steamer in the Channel,
during similar stormy weather, and under similar treatment, did not
overtake some of the emigrants of the Highlander.

Nevertheless, it was, beyond question, this noisome confinement in so
close, unventilated, and crowded a den: joined to the deprivation of
sufficient food, from which many were suffering; which, helped by their
personal uncleanliness, brought on a malignant fever.

The first report was, that two persons were affected. No sooner was it
known, than the mate promptly repaired to the medicine-chest in the
cabin: and with the remedies deemed suitable, descended into the
steerage. But the medicines proved of no avail; the invalids rapidly
grew worse; and two more of the emigrants became infected.

Upon this, the captain himself went to see them; and returning, sought
out a certain alleged physician among the cabin-passengers; begging him
to wait upon the sufferers; hinting that, thereby, he might prevent the
disease from extending into the cabin itself. But this person denied
being a physician; and from fear of contagion--though he did not confess
that to be the motive--refused even to enter the steerage. The cases
increased: the utmost alarm spread through the ship: and scenes ensued,
over which, for the most part, a veil must be drawn; for such is the
fastidiousness of some readers, that, many times, they must lose the
most striking incidents in a narrative like mine.

Many of the panic-stricken emigrants would fain now have domiciled on
deck; but being so scantily clothed, the wretched weather--wet, cold, and
tempestuous--drove the best part of them again below. Yet any other human
beings, perhaps, would rather have faced the most outrageous storm, than
continued to breathe the pestilent air of the steerage. But some of
these poor people must have been so used to the most abasing calamities,
that the atmosphere of a lazar-house almost seemed their natural air.

The first four cases happened to be in adjoining bunks; and the
emigrants who slept in the farther part of the steerage, threw up a
barricade in front of those bunks; so as to cut off communication. But
this was no sooner reported to the captain, than he ordered it to be
thrown down; since it could be of no possible benefit; but would only
make still worse, what was already direful enough.

It was not till after a good deal of mingled threatening and coaxing,
that the mate succeeded in getting the sailors below, to accomplish the
captain's order.

The sight that greeted us, upon entering, was wretched indeed. It was
like entering a crowded jail. From the rows of rude bunks, hundreds of
meager, begrimed faces were turned upon us; while seated upon the
chests, were scores of unshaven men, smoking tea-leaves, and creating a
suffocating vapor. But this vapor was better than the native air of the
place, which from almost unbelievable causes, was fetid in the extreme.
In every corner, the females were huddled together, weeping and
lamenting; children were asking bread from their mothers, who had none
to give; and old men, seated upon the floor, were leaning back against
the heads of the water-casks, with closed eyes and fetching their breath
with a gasp.

At one end of the place was seen the barricade, hiding the invalids;
while--notwithstanding the crowd--in front of it was a clear area, which
the fear of contagion had left open.

"That bulkhead must come down," cried the mate, in a voice that rose
above the din. "Take hold of it, boys."

But hardly had we touched the chests composing it, when a crowd of
pale-faced, infuriated men rushed up; and with terrific howls, swore
they would slay us, if we did not desist.

"Haul it down!" roared the mate.

But the sailors fell back, murmuring something about merchant seamen
having no pensions in case of being maimed, and they had not shipped to
fight fifty to one. Further efforts were made by the mate, who at last
had recourse to entreaty; but it would not do; and we were obliged to
depart, without achieving our object.

About four o'clock that morning, the first four died. They were all men;
and the scenes which ensued were frantic in the extreme. Certainly, the
bottomless profound of the sea, over which we were sailing, concealed
nothing more frightful.

Orders were at once passed to bury the dead. But this was unnecessary.
By their own countrymen, they were torn from the clasp of their wives,
rolled in their own bedding, with ballast-stones, and with hurried
rites, were dropped into the ocean.

At this time, ten more men had caught the disease; and with a degree of
devotion worthy all praise, the mate attended them with his medicines;
but the captain did not again go down to them.

It was all-important now that the steerage should be purified; and had
it not been for the rains and squalls, which would have made it madness
to turn such a number of women and children upon the wet and unsheltered
decks, the steerage passengers would have been ordered above, and their
den have been given a thorough cleansing. But, for the present, this was
out of the question. The sailors peremptorily refused to go among the
defilements to remove them; and so besotted were the greater part of the
emigrants themselves, that though the necessity of the case was forcibly
painted to them, they would not lift a hand to assist in what seemed
their own salvation.

The panic in the cabin was now very great; and for fear of contagion to
themselves, the cabin passengers would fain have made a prisoner of the
captain, to prevent him from going forward beyond the mainmast. Their
clamors at last induced him to tell the two mates, that for the present
they must sleep and take their meals elsewhere than in their old
quarters, which communicated with the cabin.

On land, a pestilence is fearful enough; but there, many can flee from
an infected city; whereas, in a ship, you are locked and bolted in the
very hospital itself. Nor is there any possibility of escape from it;
and in so small and crowded a place, no precaution can effectually guard
against contagion.

