Only one book has ever previously been written telling the story of the Ticonderoga, namely Fever Beach by Mary Kruithof, a fellow Ticonderoga descendant. Mary’s ancestors were the Fanning family who travelled to Melbourne from Londonderry, Ireland, and she tells me she wrote the book as a purely private venture after being encouraged by friends and family to commemorate the 150th anniversary, in 2002, of the Ticonderoga’s arrival. Although privately published, Mary has had to write a second edition, and frequently orders more and more copies as the popularity of Fever Beach continues to outstrip her initial expectations, and deservedly so. It is a wonderful book, brilliantly researched, and provided my main secondary source in writing my own account of the Ticonderoga.
A significant speech delivered in November 1992 at the old Point Nepean quarantine station by historian Florence Chuk was the first many people learned of the Ticonderoga story, and, along with her notes which she so generously lent to me, also provided me with many quotes and pieces of information. Her book The Somerset Years gave me a good deal of background on some of the Ticonderoga’s passengers, who would otherwise just have been names on a list.
A handful of other works mention Ticonderoga’s voyage, including Doctors at Sea by Robin Haines and Rob Mundle’s Under Full Sail. Doctors at Sea provided me with a most detailed picture of the role of surgeons at sea in the nineteenth century, their importance to the passengers, and the problems they faced. Rob Mundle, a sailor himself, gives an excellent background to the clipper era and its importance in Under Full Sail, also bringing to life such characters as the great Bully Forbes, as well as brilliantly explaining the advent of the vital Great Circle route.
Author Don Charlwood had a life-long passion for the story of the emigrants under sail, and his book The Long Farewell is a superb collection of first-hand accounts of those who made the journey from Britain.
A history of life within Britain’s emigration depots, particularly at Birkenhead, is captured with wonderful colour by Keith Pescod in his work Good Food, Bright Fires & Civility.
Unfortunately, the diary or detailed first-hand account by a Ticonderoga passenger is yet to be found, but many anecdotes and letters exist. Only in later life did passengers like Christopher McRae, James Dundas and Donald McDonald first pen their thoughts, and then only in a handful of feature stories for various newspapers. McDonald’s brief account of the voyage and of revisiting his mother’s grave at the quarantine station only appeared in The Argus in 1917. The story of the young McRae’s remarkable 60-mile trek from the quarantine station to the door of his relative in Coburg came to light in a Saturday afternoon edition of The Argus on 4 August 1934, in an article written by his distant relative, John Andrew McIvor. In this he also quotes another unnamed Ticonderoga survivor as having told him, in 1909, that, ‘Whole families were wiped out: in some cases both parents died, leaving young children. Of 15 families from St Kilda—that ultima thule of the Scottish Isles flung out towards Iceland—only 15 individuals survived’.
As I detail in the book, my own forays into the bowels of the Public Record Office in London yielded such gems as the original correspondence of Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe to the Ticonderoga disaster and its aftermath, including the decision to deny my great-great-grandfather’s request for increased remuneration due to the extra duties he undertook after the Ticonderoga’s principal surgeon, Sanger, became ill.
I am particularly gratified to know that in 1952, on the centenary of the landing of the ‘Hell Ship’, the Point Nepean site where my ancestors first stepped foot onto Australian soil was officially renamed ‘Ticonderoga Bay’.