SO YOU DON'T LIKE TROOPSHIPS!

Cue (NZERS), Issue 14, 31 December 1944, Page 9

SO YOU DON'T LIKE TROOPSHIPS!

rHE New Zealand soldier goes to war JL inmodern luxury lin&rs. converted uncomfortably to [troopships} He chafes under the confined space, the monotonous meals, the lack of entertainment. Thoughts of danger cross his mind as he sails through the southern seas. The future seems precarious and the adventure great.* The four weeks pass slowly ... ONE hundred years ago, immigrants ■y / sailed to New Zealand in fragile vessels of under 500 tons. In these small ships, 150 passengers were crowded into cramped quarters, their food was extremely plain 5 and unattractive, dangers -Threatened them 4 from sickness and storm, and they were going to a land at . the "other end of the world" ‘ inhabited largely' by savages. The voyage lasted over three months . .

When the scheme to colonise New Zealand was first introduced by the New Zealand r Association (later the New Zealand Company),' England was in the throes of an industrial upheaval which produced a great surplus of labour throughout the country. Unemployment, as it is known to-day, had raised its ugly head. The company, inspired by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, had the backing of prominent Englishmen A to put . its scheme before Parliament. It was also strongly supported by men. with capital who wished to emigrate to New Zealand to take up land. The British Government, however, was not, at the time, anxious to acquire new possessions, and so when the first ships left for New Zealand the passengers v did not know whether their , new country was to be a British possession or not. They faced a long, arduous voyage, the Maoris had a bad reputation for fierceness and treachery, and the immigrants had little conception of what x pioneering life would be like. , With great courage and optimism, they set forth on their adventure. .

The ships they sailed in and the privations they endured appear in striking contrast with conditions of sea travel to-day, even in wartime. A typical early immigrant ship was 120 ft. in length, had a tonnage of 450, and carried 150 passengers. Compare those figures with the Queen Mary or a similar luxury liner I,oooft. in length, a displacement of 80,000 tons, and in peace-time a passenger list of 2,000, a figure which can be multiplied several times when the ship is used for troops.

The voyage from England to New’ Zealand took, on an average, three months and a half. Occasionally, a ship would call at a port in Brazil or at the Cape of Good Hope, but the majority sailed from Gravesend to New Zealand without the passengers having an opportunity of stretching their legs on land. It is understandable that the ships did not call at an Australian port. After weeks and weeks at sea, a large number of the passengers probably would have deserted to the older established settlements.

Dr. Johnson once said that being at sea is like being in prison, with the added chance of being drowned. The passengers on the early immigrant ships no doubt would have endorsed his remarks —and so, for that matter, would many present-day New Zealanders. Fourteen or more to a two-berth cabin, tiers of bunks or hammocks in the

cinema,” scores of men ’’sardineT' into quarters in the bowels of the shin may be uncomfortable in the eyes of th? modern traveller. But such accommodation is luxury compared with the conditions of ships 100 years ago. Class distinction was rife on board ship, and the cabin passengers often would not deign to speak to the steerage immigrants, who had much inferior accommodation and food. The steerage passengers lived below deck, their' sleeping quarters being mere boxes, two yards square and seldom much more than six feet in height. Into that space were crammed four berths, so that the double tier of bunks allowed little floor space for dressing. -It is worth noting, too, that a ’’person” for the purposes of accommodation and rations might actually be two children between the ages of seven and fourteen or three under seven. The scene in a cabin of such proportions and with a full quota of occupants (including armies of bed-

bugs and cockroaches) can be imagined - especially during rough weather in the redoubtable Bay of Biscay or in the Roaring Forties!

Food on an immigrant ship varied considerably - usually from the barely edible to the almost inedible. Some of the Company’s ships, however, provided reasonably good fare. As a rule, the immigrants were divided into messes

