What with bad or scanty provisions, scarcity of water, severe hardship, and long confinement in a foul den, ship fever reaped a glorious harvest between decks, as frequent ominous splashes of shot-weighted corpses into the deep but too terribly testified. Whatever the cause, the deaths on board the British ships enormously exceeded the mortality on board the ships of any other country. For instance, according to the records of the Commissioners of Emigration for the State of New York, the quota of sick per thousand stood thus in 1847 and 1848—British vessels, 30; American, 9⅝ ; Germans, 8⅝. It was no unusual occurrence for the survivor of a family of ten or twelve to land alone, bewildered and broken-hearted, on the wharf at New York; the rest—the family—parents and children, had been swallowed in the sea, their bodies marking the course of the ship to the New World.
But there were worse dangers than sickness, greater calamities than death and a grave in the ocean, with the chance of becoming food for the hungry shark. There was no protection against lawless violence and brutal lust on the one hand, or physical helplessness and moral prostration on the other. To the clergyman, the physician, and the magistrate, are known many a sad tale of human wreck and dishonour, having their origin in the emigrant sailing ship of not many years since. Even so late as 1860, an Act was passed by Congress to regulate the carriage of passengers in steamships and other vessels, for the better protection of female passengers; and a single clause of this Act, which it is necessary to quote, is a conclusive proof of the constant and daily existence of the most fearful danger to the safety of the poor emigrant girl. Every line of the clause is an evidence of the evil it endeavours to arrest:—
That every master or other officer, seaman, or other person employed on board of any ship or vessel of the United States, who shall, during the voyage of such ship or vessel, under promise of