Horrible as the sights of the steerage now were, the cabin, perhaps,
presented a scene equally despairing. Many, who had seldom prayed
before, now implored the merciful heavens, night and day, for fair winds
and fine weather. Trunks were opened for Bibles; and at last, even
prayer-meetings were held over the very table across which the loud jest
had been so often heard.

Strange, though almost universal, that the seemingly nearer prospect of
that death which any body at any time may die, should produce these
spasmodic devotions, when an everlasting Asiatic Cholera is forever
thinning our ranks; and die by death we all must at last.

On the second day, seven died, one of whom was the little tailor; on the
third, four; on the fourth, six, of whom one was the Greenland sailor,
and another, a woman in the cabin, whose death, however, was afterward
supposed to have been purely induced by her fears. These last deaths
brought the panic to its height; and sailors, officers,
cabin-passengers, and emigrants--all looked upon each other like lepers.
All but the only true leper among us--the mariner Jackson, who seemed
elated with the thought, that for him--already in the deadly clutches of
another disease--no danger was to be apprehended from a fever which only
swept off the comparatively healthy. Thus, in the midst of the despair
of the healthful, this incurable invalid was not cast down; not, at
least, by the same considerations that appalled the rest.

And still, beneath a gray, gloomy sky, the doomed craft beat on; now on
this tack, now on that; battling against hostile blasts, and drenched in
rain and spray; scarcely making an inch of progress toward her port.

On the sixth morning, the weather merged into a gale, to which we
stripped our ship to a storm-stay-sail. In ten hours' time, the waves
ran in mountains; and the Highlander rose and fell like some vast buoy
on the water. Shrieks and lamentations were driven to leeward, and
drowned in the roar of the wind among the cordage; while we gave to the
gale the blackened bodies of five more of the dead.

But as the dying departed, the places of two of them were filled in the
rolls of humanity, by the birth of two infants, whom the plague, panic,
and gale had hurried into the world before their time. The first cry of
one of these infants, was almost simultaneous with the splash of its
father's body in the sea. Thus we come and we go. But, surrounded by
death, both mothers and babes survived.

At midnight, the wind went down; leaving a long, rolling sea; and, for
the first time in a week, a clear, starry sky.

In the first morning-watch, I sat with Harry on the windlass, watching
the billows; which, seen in the night, seemed real hills, upon which
fortresses might have been built; and real valleys, in which villages,
and groves, and gardens, might have nestled. It was like a landscape in
Switzerland; for down into those dark, purple glens, often tumbled the
white foam of the wave-crests, like avalanches; while the seething and
boiling that ensued, seemed the swallowing up of human beings.

By the afternoon of the next day this heavy sea subsided; and we bore
down on the waves, with all our canvas set; stun'-sails alow and aloft;
and our best steersman at the helm; the captain himself at his
elbow;--bowling along, with a fair, cheering breeze over the taffrail.

The decks were cleared, and swabbed bone-dry; and then, all the
emigrants who were not invalids, poured themselves out on deck, snuffing
the delightful air, spreading their damp bedding in the sun, and
regaling themselves with the generous charity of the captain, who of
late had seen fit to increase their allowance of food. A detachment of
them now joined a band of the crew, who proceeding into the steerage,
with buckets and brooms, gave it a thorough cleansing, sending on deck,
I know not how many bucketsful of defilements. It was more like cleaning
out a stable, than a retreat for men and women. This day we buried
three; the next day one, and then the pestilence left us, with seven
convalescent; who, placed near the opening of the hatchway, soon rallied
under the skillful treatment, and even tender care of the mate.

But even under this favorable turn of affairs, much apprehension was
still entertained, lest in crossing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the
fogs, so generally encountered there, might bring on a return of the
fever. But, to the joy of all hands, our fair wind still held on; and we
made a rapid run across these dreaded shoals, and southward steered for
New York.

Our days were now fair and mild, and though the wind abated, yet we
still ran our course over a pleasant sea. The steerage-passengers--at
least by far the greater number--wore a still, subdued aspect, though a
little cheered by the genial air, and the hopeful thought of soon
reaching their port. But those who had lost fathers, husbands, wives, or
children, needed no crape, to reveal to others, who they were. Hard and
bitter indeed was their lot; for with the poor and desolate, grief is no
indulgence of mere sentiment, however sincere, but a gnawing reality,
that eats into their vital beings; they have no kind condolers, and
bland physicians, and troops of sympathizing friends; and they must
toil, though to-morrow be the burial, and their pallbearers throw down
the hammer to lift up the coffin.

How, then, with these emigrants, who, three thousand miles from home,
suddenly found themselves deprived of brothers and husbands, with but a
few pounds, or perhaps but a few shillings, to buy food in a strange
land?

As for the passengers in the cabin, who now so jocund as they? drawing
nigh, with their long purses and goodly portmanteaus to the promised
land, without fear of fate. One and all were generous and gay, the
jelly-eyed old gentleman, before spoken of, gave a shilling to the
steward.

The lady who had died, was an elderly person, an American, returning
from a visit to an only brother in London. She had no friend or relative
on board, hence, as there is little mourning for a stranger dying among
strangers, her memory had been buried with her body.

