Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T02:41:44.490Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bodies at sea: travelling to Australia in the age of sail*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2016

Tamson Pietsch
Tamson Pietsch*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article considers the bodily experience of being at sea in the age of sail. Using shipboard diaries written by eight passengers during the high period of free migration to the Australasian colonies, it argues that oceanic journeys disrupted and upended the land-based bodily practices being fashioned in nineteenth-century Britain. At sea, these mechanisms of bodily comportment were rendered fragile and unstable, leaving middle- and working-class bodies alike vulnerable and open to refashioning and reformation. In so doing, it points to the need for scholars to bring together land- and sea-based histories and to historicize and particularize oceanic spaces.

Keywords

bodiesemotionsmigrationseashipstransit
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , July 2016 , pp. 209 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Woolcock, Helen R., Rights of passage: emigration to Australia in the nineteenth century, London: Tavistock Publications, 1986Google Scholar; Haines, Robin, Jeffery, Judith, and Slattery, Greg, Bound for South Australia: births and deaths on government-assisted immigrant ships 1848–1885, CD-ROM, St Agnes, SA: Gould Genealogy, 2004Google Scholar; Lubbock, Basil, The colonial clippers, 4th edn, Glasgow: Brown, Son & Ferguson, 1975Google Scholar; Harcourt, Freda, Flagships of imperialism: the P&O company and the politics of empire from its origins to 1867, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Smallwood, Stephanie E., Saltwater slavery: a middle passage from Africa to American diaspora, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007Google Scholar; Christopher, Emma, Pybus, Cassandra, and Rediker, Marcus, eds., Many middle passages: forced migration and the making of the modern world, Berkeley, CA: University of California, 2007Google Scholar; Anderson, Clare, ‘“The Ferrignees are flying – the ship is ours!” The convict middle passage in colonial South and Southeast Asia, 1790–1860’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 42, 2, 2005, pp. 143–186CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rediker, Marcus, Between the devil and the deep blue sea: merchant seamen, pirates and the Anglo-American maritime world, 1700–1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993Google Scholar; Haines, Robin, Life and death in the age of sail: the passage to Australia, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003Google Scholar.

3 Porter, Roy, ‘History of the body reconsidered’, in Peter Burke, ed., New perspectives on historical writing, Cambridge: Polity, 1999, pp. 233–260Google Scholar; Vigarello, Georges, Concepts of cleanliness: changing attitudes in France since the middle ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988Google Scholar. See also Gallagher, Catherine and Laqueur, Thomas, eds., The making of the modern body: sexuality and society in the nineteenth century, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986Google Scholar; and, more recently, Gowing, Laura, Common bodies: women, touch, and power in seventeenth-century England, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003Google Scholar. For an imperial and global view, see Ballantyne, Tony and Burton, Antoinette, ‘Introduction: bodies, empires, and world histories’, in Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, eds., Bodies in contact: rethinking colonial encounters in world history, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005, pp. 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Duden, Barbara, The woman beneath the skin: a doctor’s patients in eighteenth-century Germany, trans. Thomas Dunlap, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. 1–31Google Scholar.

5 The term is taken from Foucault, Michel, Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, New York: Vintage Books, 1977Google Scholar.

6 Joyce, Patrick, Rule of freedom: liberalism and the modern city, London: Verso, 2003, p. 1Google Scholar.

7 E.g. Barak, On, On time: technology and temporality in modern Egypt, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bayly, Christopher A., The birth of the modern world, 1780–1914: global connections and comparisons, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 12–18Google Scholar.

8 Burton, Antoinette, ‘The body in/as world history’, in Douglas Northrop, ed., A companion to world history, Oxford: Blackwell, 2012, pp. 272–284CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hunt, Lynn, Writing history in the global era, New York: W.W. Norton, 2014Google Scholar.

9 Bateson, Charles, The convict ships, 1787–1868, Sydney: Reed, 1974, p. 47Google Scholar; Charlwood, Don, The long farewell, Ringwood: Allen Lane, 1981, p. 159Google Scholar.

10 Foucault, Discipline and punish, pp. 135–69.

11 Ibid., p. 198.

12 Stoler, Ann, Along the archival grain: epistemic anxieties and colonial common sense, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009Google Scholar.

13 See the relevant contributions to this special issue and also Ghosh, Amitav, Sea of poppies, London: John Murray, 2008Google Scholar; Balachandran, Gopalan, Globalizing labour? Indian seafarers and world shipping, c. 1870–1945, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012Google Scholar; Huber, Valeska, Channelling mobilities: migration and globalisation in the Suez Canal region and beyond, 1869–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hyslop, Jonathan, ‘Zulu sailors in the steamship era: the African modern in the world voyage narratives of Fulunge Mpofu and George Magodini, 1916–1924’, in Fiona Paisley and Kirsty Reid, eds., Critical perspectives on colonialism: writing the empire from below, London: Routledge, 2010, pp. 123–140Google Scholar; Tagliocozzo, Eric, Secret trades, porous borders: smuggling and states along a Southeast Asian frontier, 1865–1915, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005Google Scholar.

14 See Hamish Maxwell-Stewart’s ‘Founders and survivors: Australian life courses in historical context’ project at the University of Tasmania, http://www.foundersandsurvivors.org (consulted 10 March 2016).

