A Call for Reform: Passenger Abuses

This account is from the New York Daily Times, June 9, 1853.  It was published just one week after the arrival of many Graf family members.

Inhumanity Afloat.

The records of the sea are fast becoming the most painful portions of our daily intelligence.  Hardships and cruelty seem to go hand in hand, and the Packet service constantly furnishes new causes of complaint.  The reports of our Courts teem with statements of wrongs inflicted upon seamen and passengers; the condition of too many of our emigrant packet-ships is repulsive in the extreme; the civility of captains, mates and agents is nothing to boast of; and the system of Emigrant transportation is altogether in need of a reform.  There are one or two facts which have lately had their development, that seem to place this question of Emigrant accommodations in a clear light.  We have received a communication from a reliable source, setting forth the discomfort and distress attending a steerage passage across the Atlantic, and calling attention to some of the glaring abuses to which the service is subject.  We give the material portions of the writer’s statement; the entire letter is too long for insertion:

“Although the passengers were not so completely under the control of the officers as the sailors, yet so far as their authority went, it was exercised to the fullest extent.  It is true, none of them ever lifted their hands to the passengers, but to this length did they go, and there stop.  Abuse and threatenings were dealt out plentifully.  The insolent and overbearing demeanor of the officers, and the total want of any regulation among the passengers, was the source of much annoyance and inconvenience to all on board.  Remonstrance or redress was out of the question.  A brutal answer or a blasphemous oath was the ready response.

“On board this ship were not less than 350 passengers.  The fire-place allotted for this number for cooking, was a place eight feet long by eighteen inches broad – a space not sufficient for half the number.  The consequence was a continual strife, from morning to night.  In all such affrays, the strongest came off conquerors.

“The contract ticket specified that we were to receive biscuit equal in quality to Navy biscuit.  If it is the same that we received, I pity the seamen who have constantly to live on it.  I am satisfied it was made of the coarsest flour that could be procured.  The tea was of the coarsest quality – in fact, such as would find no purchaser in London.  The sugar – it was impossible to say what it was extracted from; but it had a very loathsome taste, which affected anything it was put among.  The rice was musty [?].  The flour and oatmeal were the only tolerable articles supplied by the ship.  The ticket further stated that, in lieu of tea, coffee and cocoa, if preferred, could be had, yet not an ounce of either could be obtained.  Neither was salt furnished, although two ounces a week were to be allowed.

Our correspondent furnishes a number of facts of less importance than those above quoted, but equally indicative of the heartlessness of the practice in question.  The name of the particular vessel, although in our possession, is not essential to the point.  The practice of abusing emigrants is all but universal.  No one case is more unjustifiable than another, for all are in plain derogation of the most obvious rules of justice and propriety.  The flagrancy of open cruelty is the only event that is likely to attract the general attention of the community.

The fact seems to be that ship-captains and ship-owners are too generally regardless of the safety and comfort of their passengers.  In the first place, the ship is crowded to suffocation, in direct defiance of law; then, the Captain is too often a man accustomed to command, and intent only on obedience; next, the craft is rarely cleansed, and thus becomes a moving pest-house, unhealthy and disgraceful even when vacated, and disgusting when crowded with a human cargo.  These are classes of evils, to remedy which there has been much ineffective legislation.  The true method of improvement is the enforcement of the Passenger-laws, a strict surveillance of every Packet, as to cleanliness and seaworthiness; a general accountability of officers and agents, for any maltreatment of passengers and seamen.  That the evil should be allowed to pass without action, as well as remonstrance, is hardly to be expected in these days of Reform.  The attention of shipping-owners is especially due to the importance of the questions involved.  Another feature of this class of abuses is the incompetency of Captains.  The late case of the William and Mary* may stand as an instance of this.  The conduct of the master of that vessel, in not only abandoning his ship, at a time when subsequent experience proved that her salvation was by no means impossible, but also in neglecting the means of rescuing two hundred souls on board, has called out a rebuke from all quarters.  Instances of cruelty to seamen are very frequent.  A man’s life is counted of less value than a spar or a sail, and not a few lives are annually sacrificed in this way.  Let us have a reform in all these matters.  Ships are not inaccessible to laws made upon the land, because they are upon the sea; their officers should be made to understand that the voice of public opinion and the terrors of the law are both to be uplifted against them; for every unjustifiable act; and shipping merchants will do well to establish a vigilant watch over the conduct of their ships, and the capacity of their masters.  The Emigrant is but poorly treated, at best, his lot is a hard one, and needs to be alleviated as much as in us lies.

* The William and Mary sank in the Bahamas in May 1853.  
http://www.old-merseytimes.co.uk/williamandmary.html 

There is some very good information on the voyage across the Atlantic at this site:
Understanding Your Ancestors