We Are the Rebels Read Online Free Page A

the Lady Flora , the ship carrying the actor Sarah Hanmer and her daughter Julia to their
new home, the doctor prescribed wine and porter for the invalids. Another passenger,
John James Bond, thought that might explain why some of the ladies are again disposed
to faint .
    With heads reeling and stomachs churning, many immigrants prayed for death to put
them out of their misery. But when they finally crawled out of the putrid stinking
belly of the ship to face the light again, it was as if they were born anew. The
first challenge had been overcome, and they were away. In time I might make a brave
sailor , wrote Fanny Davis, marvelling at the new possibilities that suddenly seemed
to arise before her.

OUR FLOATING WORLD
    The vast majority of gold-rush immigrants were travelling from British ports. For
them, the early part of the journey proceeded in a southwesterly direction down
the east Atlantic Ocean. The ship’s route would descend past the Bay of Biscay, Lisbon,
Madeira, the Canary Islands and the lumpy knob of West Africa, through the Tropic
of Cancer towards the equator. Sometimes, if conditions were poor and ships made
slow progress, the English coastline could still be visible for weeks. But eventually,
all familiar markers disappeared from sight.

    The journey from Britain to Melbourne
    Now there was only the vast rolling ocean.
    Just six days after her departure, English schoolgirl Jane Swan noted it was getting
perceptibly warmer but, she complained to her diary, we get quite tired of having
nothing to look at but the sea . Passengers with more serious grievances were also
quick to make them known. After all, most of the gold-rush immigrants had paid for
their passage, or at least they were there of their own free will—not as convicts
or naval conscripts.
    On the Lady Flora , J. J. Bond said, the ’tween deck people think they are living
too much like pigs. These disgruntled passengers petitioned the captain to land at
the nearest port so they could acquaint the owners of the ship with the condition
of facilities that were unequal to her crowded state .
    The passengers’ objection to living like swine was fair enough. They would all have
heard of the Ticonderoga , the famous ‘plague ship’ that arrived at Port Phillip in
November 1852 after a hell voyage in which one hundred of its 795 assisted migrants
died—over half of them children. A report by the Immigration Board in Melbourne later
stated that the ship:
    did not appear to have been cleaned for weeks, the stench was overpowering, the lockers
so thoughtlessly provided for the Immigrants’ use were full of dirt, mouldy bread,
and suet full of maggots, beneath the bottom boards of nearly every berth upon the
lower deck were discovered…receptacles full of putrid ordure, and porter bottles
etc, filled with stale urine, while maggots were seen crawling underneath the berths.
    Jane Swan’s family, on board the William and Jane , also signed a petition. This one
was about a bad water supply, and it worked. They were supplied with good water from
the tanks.
    Petitioning was something the English emigrants would have been quite familiar with.
It was part of a longstanding tradition in which people got together to complain
about and combat local grievances. The journey to Australia, being long and crowded,
made getting together to complain quite straightforward. Since nobody liked the idea
of hostile crowds in confined spaces, most ship captains were at least willing to
hear petitions and delegations without taking offence.
    By the time most gold seekers arrived on dry land, they had already made friendships
and alliances: strong bonds based on shared space and sometimes common grievances.
Many passengers referred to shipboard life as being like one well regulated family .
The Marco Polo Chronicle put this clannish feeling down to the depression that associates
with ‘goodbye’ followed by the vast amount of physical suffering to be surmounted through