Michael Veitch - Hell Ship

As Dr Sanger had found on previous voyages, what he represented to many of these people was a gulf too vast to bridge, even in the face of dire sickness and ultimately death. Now, however, both he and Veitch began to peer more closely into the dark nooks of the lower decks where those quiet Gaelic families huddled in their berths. Soon, both found that the epidemic was more widespread than even they had thought. By the time Sanger and Veitch had attended to one of the sick children, the other members of the family were also usually harbouring the disease and would soon present with the symptoms of typhus. Charles McKay worked tirelessly beside Drs Sanger and Veitch as translator, doing his best to convey the gravity of the situation that many of the Highland families were facing. Reluctantly, some of them gave their sick members over to the doctors’ care, but little could be achieved in any case. The hospitals were already full and there were almost no medical stores left to treat the patients. As always, the disease remained particularly brutal on children.

On 18 October, Janet Gillard perished, just a single summer into her life, as did another infant of the same age, Agnes Welch, following her mother Mary, who had died two days earlier. Baby James Smith perished the next day, and on 21 October, yet another of the McRae family died: little Elizabeth, who was just two years old.

Soon the funerals themselves became almost redundant. Now, more often than not, a father, or even a sympathetic member of the crew, or even Dr Sanger himself, would spirit away the tiny bundle from the bedside of the grieving family and drop it quietly over the side to spare them further torment. Even with the adult funerals, hardly anyone now attended outside the immediate family. The sail-makers ran out of canvas in which to sew up the bodies. Weights of iron to pull the deceased quickly below the surface also became scarce. As young James Dundas recalled decades later, anything that could wrap a body to offer some dignity was now used: bread bags, tablecloths, even the bedding in which the patient had died. Previously, this was disposed of separately, but now it doubled as the funeral shroud.

As the Ticonderoga finally began to leave the ice to proceed towards the north-east, she encountered fierce headwinds, into which she was required to tack back and forth to make any headway at all. Then, climbing back through the Roaring Forties, a new horror arrived. Under a leaden sky one afternoon as the ship made its way across the Southern Ocean, another two passengers were hastily buried at sea. The tiny group of family members could barely look as their bodies were given to the waves, but then a gasp went up as all watched a series of grey fins attack the half-floating bundles slowly receding in the ship’s wake. Sharks, the ocean’s great scavengers that traditionally follow the refuse trail of ships, large and small, had found another reason to stay close to the Ticonderoga . Mourners and crew likewise looked away; attending children were quickly ushered below. To avoid this horrific spectacle, some burials—contrary to the custom—began to take place at night. The pall of grief sweeping the ship was immeasurable.

Meanwhile, the entire system of the ship, practised and refined successfully in the early weeks of the voyage, was breaking down. Although less infected than those in the married quarters, the single men in the ship’s bow also suffered, reducing the numbers of hands capable of keeping the ship relatively clean. Even those still fit enough to be rostered to such duties were soon overwhelmed by what they saw in the degenerating lower passenger decks and abandoned their tasks. Dr Sanger and Veitch, their wines, spirits and other medical comforts now virtually exhausted, were at their wits’ end. Now, often accompanied by Captain Boyle, all they could offer was sympathy, kind words and a little comfort. For those who had already given up hope and were resigned to the fate of either themselves or their loved ones, however, such displays of care and dedication counted for much.

The intricate meal system around which so much of the ship’s life had revolved was now in chaos. The galleys may well have coped with the battering dealt by the Southern Ocean—many of the stoves were gimballed and could cope with all but the fiercest tossing of the ship—but in the face of the disease, all semblance of order collapsed. While the Ticonderoga did not run out of food, the means to prepare it collapsed. Stoves went cold as more and more passengers became debilitated, first with fear of the storms, then with sickness. Those unaffected with either had to make do independently, conducting scavenger parties to the now often deserted galleys or gathering handfuls of soup tins and other sustenance from the stores. Biscuits and water became the staple for many.

By late October, even those who still had an appetite could not avoid one of the disease’s most confronting symptoms: the ranting shouts of delirium. The severely high fever associated with typhus scorched the minds of its helpless victims, sending even the most demure into bouts of screams, shouts and random abuse. For children witnessing their parents in such a situation, or vice versa, it was particularly harrowing. One woman was reported in the Geelong Advertiser and Intelligencer later in April of 1853 as dementedly shrieking, ‘We are done for! We are done for!’, convincing those around her that, fever or no, she was forecasting a prophecy. This, amplified dozens then hundreds of times, made the ship resemble a floating prison for the insane, from which there was no escape.

Even worse, perhaps, was the terrible stench. Emanating from the breath and the myriad red and gangrenous sores that cover the body, it has been said that the stench of a single typhus patient is strong enough to be detected at the other end of a hospital ward, or even behind a closed door. Even today, typhus patients will be isolated for just this reason: the disease utterly lives up to one of its many names—‘putrid fever’.

Historical accounts of typhus’s awful stench are legion, but perhaps one of the most graphic was penned by a local priest recording an outbreak in eighteenth-century Guatemala:

The filthy smell and stench which came from those who lay sick of this disease was enough to infect the rest of the house, and all that came to see them. It rotted their very mouths and tongues and made them as black as coal before they died. [3] Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal , vol. 1, 1805

Doctors who treated typhus patients also reported on their ‘cadaver-like breath’, and how the dreadful smell ‘provided a sensory aspect to the disease that was almost impossible to escape’. Descriptions of the smell of typhus vary from source to source, but most agree that it resembles advanced rotting flesh or vegetable matter, and can easily make a person not used to it retch violently. As we have seen, the interior atmosphere of the Ticonderoga , with her full load of passengers, was volatile even before the disease took hold. Even the crew, inured though they were to the challenging olfactory standards of a nineteenth-century sailing ship, reeled back in disgust upon removing the night covers at dawn. What she then began to smell like with dozens suffering various stages of typhus can scarcely be imagined. The smell reached into everything on board, pervading clothes, bedding, even the very timbers of the ship herself. [4] Kruithof, 2002, p. 56 Nor was the disease the only factor contributing to the ship’s rank atmosphere.

With passengers either ill or physically or emotionally weakened, and with morale and possibly even sanity collapsing, fewer and fewer had the strength or presence of mind to make the climb from the lower decks to use the ships’ water closets. Night utensils became filled to overflowing, and other receptacles began to be used for human waste, urine, vomit and ordure: soup tins, pots and other cooking utensils, drinking mugs—anything that could be found. With the rolling and pitching of the ship, the floors of the decks became awash in filth, further compounding the hellish atmosphere. The lower deck was in an even more indescribable state, as effluent began to seep down the walls and through the floorboards from the equally chaotic main deck above. Those who were still well enough to eat left food scraps, putrefying, where they lay.