The Indian Ocean (51 page)

On her voyage out in 1815 Mrs Fay also was confined to her cabin, but on this occasion because she was escorting six young ladies to India. They 'were only five times on deck during the passage, which was owing to the previous arrangement between the Captain and me, to guard against imprudent attachments, which are more easily formed than broken – and I am happy to say the plan succeeded to our wish.'
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As more people travelled the quality of food for the common immigrant was far different from what the elite had and continued to have. Lancelot L. Earl was an assisted immigrant to Australia in 1882. When they were sixty-seven days out from London they ate a porpoise, 'perhaps what made it seem so nice to us was because it is going on for 3 months since we eat any other than salt or preserved meat or salt junk, as the sailor's term is, but salt leather would be a better name for it, and therefore anything of a fresh nature is a treat for us.' Three days later 'There is not even a potato left, so we have to be contented with what is called preserved potato, which looks something like sawdust, and don't taste much better, but there is plenty of sea biscuit left so there is no fear of starving.'
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Convicts and assisted immigrants to
Australia lived for months on a diet essentially of bread and water, some salt beef, and occasional cheese, sugar, tea and pork.

Long voyages could be tedious. Fanny Parks had a fine time coming out to India as there were lots of gallant officers on board and she flirted to her heart's content. Coming back in 1822 was less fun:

This has proved a most uninteresting voyage as far as it has gone, nothing to be seen; one solitary albatross appears now and then, and a few Cape pigeons. The other day I saw a sperm whale blowing at a distance. There is nothing to look at but the boundless ocean; even the sunsets and sunrises have not been remarkably fine....
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So also Lancelot L. Earl in 1882:

The days have hung very heavy on us as we do not have much to do, although we pass the time along by playing various games, such as ship quoits, which are made of rope, and have to be thrown within a chalk ring. We also find a deal of sport in playing at Touch, as we chase each other up and all about the riggings and ropes. Slipper [?] and Tugs of War between married and single men caused a great deal of sport, as the married men pulled us all over the ship, and a great many other games the sailors have put us up to.
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If the weather allowed people danced and put on plays, learnt languages preparatory to arriving in India, and found other improving ways to pass the time.

The weather controlled everything in these sailing ships. We will write about storms presently, but being becalmed in the tropics was also at the least unpleasant. In October 1822 Fanny Parks was stationary in latitude 4° S.

The heat was very great; the vertical sun poured down its sickening rays, the thermometer in the shade of the coolest cabin 86°; not a breath of air.... The sails flapped against the mast, and we only made progress seventeen knots in the twenty-four hours! Thus passed eleven days – the shower bath kept us alive, and our health was better than when we quitted England. M. mon mari, who was studying Persian, began to teach me Hindostanee, which afforded me much pleasure. In spite of the heat there was gaiety on board; the band played [that is the band of the soldiers on the ship] delightfully, our fellow-passengers were agreeable, and the calm evenings allowed of quadrilles and waltzing on the deck, which was lighted up with lanterns and decorated with flags.
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Storms were a fearful event indeed, and we have numerous hair-raising accounts of severe ones, especially in the southern reaches below the Cape. Here is one from
1880, by an immigrant travelling to Australia, Richard James Whyte, on a small sailing vessel, the
Helena Mena
. In heavy weather in the southern ocean,

the wind blows the ship on one side till the bulwarks are level with the water, then – BUMP – BANG – comes the sea against the side sounding (if you are below) as if the side of the ship was being knocked in, the vessel trembling like a leaf at every blow, if your duty happens to take you along the deck when she is so struck you know directly you hear it that you are doomed to get drenched if you are on the side which she is struck, but there is no real danger to the ship....

Soon after, in a violent gale,

the sailors were as busy as bees furling the sails, the water being thrown up as high as the main stay sail, the sea running mountains high and over the edge of the bulwark, till it looked every time as if the ship must go over. I scrambled down below and with some difficulty got to bed, between 12 and 3 the gale reached its height, and the ship pitched, rolled and plunged to an extent alarming, everything was being rolled from one side of the ship to the other in the most fantastic confusion.
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Steamers and the canal produced a quantum change. The main thing was regularity and predictability. One could guarantee that the voyage would take so many days, and even that one would arrive at a certain time. Voyages lost some of their tedious and dangerous aspects. Human relations also changed, for there is a major difference between being fellow passengers for a few weeks as compared with months. The age of steam also coincided with the high point of British imperialism: indeed P&O especially typified and represented this, and also helped to create it. The stately liners, marvels of technology in the second half of the nineteenth century, were a visible symbol of British dominance. As they eased their way through British dredged channels to British built berths in British colonial ports they visibly and metaphorically pushed aside the host of smaller indigenous craft in their way.

This is very much a later nineteenth century matter. The opening of the Canal made a huge difference, as now one did not have to trans-ship at Alexandria and travel overland to Suez, there to pick up another ship to travel down the Red Sea. The itinerary of Emma Roberts, travelling from London to India in 1838, shows that even with steam a voyage could be long and arduous. Travelling by small steamers and diligences, it took fourteen days to reach Marseilles from London. She then took a steamer to Leghorn, Malta and Alexandria, and then a small boat to Cairo. The next part of the journey was overland to Suez, which took three nights and two days. The passage on a steamer from Suez to Mocha and then Mumbai took another sixteen and a half days. In total her trip took sixty-one days,

Once the Canal was open the journey became very routine, and very fast. The
P&O line was always considered to be the poshest, even if the appealing notion that POSH is an acronym for Port Out Starboard Home, these being the preferred shady sides of the ship, unfortunately has no linguistic validity. They carried the mails, had the gilt edged, official, passenger trade, and never allowed dogs on board. When Leonard Woolf went out to Colombo on the P&O liner
Syria
in 1904 he had to send his dog on another, less restrictive, line. Mark Twain left an agreeable account of first-class travel in 1896 as he went from Ceylon to Mauritius:

