July 2007 – Edition 27

This was followed soon by a large influx of migrant diggers from
overseas. Between 1851 and 1861 a total of 500,000 of the
population of the British Isles migrated to Australia. The
number to go to Melbourne alone was an amazing 300,000. The
Victorian Governor of the early 1850s said that “The whole
structure of society and the whole machinery of government is
dislocated”.

Presumably the news that reached Thomas in Gainsborough
encouraged him to go to Melbourne to investigate. Perhaps the UK
newspapers spoke euphorically of myriads of gold miners in
Victoria who had “struck it rich” spending wildly, and of
streets paved with gold. Clearly a merchant like Thomas could
find lots of business. The dangers of the voyage and the
hardships endured by the fossickers at the diggings may
not have been disclosed in the UK press.

Thomas and his son no doubt set off on their voyage to
Melbourne with high hopes of setting up a business in Melbourne
and then sending for the rest of the family.

Although it is possible that Thomas (Senior) intended to try his
hand at gold fossicking this in fact seems very unlikely. It
would be a curious thing to do, to take a 15 year old son
trained only in the grocery business on the rough and tumble of
gold fossicking.

The fact that he did not send for his family until 6 years later
indicates that Thomas soon had strong reservations about
bringing them out prematurely, from both a financial and safety
viewpoint. On the other hand he must have felt that there was
potential in Melbourne otherwise he would have soon simply
packed his bags and returned to England.

It was a big step to leave Gainsborough. Going to
Melbourne with his son in 1853 was a big step. Thomas and his
family had grown up in comfortable circumstances in
Gainsborough. His forbears had been in the area for at least 130
years and he had had an established grocery business in
Gainsborough employing an assistant. His father was a local
identity with a retail business, a farm at nearby Willingham and
a number of houses. His wife was the daughter of the local
surgeon and two of her brothers were a surgeon and a solicitor.
His brothers included an auctioneer and a chemist. A Street,
Square, Yard and Terrace had been named after the family and
there was a large support network of relatives there.

In addition, Gainsborough was an active town with a strong trade
as a river port and serviced by two railways, which would not at
that stage have had a significant impact on the port trade.
England was expanding its empire and its economy under Queen
Victoria, who had ascended to the throne in 1838.

There was also the cost aspect. Thomas’s wife Elizabeth
was no doubt of a genteel nature and a dedicated home-maker.
Thomas would have had to leave her a considerable sum of money
to tide her over until she and the remaining children joined
him.

The routes taken to Australia. After the discovery of
gold in Australia the fastest possible passage times were
demanded by men desperate to get to the diggings as quickly as
possible. The traditional route ships involved ships calling in
at Cape Town in South Africa and then followed the Roaring
Forties to Western Australia and thence along the south coast of
Australia to Melbourne. However from 1852 many ships took the
newly devised Great Circle route instead.

The new route, which reduced travelling time from 4 months to
less than 3 months, took advantage of the curvature of the earth
and prevailing winds, taking the ships south to 50 degrees of
latitude and lower. These latitudes were previously only
frequented by Antarctic explorers and sealer’s in specially
built ships. It required supreme navigational and seamanship
skills. The winds, already very high in the Roaring Forties,
reached prodigious speeds, frequently whipping the waves up to
12 metres, and there was the constant fear of icebergs (in 1854
the SS Great Britain recorded seeing 280 icebergs).

Passengers were confined to their quarters for weeks on end
while the ships were in the Fifties. Steerage passengers, in
particular, endured severe hardships because the tops of the
stairways (the only source of ventilation) were battened down
with hatch covers for longer periods than on the old route, so
that waves breaking over the ships could not flow down the
hatchways. At these times the stench from the passengers,
cooking, oil lamps and toilet buckets (bad at the best of times)
would have been overpowering.

By the end of the 1850s many of the passengers were more
well-to-do and more interested in safety and a modicum of
comfort. Also the ships mostly carried mixed cargo instead of
cramming the maximum number of passengers in the holds.
Accordingly conditions improved somewhat. Finally, the opening
of the Suez Canal in 1869 eliminated the trip along the Forties
and Fifties.

What sort of ships were used by the migrants? In 1852
(the year before the Thomases set sail) more than 1650 ships
arrived in Melbourne, a staggering number. There was a lot of
money to be made from transporting migrants and provisions to
Melbourne, so every ship owner jumped on the bandwagon. Many of
the ships would have been barely seaworthy for such a long and
demanding trip.

At the top end of the scale was the famous SS Great Britain,
built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the early 1840s. It
combined steel construction with a 1000 horsepower steam engine,
weighed 4000 tons, and its length of 322 feet made it one third
longer than any battleship in the navy. It could carry up to 650
passengers. It made no less than 32 round voyages to Australia
between 1852 and 1875, bringing an estimated 15,000 passengers.
Its long hull would have meant that it rode over the high seas
better than smaller ships, but it would still have rolled a lot.

