‘THE SICKNESS WILL SOON PASS,’ MARY PROMISED THE CHILDREN, TRYING to comfort them.
No sooner had the voyage begun than they had fallen seasick, like most of the passengers. The rough motion of the ship as it was tossed by the ocean waves left them puking and retching, covered in sour vomit. Their throats burned and they lay curled together in their bunks, clammy and miserable.
‘Let me die,’ roared an old man, crouched in his bunk like a child.
Their clothes and blankets reeked, for there was not enough fresh water for washing to rid the hold of the pervading stench. Water was strictly rationed, with only one gallon allowed per adult for drinking, cooking and washing, no matter how much the passengers begged for more.
Annie got the seasickness worst. She lay beside her mother like a little ghost, whimpering and distressed. Dark circles grew under her eyes as she became ever more listless, unable even to hold down a few sips of water.
John recovered first, followed by Con and Jude, who found their sea legs quickly, running and playing around the steerage accommodation.
‘Mr Dwyer showed us four dolphins swimming by the side of the ship this morning, when we went up on deck to empty the piss bucket,’ Con declared with excitement. ‘Mam, you should see them. They are the biggest fish, and he said they can talk and signal to each other, and jump and swim faster than any horse. The ocean is full of such creatures!’
The rest of them suffered terribly. It was five days before the awful queasiness and retching began to ease. The captain agreed to let the steerage passengers up on deck to take some air while they tried to clean part of the hold.
As she gazed at the vast blue ocean, spread like a field all around them, Mary made the children take in deep breaths of fresh sea air to try to revive them. The wind and salt and spray stung her skin, and though there was no sight of land, only endless blue sea and sky, life coursed through her, for the past and their home place now seemed so far away.
Mary had never imagined such a voyage, cramped together with barely space to walk around or turn in your sleep. The air below deck was heavy and pungent from foul human ordure as people shared buckets and chamber pots or tried to use the water closet that hung over the side of the ship, perilously close to the waves. Most just chose to do their business in corners and hidden parts of the deck with no regard for their neighbours.
Every day the routine was the same. The ship’s mate would ring the bell to summon the passengers to line up for their food rations.
‘There’s barely enough to feed us,’ complained John as they each were given only a pound of bread, or meal or hard biscuits. Con, Jude and Nora got half portions, while the younger ones received barely a third. Some days, there were no rations at all, and the mate simply ignored their complaints. The bread and rock-hard biscuits often were green and mouldy, and the meal was not much better.
Up on deck was a caboose, with a grate for cooking over the fire. Crowds gathered around it with their pots and pans, and Mary waited patiently for her turn to use it to cook her family’s portion of the meal.
‘I’ve no pot of my own,’ wailed a young woman from Coronea who was travelling with her husband and a three-year-old. ‘What use is a pound of meal if I cannot cook it?’
Mary took pity on her and generously let her use her pot.
Con and Jude befriended the Murphy and Collins boys, who were about their own ages. The seven youngsters, their heads down, jostled and laughed, whispering and plotting together to pass the time. Nora and Sarah grew to become like sisters. They slept curled up beside each other and walked arm in arm around the crowded hold as if they were strolling down an avenue in New York, both of them full of plans for the future. Tim and Annie stayed close to Mary, frightened by the rough men who played cards and drank and cursed each other, day and night.
‘They are just bored like us all,’ she tried to reassure them.
In the murky gloom of steerage, the days ran together. Sleep was their greatest friend as it helped to pass the desperate hours. However, even that was usually disturbed by the cries of children who had woken, terrified or sick, and who clung to their mothers as Mary lay awake in the cramped bunk, listening.
Then there was the constant snoring and sounds of the other passengers at night. The loud, rough banter of some men who played cards into the early hours of the morning as they smoked their pipes; while others looked to satisfy themselves with a wife or woman under the cover of darkness. Women, on the other hand, desperately sought some privacy to relieve themselves.
John was quieter than Mary had ever seen him since they had first walked out together. She knew that his heart was broken by the loss of their land and home place. He brooded over it and it was doing him no good.
‘John, we have to try to be glad that we and the children have a chance of a new life where we are not beholden to any agent or landlord.’
‘It is not that easy to leave the place where I was raised, where I farmed, and where our children were born,’ he told her despairingly. ‘I think of it night and day.’
‘You and I will never forget it, I promise, but America is where our new home will be. Let us talk of New York,’ she encouraged. ‘Do you think Pat will be able to help you to get a job and help us find a place to stay?’
‘My brother will likely suit himself, as he always does.’
She pondered on it.
‘He is your flesh and blood and cares for you and the children. I’m sure Pat will do his best for us when we arrive.’
One of their fellow passengers, Johnny Meagher, had a tattered map of New York which he had acquired from one of the sailors in place of a half bottle of poitín. He and John and the rest of the men pored over it for hours, sharing information they had, and trying to learn the names of the districts and streets where they might find work or rooms to rent. John’s eyes lit up when he recognized his brother’s address.
‘There are factory and labouring jobs aplenty to be found,’ John reported to Mary, ‘and up north or out west there are thousands and thousands of acres of government land being sold cheaply to any man who has a few dollars and is prepared to clear the land and farm it.’
‘Land that would be our own!’ she ventured, seeing the hope in his eyes.
‘Aye, all legal and proper like, once a man has the money in his pocket to pay for it. ’Tis not like at home at all. In America work is rewarded and we will be no man’s servant.’
Relief flooded her heart. She could see that planning for the future finally was helping her husband to banish the terrible despair that had clung to him since they had boarded the ship.
She too had her own ideas for life in America. Once the family and children were settled, she would try to find work as a seamstress. In a city the size of New York, there would surely be a workroom or dressmaker’s or garment factory that would employ her or give her piece work. She had no intention of sitting idle.