of about six persons, which was the average size of the families going to New Zealand. One of the six volunteered for a fortnight’s ’’mess fatigues,” which entailed the collecting of rations and doing the cooking. The fatigue” began the day by taking a pot of porridge along to the galley which accommodated only three or four persons at . a time. As there were probably over a dozen messes, this entailed queuing up z for maybe an hour before getting a turn at the stoves. Hot water was issued to each mess for coffee, which, served in tin mugs, was usually cold by the time it reached the breakfast table. Hard ship’s biscuits completed the morning’s meal. • The mid-day meal did not entail quite so much work for the mess volunteers, as it was cooked in a common pot and served to each mess in specially marked lots — or wooden tokens being attached to the lumps of meat and nets of preserved potatoes. Plum duff or boiled rice completed this, the main meal of the day. Many a passenger went hungry to bed at night, for the evening meal consisted of biscuits and butter, washed down with tea. Sometimes, there was cold meat left over from the mid-day meal. Cabin passengers were usually a little more fortunate, chiefly because they brought extra food with them, sometimes in the form of livestock, which was kept in pens on the narrow decks. Occasionally, pedigree stock found their way into the pot to relieve the pangs of hunger - instead of fulfilling their intended mission—the stocking of pioneer farms. Some passengers even had cows in milk to supplement their uninteresting diet.

But the basis of the menu for the entire voyage was salted meat, preserved potatoes,, ship’s biscuits, porridge and rice. Dried carrots and peas, a little cheese, raisins and preserved fish were the only "delicacies” to provide variety. Dead cockroaches, weavels, tin tacks, and other foreign bodies were common ingredients of the food on board some ships. But usually the immigrants managed to keep comparatively healthy,

and there were remarkably few deaths on the long, voyage. The most important man in the ship was the surgeon who was usually the company’s agent for the voyage. He looked to the welfare of the passengers, and in most cases he did his job creditably. Apart from his medical duties, he superintended the issue of stores, saw that the immigrants kept themselves and their quarters clean, arranged amusements and educational classes, and dealt with all complaints and quarrels. It was a full-time and difficult job, but usually there was little fault to ba found with their administration. There was little to do on board and the 90 days or more passed tediously and monotonously. Some took lessons in reading and writing, others in various trades. Those who could read pored over any available book on New Zealand or even tried to learn Maori. Th« majority of immigrants showed a remarkable keenness to acquire knowledge that would assist them in their new life. There were few amusementsa little fishing at times, an occasional dance or a concert, a fair amount of gambling, the traditional ceremony of Crossing the Line —but it was, perhaps, a foretaste of the pioneer life in which the settlers had to make their own amusements and fill in the lonely days and nights as best they could in the sparsely-settled country. The first ship-loads of immigrants left England late in 1839. By August, 1843, there were 3,800 settlers in and around Wellington, 2,902 in Nelson, and 1,090 in New Plymouth. The first immigrant ■ ships to reach Auckland arrived in October, 1842, but they did not arrive at an uninhabited spot Captain Hobson had already established Auckland as the capital of the country. "In 1848. the settlement of Otago began with the arrival of the John Wickliffe and the Philip Laing, with a total of 344 Scots on board. Two years later immigrant ships began to arrive in Lyttelton,, where already a thriving settlement had been established. By 1885, several hundred sailing ships had brought immigrants to New Zealand and

the colony was well established. No matter in which part of the new country they landed — they saw the symmetrical Mount Egmont, the snow-clad Southern Alps, or the rocky capes of Cook Strait as their first landfallit was an unforgettable and welcome sight to see again the green land. The actual task of landing was not always easy. One did not merely walk down a gangway on to a , solid wharf. In some cases, passengers and their property had -to be ferried ashore in ship’s boats, and, even in the sheltered harbours, rough weather would often, interrupt disembarkation for several days. It was a case of so near and yet so far, as the passengers on their rolling ships gazed longingly at the land.

Usually, accommodation in barrel or in rough houses built for the Co pany by Maoris awaited the immigrant It is interesting to note that many shin, carried ’’prefabricated” houses which were quickly erected to accommodate the women and children. I n no time dwellings sprang up in the settlements' Some were but reed huts with thatched roofs; others were of logs or clay; some of the wealthier arrivals even brought bricks, windows, and doors with them and were soon established in comparatively elegant dwellings. But whatever their home was, how ever meagre their possessions, the immigrants had become New Zealanders. They had a new life opening up before them. They had a nation to build. .. .

SIX-FOOT square cabins, bedO bugs and cockroaches, mess fatigues and queues, hard biscuits and a< ? version of dehydrated vegetables, shipboard gambling and long, boring ! days —all these conditions are not peculiar to troopships. They are but some of the trials endured by passengers on New Zealand immigrant ships a hundred years ago. They are not new. Neither is the pre-fabricated house. The pioneers carried scores of them on board their 500-ton sailing ships. ...