The famine orphans, p.6
The Famine Orphans, page 6
Doctor Harte continued speaking. “I have spent a lot of time laying out a plan for training you in the skills you will need to be successful in your future. I am anxious that you not only secure a position in service when you reach Australia, but that you are able to maintain such position. To guarantee that, you must prove that you are an asset to the household. Yes, speaking, reading, and writing in English will be highly desirable in helping you secure a position, but characteristics such as discipline, personal cleanliness, timeliness, willingness to follow orders and an agreeable disposition will be even more important in maintaining it. And of course, you must practice household skills like cleaning, washing, polishing, meal preparation and serving.”
He smiled boyishly as a few groans greeted these last words.
“Fear not, girls,” he went on, “I have also set aside time in my plan for some leisure pursuits. It won’t be all dull labor.”
He stood up. “For the rest of the day, do as Mrs. Buckley and her assistant bid you and tomorrow we will begin lessons in earnest.”
He started to walk away and then turned back to look at us. “Oh, and tomorrow, weather permitting, we set sail for Australia!”
* * *
That night I tossed and turned, wondering what the future would bring. Tomorrow we would set out for Australia. The idea both terrified and excited me. We were sailing out into an open ocean, miles and miles of nothing but water. What if there were gales and storms, such rain and winds as we’d never seen the likes of? Would they be worse by far than the storm on the Irish Sea? Would the ship stay afloat, or would we all be tossed into the cold, black ocean? Would we survive such a journey? And if we did, what would await us on shore when we finally landed?
My fears gave way to brighter thoughts. Maybe Australia would be like a paradise, with beautiful flowers and birds. I pictured men and women and children gathered on a golden shore, their hands outstretched in greeting. They would prepare a banquet for our arrival, with foods we’d never seen in Ireland—delicious, colorful fruits and vegetables, and mouthwatering meats and breads. And we’d eat to our heart’s content, and the supply of food would never run out.
I was in the middle of such a daydream when the ship’s bell sounded and I knew the sailors would be opening the hatch any minute. Mary had slept in her own bed so I jumped up and stood, anxious to be one of the first on deck, able to watch the ship sail out into the channel and towards the open sea.
I hurried through my bath, then rushed down to the hold where I stowed my wash things and changed out of my wet shift. Then I retraced my steps up the ladder, stumbling in my excitement and climbed up to the top deck, praying no one would notice me. Doctor Harte and Mrs. Buckley had warned us that we were forbidden to go on the top deck and we would be punished if we were caught doing so. Sailors rushed in every direction around the ship, adjusting ropes and unfurling sails, clearing objects from the decks, securing the hatches, and shouting commands at each other using unfamiliar phrases. Seafaring language, I supposed. Some of it hardly sounded like English at all. They paid little attention to me. I had lodged myself in a corner between two upturned rowboats, hoping that no one would find me and haul me back to the hold. I had deliberately skipped breakfast, even though I was afraid I’d regret it later. But I didn’t want to miss seeing the ship begin to sail.
The sun cut through the morning fog and I felt its warm rays on my face but I felt no breeze. I already understood that without wind the ship could not move and I was filled with disappointment. Would we be stuck here another day? I didn’t understand what was happening as I watched sailors row a small boat away from the ship, carrying what looked like an anchor attached to a rope which trailed behind it. The other end of the rope appeared to be connected to the ship’s wheel. At some distance away, the rowboat stopped and the sailors dropped the anchor and rope into the water, and I heard the cry, “Man the capstan.” I looked down at the ship’s wheel as four sailors began furiously turning its wooden handles, slowly winding in the line. As they did so, the ship began to move, as if we were being towed forward by the anchor. Down on the pier people had gathered to watch the ship leave, shading their eyes against the sun. A roar went up when we began to move. Children jumped gleefully up and down, waving at us. I waved back and smiled. I chanced a look behind me. By now the deck was filled with passengers. I had not been aware of them before but now I saw well-dressed men and women, some with young children in tow. I assumed they spent their time in their cabins or on the top deck. I shrugged and turned back to watch the sailors. The rope was now fully reeled in and the wind had strengthened.
