OVERSEAS SETTLERS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3899, 10 May 1937, Page 14 (Supplement)

OVERSEAS SETTLERS

“PICK AND SHOVEL” MEN. An article in the March “P.L.A. Monthly” on oversease settlers who sailed from London contains an interesting ncte about the “pick and shovel” men, as the Irish and Scottish labourers were called in shipping circles. These men were of a type to have made Hollywood’s toughest characters look like gigolcs; their apetites were a source of wonder and dismay to the shipping companies concerned in their transport, for their individual capacity was sometimes as much as two large loaves at eacn meal. For this reason emigrant ships, amply provisioned to Government requirements, were sometimes compe 1 - led to revictual at Port Said. The pick and shovel men for the first

few hours of the voyage would frequently rush madly to their dining quarters when ship’s time was tolled on the bell under the impression that it was a call to yet another meal. In a “Notice to Passengers” issued by the Board of Trade in 1875, the emigrant ship is fully dealt with, including such points as “Unprotected female passengers,” and the desirability cif locking them in their compartments before dusk. A list of offences under the heading “Misconduct ’ makes the regulations of a reformatory school look like a charter cf liberty.