Another giant ship was the Black Ball Line’s SS Schomberg,
288 feet long and 2600 tons, with a 210 foot main mast (pity
help any sailor who fell from the top). It could carry 16,000
square metres of sail (about 3 football fields). On its maiden
voyage in 1855 it carried 351 passengers, 2,000 tons of railway
lines (showing a growing trend towards mixed cargo as the gold
diggers trade dropped off), 17,093 letters, 31,800 newspapers
and 90,000 gallons of water. Ignominiously it ran aground on a
sandbank near Warrnambool on the south coast of Victoria.
Fortunately it missed dangerous reefs and (somewhat ironically
because the Schomberg did not have auxiliary steam engines) a
steamship from Warrnambool took off the passengers and crew.

At the other end of the scale would have been hastily converted
coastal colliers which lumbered along at slow speeds and gave a
terrible ride for their passengers. For a much cheaper fare the
living conditions would have been primitive and the food little
better. Still, Irishmen who had survived the Great Potato
Famine or Britons who had lived in terrible city slums had
already experienced severe hardships and would be willing to
endure more of them if it meant they could make a new life down
under.

Shipwrecks. Not so fortunate as the Schomberg’s
passengers were the passengers and crews of the Dunbar,
which sank outside Sydney Heads in August 1857 with the loss of
121 lives, and the Admella which sank near Cape Banks on
the Victorian south coast a month before Elizabeth and her
family left London, with the loss of 109 lives. Later, the
Loch Ard was battered to pieces at the foot of 200 foot
cliffs near the Twelve Apostles with the loss of 52 lives.
Miraculously two people survived. A total of 18 sailing ships
met their doom in the area.

In the case of the “Admella” it took 6 whole days for a rescue
ship to finally reach the area, by which time most of the
passengers (who had taken refuge on a wave-swept rock) had died
of exposure or been swept away to their deaths. When the news of
their plight first reached the outside world extra editions of
the Adelaide newspapers were published and such was the gravity
of the situation that both Houses of Parliament were adjourned.

Why so many Shipwrecks? The high rate of ship losses off
the coast of south Victoria was due to the narrow Bass Strait
and strong winds and storms which blew sailing ships northerly
onto the rugged coastline, which was riddled with reefs. This
occurred mostly at night when no navigational features except
one sole lighthouse at the entrance to the strait could be seen.
Sailing ships are very limited in their ability to sail up-
wind, and the square riggers were the worst.

The toll on shipping only ended when the era of sail ended and
mariners no longer faced the threat of being blown onto the
coast. But steam was a long time coming, in 1882 only half of
ships on the British register were steam driven.

Rescue boats were stationed at several ports on the Victorian
south coast, including Port Fairy and Portland. They were
large rowing boats manned by men who became legendary for their
bravery. They were called upon when the seas were too rough or
the winds too strong for ships to be used. But their range was
limited to the distance the men could row in a day. My
sister-in-law’s great grandfather was one of these men, and
his name is on a monument at Portland.

Other causes of Ship Loss. Statistics showing the number
of ships lost at sea are difficult to find, but the proud
Loch Line ships were ill-fated to a degree extraordinary
even in that era of uncertain sea travel. Of 25 sailing ships
(the owners stubbornly refused to adopt steam) 5 ships simply
disappeared without trace after leaving port (not uncommon), and
11 sank from collisions at sea and from running aground.

The ships that simply disappeared may have hit icebergs at night
or been trapped in icefields, if they had taken the Great Circle
Route. They may also have foundered in heavy seas. Foundering
could have been caused by a ship rolling over sideways or
running down the front of a giant wave and disappearing into the
next wave. If a sailing ship had been dismasted its chances of
foundering increased significantly. Ships with heavy cargoes
could founder if the load shifted.

High incidence of Disease. The other great peril for
migrants was disease- typhus, cholera, diphtheria and influenza
were the main causes of death. The diseases were often
contracted in the overcrowded boarding houses in the ports prior
to embarkation (people had to wait for the ships to arrive from
a previous trip to Australia and may have had to wait for weeks
for them to arrive). This was exacerbated by the appallingly
unhygienic conditions on the ships, particularly for passengers
who were lodged below decks. These diseases were spread by
rodents, lice and contaminated water. The malnourished and frail
were particularly susceptible.

The “Triconderoga” set out from Liverpool (the
embarkation point of the Thomases) in August 1852 (a year before
the Thomases). When she sailed into Melbourne 100 of the 714
passengers had died and a further 300 were sick. Further, 16 of
the 57 crew had also died. The superintendent on board said that
nearly all the diseases contracted were “of a Typhoid
character”.