“Raise anchor!” came the cry, followed by “Hoist the sails!” Men began scurrying up the rope rigging to adjust the sails. The noise was deafening as the wind filled them, causing them to billow like bed sheets drying on a clothesline. I waited, holding my breath. Soon a flock of seagulls crowded the sky above us and, as if it were a signal, the ship began to move again, the wind carrying us farther down the channel. I held tightly to the railings as the crowd on the pier and everyone on deck began cheering more loudly than before. We were on our way.
I made a note of the date in my mind—August 24th, 1848—the day my life would change forever. As I watched the shoreline slip away, I was overcome with sadness. It was an English shore I was leaving, but my beloved Ireland lay just beyond it to the west. My breath rose and fell in long sighs, my eyes were wet with tears and I felt physically sick. With every minute that passed I was moving farther and farther away from my homeland. I saw images of Ma and Da and my brothers and little Maeve; I saw the slopes of Slieve Gullion mountain; wee lambs gamboling on green grass; turf bogs and hedges scarlet with fuchsia; our family cottage surrounded by stone walls; and I heard the music of fiddles wafting over the fields on a summer evening.
A noise from behind startled me. It was Patsy. I wanted to shout at her to leave me alone. Instead, I fixed my gaze ahead.
“Well, good riddance to bloody Ireland,” she said. “I hope I never set foot there again.”
I said nothing, although I heard a catch in her voice. Poor Patsy, I thought. She had known only poverty, struggles, and worse, while, despite the famine, I was leaving behind memories of a once happy life. At this moment, I didn’t know which of us was better off.
* * *
It didn’t take long for us to discover the reality of life on a sailing ship. Mary was one of the first to get seasick. Within hours she was down below, writhing in her berth, clutching a bucket. Soon others joined her in the hold. Three days later, just as we were getting our last sight of England at Land’s End, every one of us lay exhausted in our berths.
Doctor Harte tried to reassure us that seasickness was to be expected at first, but that we would soon get used to the motion of the ship beneath our feet. Nobody, not even I, believed him. He even walked up and down past the berths showing us how to place our feet wide apart.
“Watch how the sailors do it!” he said.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Patsy groaned, in between vomiting into her bucket, “haven’t the feckin’ English punished us enough? Bad cess to all of them! Who knows what other torment they have in store?”
It didn’t help matters that Phoebe seemed to take great delight in Patsy’s distress.
“If you think you’re in a bad way now, miss, just wait ’til tomorrow when we’ll finally be out in the open sea. Sailing down the English Channel was child’s play,” she said, “compared to being knocked on your arse by waves the height of houses lashing the boat.”
Patsy vomited again and lay back groaning.
As one by one we all succumbed to illness, the smell in the hold became unbearable. Sailors were sent to empty our buckets and rinse the floors, but it did little to relieve the foul stench of vomit and human waste. This new stench combined with the already awful smell of the wet stone and gravel ballast that was stored beneath the floorboards. Very few of us were able to hold up our heads without swooning, let alone climb the ladder up to the deck to get some air. Mrs. Buckley did not appear in the hold at all and Phoebe spent as little time there as possible. It was Doctor Harte who overruled the matrons and ordered the hatch to be left open during the day. But at night when we were locked down, the air became suffocating.
Unlike the matrons, it was Doctor Harte who regularly came each day down to the hold, stopping at each berth to reassure us that we would be well soon, and to try to tempt us with broth.
“Am I going to die, Doctor?”
“No, you are most certainly not!” he replied, as he was asked the same question repeatedly, “but you must try to eat.”
I couldn’t help but admire his patience and his kind manner. I wondered if he had sisters at home. If he did, I was sure they would be very fond of him. I didn’t have much experience with doctors—I had always been a healthy child—but from what I’d heard they were pompous and gruff—nothing like our Doctor Harte. I realized how lucky we were to have the likes of him watching out for us.
