Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/39

Rh and improvident people were self-evident. Many of them embarked without any provisions at all, and very few, if any, with a sufficient supply; many had not the means to buy food, and others had deceived themselves as to the duration of the voyage; hence it is doubtless true that not one of all the emigrant ships from British and Irish ports had a sufficient supply of proper food for all on board. But, supposing there were some among the cargo of passengers well provisioned for the voyage, there were no means at their disposal for having their food properly cooked. For, as the arrangements of which they could avail themselves for that purpose were insufficient even on board of the very largest and best of ships engaged in the conveyance of emigrant passengers, it can readily be imagined what they must have been on board of the fleet of vessels of an inferior class.

On the upper deck of the ship, there were two small rooms for cooking, about five feet deep and four feet wide, called the steerage galley. Within was a grate corresponding to the width of the room, over which grate was fastened an iron bar, and on this there were two iron hooks, to which the emigrant hung his pot or kettle (if he had one) when he wanted to cook. These were all the arrangements for preparing meals for several hundred passengers. The result was that, except when they had nothing to cook or were sick, there was constant fighting for room near the caboose, and not one of the passengers could be sure of getting his food well cooked. The sufferings which they endured in this way embittered the emigrants one against another, and their quarrels ended when in the evening the fires were extinguished, but only to revive in the morning.

From these causes resulted not only want of sufficient and wholesome food, but also the impossibility of properly preparing what little there was. In view of this, it cannot surprise us that thousands of emigrants, greatly enfeebled already when going on board, either died on the passage or arrived with scarcely a spark of life in them.

An experience of fifty years, comprising an immigration of more than five millions, teaches us that the three diseases by which passenger-ships have been chiefly scourged are typhus or