Part 3 continued next month.

You probably thought I had fallen off the edge of the earth.

In truth I have been working on a rather big project for nearly
a year. Jerry and I were involved in a thing called Garden
Scale Model Railroading.

Essentially they are trains that are about 1:24 scale, or 1/2
inch to the foot scale. Bigger than most models but not little.
Well we had been playing with them for years and collected quite
a bit of the stuff to build one, but never got around to
actually building it.

Well this year we were having a Convention (yes believe it or
not, lots of people do this and love to come). So in Jerry’s
memory I built a garden railroad for the Convention. It really
was no small undertaking and later I may send some pictures and
perhaps something we could use as an article for the Journal.

Well, the point is this. Today I had my open house. This is
where they bring bus loads of people to see the layouts on
tours. Truly this is an international Convention. We had quite a
few from Australia, second only to Canada and followed by
England then Germany.

One of the gentlemen recognized the family name. He went to
University in Victoria, I believe, possibly RMIT (at least
that is where he retired from). Because of his name, the next in
class after him was Jerrems, but he could not quite
remember who it was. He majored in chemistry and he graduated in
1957. Any ideas who it might have been? This gentleman’s name is
John Izard.

I just thought this one of those very cool moments when things
seem to come round in a big circle.

Any way we had a lovely visit, as well as we could considering
there were so many people wandering around my yard at any
particular time, but it was just great and he was a good laugh.
He gave me a Koala with the Australian flag as a little collar
pin. I have to give them credit too, the Aussies were about the
only ones besides ourselves who were not melting and bemoaning
the weather. I think all told I had about 300 people throughout
the day.


I have his email and I told him I would check and see if if
anyone might know which Jerrems it was. Once again I
enjoyed the newsletter, I read it as soon as it comes. Just love
it. Sue J July 1, 2007″

Editors Note: The image shown is a sample Garden Scale
Model not Sue’s.

Serena’s article was titled “To and From the Far Places” and it
was included in a publication called “Japan: Overseas Travel
Magazine” published in 1931.

Unfortunately in this instance Google, possibly to avoid
breaching copyright has only made rather uninformative snippets
of this article available. These are:

LHS column “An Everchanging Pageant-and its actors, they who
come and go on the sea’s highways. In that pageant”.

RHS Column “And so we meet Joseph F. Rock, a vagabond perhaps, a
scientist of high reputation, a rover and explorer”.

Perhaps Serena was the wife of a Jerrems male. Her name is
certainly very picturesque (rather like her article) and not a
name I would have associated with the early 1900s, when
presumably she was born.

It is difficult to imagine anyone adopting the surname “Jerrems”
as a nom de plume!

The year of 1931 (when the magazine was published) was not an
auspicious time to publish a book presumably intended to promote
travel to Japan. Previously Japan had been an ally of the UK and
US in the First World War, a member of the League of Nations and
a signatory to international treaties. But relations were soured
by Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in September 1931. From then on
relations continued on a downward slide, thanks to the
increasing influence of a militaristic faction which gained
power in Japan. Further, the world was in the grip of the Great
Depression and travel was far from most people’s minds.

Apart from this, in those days travel to the UK and Europe by
ship was the most popular tourist activity. The ships were fast
and luxurious. On the other hand Japan was one and a half times
the distance and the ships would have been slow, most likely
carrying mixed cargo and a handful of passengers. Intending
passengers would also have had to get to the port of San
Francisco by train, making a long total travelling time to and
from Japan.

Before the days of travel agents, travelling in Japan would also
have been quite hit and miss.

In conclusion, I think Serena had been overcome by the mystique
of the Orient, to the exclusion of practical considerations.
Still, her article was only one page so she would not have
invested too much time in it.

The book came from the extensive Michigan University Library
collection, which is apparently being progressively scanned. It
was entered in Google late last year. We look forward to more
references to Jerrems appearing on Google in due course. Google
suggested that I buy the book, but the more practical option
would be for a Jerrems Journal reader in the US to obtain it
from the Library on an inter-library loan.

Serena, we know you are out there somewhere. Assuming you are
now writing travel articles for St Peter, perhaps you will send
us an email from heaven explaining who you are.

I have a recollection of a 1960s song “Serena” (“Serena, Serena,
I love you so”), does anyone remember it? (Editor’s Note:
Ray’s Musical Memory is fading slightly. Methinks he remembers “Corina,
Corina”.)

CORINA CORINA
From the the 1969 release: “Early Steppenwolf” (recorded Live at
the Matrix in San Francisco, May 14, 1967) Arrranged by John Kay

MCA Music (BMI)