Now, as we sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean, I thought back to all the horrors of the last few days—the long, exhausting ride on the cart to Dublin, the nightmare on the steamer to Plymouth, the fear that we were going to be prisoners in Plymouth or, even worse, in Van Dieman’s Land—it seemed as if a lifetime had passed. I tried not to even think of the earlier horrors—the famine itself, losing wee Maeve and Paddy and Da, and then my dear, sweet Ma and leaving poor Christy behind. I didn’t even have the strength to cry. I turned over, buried my head beneath my blanket, and willed myself to sleep.
* * *
The sickness passed eventually, just as Doctor Harte had promised, and our daily routine, as laid out that first day, was put into practice. All the orphans were divided into groups, or “messes” as they were called on a ship. Our mess consisted of myself, Patsy and Mary, which pleased me since we all knew each other, and I was not separated from Mary. But to my dismay, the two disruptive girls from Belfast, Sheila Hughes and Lizzie McShane, were included. They could have been sisters they looked so alike. Both were dark-haired, pale-skinned and stoutly built. Sheila was the more aggressive of the two, always ready to pick a physical fight, while Lizzie used her sharp tongue as a weapon. They’d worked together in a wet linen mill in Belfast before losing their jobs—they never said how—and entering a workhouse. I didn’t think pairing them with Patsy was a good idea at all since they would likely encourage one another in mischief. Rounding out our number was a girl from County Kerry in the southwest of Ireland named Bridie O’Sullivan. She was a big, shy, country girl who only spoke a word or two of English, spending most of her time saying her prayers out loud and blessing herself, much to the disgust of Patsy and the Belfast girls.
Doctor Harte had assigned one orphan from each mess to be in charge. I was picked to oversee ours. My job was to go to the kitchen, or “galley” as it was called, located on the orlop deck, three times a day to fetch the food from the cook and bring it down to the others in the hold. Meals operated on a tight schedule and I was responsible for ensuring our food was picked up and eaten on time so the next mess could take our places. My annoyance about this assignment faded when I realized that it would give me something else to think about besides homesickness.
The first morning I nervously made my way to the galley at eight o’clock. It resembled a small shed built in the middle of the deck. Inside, a bin about four feet wide and two feet high had been filled with sand and on top of that a fire lit where the cooking was done, while pots sat steaming on iron tripods. Except for the sand, I was reminded of the turf fires in Irish kitchens, but here there was no chimney for the smoke to escape, just a hole in the roof.
I had a fit of coughing and Doctor Harte suddenly appeared beside me looking concerned.
“Are you alright, Miss Gilvarry?” he said.
I found my breath. “Yes. It’s just the smoke.”
He smiled, and I noticed the dimples in his cheeks. I realized I had never been this physically close to him and I stepped back nervously.
“Yes, I often wonder how the poor cooks stand it.”
All business, he signaled the cook, who brought a variety of food over to the counter, including gruel, bread and milk, and waited while he inspected each item. Then he looked up and nodded while the cook returned to his fireplace.
“I intend to inspect each meal before it is served. I want to make sure that no corners are cut, and you get the rations you are entitled to. So, we shall meet again at dinner.”
He smiled, gave me a little bow, and left.
Somewhat bemused, I watched him go, then I turned to the counter wondering how I was going to maneuver all this food back down to the hold.
At one o’clock and again at six, I made my way to the galley to collect beef, rice and beans, biscuits with molasses, and water for dinner and, later, tea and bread called “duff” made from flour and raisins. Doctor Harte, good to his word, appeared by my side on both occasions, inspecting each item and checking it off in a notebook.
By the third day, I was growing more comfortable in my new role. With the help of Mary, I was able to get the meals delivered to the mess in two round trips. I had enlisted Mary as much to build her confidence as to help me. She glowed with pride when I complimented her and I was pleased I had thought of it. Little did I know this would be the first bone of contention in the mess.
“If ya were lookin’ for a body to help you, instead of that Mary one who’s afraid of her own shadow, why didn’t ya pick that big lump there?” said Lizzie McShane one night at teatime, nodding towards Bridie, who sat silently at the end of the table. “Sure, she could lift a whole cow,” Lizzie continued, “let alone a wee jug of milk.”