Customs in tropic seas. At 5 in the morning they pipe to wash down the decks, and at once the ladies who are sleeping there turn out and they and their beds go below. Then one after another the men come up from the bath in their pyjamas, and walk the decks an hour or two with bare legs and bare feet. Coffee and fruit are served. The ship cat and her kitten now appear and get about their toilets; next the barber comes and flays us on the breezy deck. Breakfast at 9.30, and the day begins. The people group themselves about the decks in their snowy white linen, and read, smoke, sew, play cards, talk, nap, and so on.... If I had my way we should never get in [to a port] at all.
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The imperial aspect was very strong indeed, even when not on a British ship. Isabel Burton and her husband Richard sailed on an Italian ship, he being Consul at Trieste. Nevertheless, there were plenty of occasions for imperial activity. In the Red Sea in May 1876 they passed a lighthouse, and

They dipped flag to us, as the Captain paid us the compliment of flying the red Union Jack for the Queen's birthday. Lloyd's made us an extra good dinner for this occasion, and I brewed a claret-cup, and we drank Her Majesty's health 'three times three,' with a fervent 'God bless her!' at the end. Then followed the healths of Emperor Franz Joseph and the Empress, the Captain and the officers. The old Captain was quite affected by this unusual scene, for we made the old Italian ship ring with British cheers, and he ordered champagne and drank to our Queen and to us, in a very pretty speech; we afterwards sang 'God Save the Queen' on deck, and then the Austrian national hymn.
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Indeed, so British was the whole route that some even found it disappointing. Harding, later to be an important mandarin in London, travelled out to the colonies on the
Medina
, a magnificent 12,400 ton steamer, in 1913. He was Secretary of the Dominions Royal Commission. There was some exotica to be sure. Port Said was 'a compound of a second rate French watering place... and a fourteenth rate Eastern town. The most attractive parts of it were the children in various stages of costume from half a nightshirt to what one is accustomed to see, and the goats taking around the morning milk. They bring it to the door and are milked into bottles.' The crew was mustered, the lascars on one side and the white crew on the
other, 'and very curious they looked – with a variety of coloured sashes and Company's uniform.' But mostly it was all too familiar: when he got to Aden he said it was all worthwhile,

if only to realise the extraordinary 'Britishness' of this particular route. One sails on comfortably for three or four days and then, when things are perhaps becoming a trifle monotonous, one finds a relaxation in the shape of a port very British-looking (in all but the houses and population [hard to tell then what he
does
include as being 'British']) and with all the necessary appliances for buying Kodak films, Whisky, Picture Postcards and other British delights. I think it really ought to be called 'the Imperial Piccadilly.'
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The first-class passengers travelled in great style; indeed Isabel Burton complained that her English fellow-passengers on the Austrian ship 'want their huge lumps of beef and mutton four times a day. They eat up the provisions like locusts, and drink the cellar dry almost before we got to Aden.' The well-connected Ruby Madden, from an elite Melbourne family, may have been a typical traveller in the heyday of the empire. Once her ship left Fremantle, bound for Colombo in 1902, 'I always breakfast in bed and then dress at my leisure, and it makes the day not so long and dreary.' Ruby had a new outfit every day, and dirty underwear was simply chucked out the porthole, as washing facilities were minimal. Singing and duets, just as in a country house weekend, helped to pass the time. Her account is mostly about her clothes, and which men paid welcome (or unwelcome) attention to her. She changed ship in Colombo, and rested in the Galle Face Hotel while her luggage was transferred. Arriving in Mumbai, she was met by an important official who further eased her arrival. 'I need not have worried myself at all about the Customs for he left word for everything to be passed and his servant waited to bring it home, and we drove off in a sweet victoria, with rubber tyres and footman and coachman. They look so smart with green and gold livery and broad belts and turbans.'
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Nevertheless, even luxurious first-class travel had its up and downs. Rigid divisions amongst those ruling India began on the voyage out. Military, Indian Civil Service, and planters kept themselves separate. As the boats neared India, Punjab Club members wore white jackets and black trousers, Kolkata Club black jackets and white trousers. The extent of the compartmentalisation is well summed up in a story (possibly apocryphal) concerning a governor's daughter who found her first-class companions stuffy, and had a one-night fling with a handsome second-class steward. Next morning he approached her, but she froze him and said 'In the circle in which I move, sleeping with a woman does not constitute an introduction.'
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Other tales of childish, snobby, behaviour are legion. Captain Sulivan in 1866 was travelling down the Red Sea in a passenger ship, en route to take command of an anti-slave Royal Navy frigate. Some of the passengers had come to Suez via Marseilles, some from Southampton via Alexandria, and the two groups did not get on.

Passengers via Southampton improved their acquaintance by criticising passengers via Marseilles. Passengers via Marseilles played chess &c, together, and always looked as if they knew something the other party would like to, but didn't. . . . Passengers by Southampton steamer laughed and talked together as they had never laughed and talked before the other party joined. The former played croquet on deck, the latter backgammon below.
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Leonard Woolf, a rather precious, though also perceptive, 24-year-old recruit to the Ceylon Civil Service also noticed a change among his fellow passengers. At first there was an 'uncomfortable atmosphere of suspicion and reserve which is at first invariably the result when a number of English men and women, strangers to one another, find that they have to live together for a time in a train, a ship, a hotel.' As the voyage of three weeks proceeded they evolved into 'a complex community with an elaborate system of castes and classes. The initial suspicion and reserve had soon given place to intimate friendships, intrigues, affairs, passionate loves and hates.' Class was very much in evidence, with strict divisions between civil servants, army officers, planters and business men.
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