But the thing most worthy of note among these now light-hearted people
in feathers, was the gay way in which some of them bantered others, upon
the panic into which nearly all had been thrown.

And since, if the extremest fear of a crowd in a panic of peril, proves
grounded on causes sufficient, they must then indeed come to
perish;--therefore it is, that at such times they must make up their
minds either to die, or else survive to be taunted by their fellow-men
with their fear. For except in extraordinary instances of exposure,
there are few living men, who, at bottom, are not very slow to admit
that any other living men have ever been very much nearer death than
themselves. Accordingly, craven is the phrase too often applied to any
one who, with however good reason, has been appalled at the prospect of
sudden death, and yet lived to escape it. Though, should he have
perished in conformity with his fears, not a syllable of craven would
you hear. This is the language of one, who more than once has beheld the
scenes, whence these principles have been deduced. The subject invites
much subtle speculation; for in every being's ideas of death, and his
behavior when it suddenly menaces him, lies the best index to his life
and his faith. Though the Christian era had not then begun, Socrates
died the death of the Christian; and though Hume was not a Christian in
theory, yet he, too, died the death of the Christian,--humble, composed,
without bravado; and though the most skeptical of philosophical
skeptics, yet full of that firm, creedless faith, that embraces the
spheres. Seneca died dictating to posterity; Petronius lightly
discoursing of essences and love-songs; and Addison, calling upon
Christendom to behold how calmly a Christian could die; but not even the
last of these three, perhaps, died the best death of the Christian.

The cabin passenger who had used to read prayers while the rest kneeled
against the transoms and settees, was one of the merry young sparks, who
had occasioned such agonies of jealousy to the poor tailor, now no more.
In his rakish vest, and dangling watch-chain, this same youth, with all
the awfulness of fear, had led the earnest petitions of his companions;
supplicating mercy, where before he had never solicited the slightest
favor. More than once had he been seen thus engaged by the observant
steersman at the helm: who looked through the little glass in the cabin
bulk-head.

But this youth was an April man; the storm had departed; and now he
shone in the sun, none braver than he.

One of his jovial companions ironically advised him to enter into holy
orders upon his arrival in New York.

"Why so?" said the other, "have I such an orotund voice?"

"No;" profanely returned his friend--"but you are a coward--just the man
to be a parson, and pray."

However this narrative of the circumstances attending the fever among
the emigrants on the Highland may appear; and though these things
happened so long ago; yet just such events, nevertheless, are perhaps
taking place to-day. But the only account you obtain of such events, is
generally contained in a newspaper paragraph, under the shipping-head.
There is the obituary of the destitute dead, who die on the sea. They
die, like the billows that break on the shore, and no more are heard or
seen. But in the events, thus merely initialized in the catalogue of
passing occurrences, and but glanced at by the readers of news, who are
more taken up with paragraphs of fuller flavor; what a world of Me and
death, what a world of humanity and its woes, lies shrunk into a
three-worded sentence!

You see no plague-ship driving through a stormy sea; you hear no groans
of despair; you see no corpses thrown over the bulwarks; you mark not
the wringing hands and torn hair of widows and orphans:--all is a blank.
And one of these blanks I have but filled up, in recounting the details
of the Highlander's calamity.

Besides that natural tendency, which hurries into oblivion the last woes
of the poor; other causes combine to suppress the detailed circumstances
of disasters like these. Such things, if widely known, operate
unfavorably to the ship, and make her a bad name; and to avoid detention
at quarantine, a captain will state the case in the most palliating
light, and strive to hush it up, as much as he can.

In no better place than this, perhaps, can a few words be said,
concerning emigrant ships in general.

Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes
of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores; let us waive
it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they have
God's right to come; though they bring all Ireland and her miseries with
them. For the whole world is the patrimony of the whole world; there is
no telling who does not own a stone in the Great Wall of China. But we
waive all this; and will only consider, how best the emigrants can come
hither, since come they do, and come they must and will.

Of late, a law has been passed in Congress, restricting ships to a
certain number of emigrants, according to a certain rate. If this law
were enforced, much good might be done; and so also might much good be
done, were the English law likewise enforced, concerning the fixed
supply of food for every emigrant embarking from Liverpool. But it is
hardly to be believed, that either of these laws is observed.

But in all respects, no legislation, even nominally, reaches the hard
lot of the emigrant. What ordinance makes it obligatory upon the captain
of a ship, to supply the steerage-passengers with decent lodgings, and
give them light and air in that foul den, where they are immured, during
a long voyage across the Atlantic? What ordinance necessitates him to
place the galley, or steerage-passengers' stove, in a dry place of
shelter, where the emigrants can do their cooking during a storm, or wet
weather? What ordinance obliges him to give them more room on deck, and
let them have an occasional run fore and aft?--There is no law concerning
these things. And if there was, who but some Howard in office would see
it enforced? and how seldom is there a Howard in office!

We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them,
go to heaven, before some of us? We may have civilized bodies and yet
barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to
its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief
outweighs ten thousand joys, will we become what Christianity is
striving to make us.

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