Sheila Hughes joined in. “You’re right there, Lizzie,” she said, grinning, “but be the size of her I’d say she might devour our meal along with her own before she even got down here.”
“Aye, and us sitting waiting with our tongues hanging out!” said Patsy.
All three of them cackled like witches. I glared at them.
“Stop that,” I said. “Bridie doesn’t even know what you’re saying about her. It’s not very kind.”
Lizzie widened her eyes. “Ooh, listen to that, girls,” she said, looking at Sheila and Patsy, “it’s not very kind,” she finished, mimicking me. “Sure the big culchie has no notion what I’m after saying.”
Mary turned pale and put her head down. I didn’t know who I was angrier with—Lizzie, Sheila and Patsy for their meanness, or Mary for not standing up for herself. I got up and started collecting the dishes, hoping to ease the situation, but out of nowhere Bridie sprang from her seat and set upon Lizzie, thumping her soundly around the head and shoulders.
“Stop it now!” I shouted, but nobody listened. Patsy jumped in to help Lizzie, while Sheila lunged at Bridie with a metal fork.
“Get away, or I’ll stick ya with this, ya big ugly pig,” she hissed.
I turned to Mary. “Get Mrs. Buckley. Now, Mary!”
She fled up the ladder.
I stood, shouting myself hoarse but they refused to stop fighting.
For the first time I was relieved to see Mrs. Buckley appear, Phoebe behind her.
“What is the meaning of this?” Mrs. Buckley barked. “Stop it at once or I’ll call the captain and have you put in irons!”
At that moment several girls from the mess following ours arrived to have their tea. They stood gaping at the scene in front of them. Slowly, Sheila dropped the fork and Bridie backed away from Lizzie. I opened my mouth to explain.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Buckley,” I began, “I tried to stop them, but—”
She held up her hand to silence me.
“I do not want to hear what you have to say, Miss Gilvarry! I advised Doctor Harte that you were the wrong person to put in charge of your group, but he didn’t listen. You have shown your lack of responsibility on more than one occasion.” Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t think I didn’t see you on the top deck the day we sailed from Plymouth. I reported you to Doctor Harte but he made excuses for you.” She sighed. “Now he will see I was right all along!”
“But . . .” I began, indignant that she was blaming me.
“No ‘buts’!” she said. “I will be reporting all of you to Doctor Harte and it will be up to him whether or not he reports this outrageous behavior to the captain.”
“If he has the guts to do it,” murmured Phoebe.
Mrs. Buckley ignored her. “All of you will remain down here for the rest of the evening, and instead of going to breakfast tomorrow, you will report to Doctor Harte at first bell. That is all.”
She looked at the plates and mugs on the table, then at the group of girls from the next mess who waited open-mouthed. “And clear this table up, Miss Gilvarry, so these girls may have their meals.”
With that she signaled Phoebe and together they climbed the ladder and closed the hatch behind them.
The next morning the members of our mess stood in a circle around Doctor Harte, Mrs. Buckley and Phoebe. My stomach growled with hunger from missing breakfast, but that didn’t bother me as much as my feeling of shame for having let him down. Mrs. Buckley recited our sins to him, a triumphant look on her flushed face. Then she pointed at me.
“I would recommend, Doctor, that you choose someone else to oversee the mess, or better yet assign her to a different group. Miss Gilvarry has shown herself on many occasions to be unreliable and a rule-breaker. If you remember, I have tried to warn you of this—”
She stopped abruptly when the doctor raised his hand for silence.
“Thank you, Mrs. Buckley. That will be all. And for goodness’ sake get these girls some breakfast. I will speak to Miss Gilvarry alone.”
He took me by the arm and led me away while Mrs. Buckley glowered after him.
“Let’s go to the upper deck,” he said curtly.
“But . . . I thought we weren’t allowed up there,” I said.
He turned to me. “No, you are not, but I understand that has not stopped you in the past.”