15 Harper, Marjory, Emigration from north-east Scotland, 2 vols., Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988, vol. 1, p. 37Google Scholar, quoted in Hassam, Andrew, Sailing to Australia: shipboard diaries by nineteenth-century British emigrants, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994, p. 7Google Scholar.

16 Hassam, Sailing to Australia, pp. 9, 12.

17 Davis, Fanny, ‘Diary of Fanny Davis, 1858’, in Charlwood, Long farewell, pp. 277–290Google Scholar.

18 Merseyside Maritime Museum (henceforth MMM), DX/1071/R, Diary of Emigrant, Sarah Stephens.

19 ‘The Diary of Mary Maclean on board the Africana from Liverpool to Sydney, 1865–1866’, in Hassam, Andrew, No privacy for writing: shipboard diaries, 1852–1879, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994, pp. 93–126Google Scholar.

20 Fenwick, John, ‘Diary of John Fenwick, 1854’, in Charlwood, Long farewell, pp. 253–276Google Scholar.

21 MMM, DX/243/1, Diary of John Hedges, 1858–9.

22 MMM, DX/651, Voyage account of J. T. Deighton aboard the Fred Warren to Australia, 1867–8.

23 Henry Martin Lightoller, ‘Diary of Dr H.M. Lightoller, 1878’, in Charlwood, Long farewell, pp. 291–310.

24 MMM, DX/1966, Papers of Rev. Charles Baker.

25 Following Foucault, Michel, ‘Technologies of the self’, in Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton eds., Technologies of the self: a seminar with Michel Foucault, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988, pp. 16–49Google Scholar.

26 Hassam, Sailing to Australia, p. 20.

27 See also Foucault, Michel, ‘Of other spaces, heterotopias’, Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, 5, 1984, pp. 46–49Google Scholar.

28 de Certeau, Michel, The practice of everyday life, trans. Steven Rendall, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984Google Scholar.

29 Capper, John, The immigrant’s guide to Australia, Liverpool: George Phillip & Son, 1853, p. 103Google Scholar.

30 Other popular examples of the genre include Mackenzie, Eneas, The emigrant’s guide to Australia with a memoir of Mrs Chisholm, London: Clark, Beeton, 1853Google Scholar; Baird, James, The emigrant’s guide to Australasia: Australia, New South Wales, Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, and Queensland, London: Virtue, 1868Google Scholar.

31 Baker, 12 December 1857.

32 Maclean, 20 December 1865, p. 103.

33 Stephens, 24 October 1876; Maclean, 25 December 1865, p. 105.

34 Stephens, 14 December 1876.

35 Deighton, 22 June 1867; Hedges, 25 December 1858.

36 Deighton, 1 July 1867.

37 Hedges, 26 November 1858.

38 Davis, 9 July 1858, p. 283.

39 Lightoller, 31 August 1878, p. 300.

40 Stephens, 20 November 1876.

41 Lightoller, 6 and 13 September 1878, pp. 301, 303.

42 Davis, 12 June 1858, p. 280.

43 Stephens, 3 October 1876.

44 William Merifield, diary on the Lincolnshire, from London bound for Melbourne, 1858, MS 8044 La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, in Charlwood, Long farewell, p. 160.

45 Davis, 5 July 1858, p. 282.

46 Stephens, 15 November 1876.

47 Stephens, 19 October and 20 November 1876.

48 Hedges, 17 October 1858.

49 Stephens, 28 October 1876.

50 Baker, 27 June 1857.

51 Davis, 16 August 1858, p. 287.

52 Hedges, 7 December 1858.

53 Maclean, 6 January 1866, p. 109.

54 Baker, 7 June 1857.

55 Mackenzie, Emigrant’s guide, p. 73.

56 Maclean, 19 December 1865, p. 103.

57 Davis, 24 June 1858, p. 282.

58 Stephens, 21 October 1876.

59 Davis, 24 June 1858, p. 282.

60 Hedges, 30 October 1858.

61 E.g. Huber, Channelling mobilities, p. 53.

62 See Ashmore, Paul, ‘Slowing down mobilities: passengering on an inter-war ocean liner’, Mobilities, 8, 4, 2013, pp. 595–611CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for discussion of the diary as a record of ‘affective moments’, albeit in a different period.

63 See de Schmidt, Johanna, ‘“This strange little floating world of ours”: shipboard periodicals and community-building in the “global” nineteenth century’, pp. 229–250Google Scholar in this issue. For the later period, see Wenzlhuemer, Roland and Offermann, Michael, ‘Ship newspapers and passenger life aboard transoceanic steamships in the late nineteenth century’, Transcultural Studies, 1, 2012, pp. 77–121Google Scholar, http://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/transcultural/article/view/9363/3245 (consulted 16 July 2014).

64 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, London: Verso, 1983Google Scholar.

65 Davis, 1 July 1858, p. 282.

66 Stephens, 22 October 1876.

67 Maclean, 6 January 1866, p. 110.

68 Davis, 9 September 1858, p. 289.

69 Hedges, 29 September 1858.

70 Edwin Frances quoted in Hassam, Sailing to Australia, p. 20.

71 Hassam, No privacy for writing, pp. xviii–xxiv.

72 Stephens, 18 November 1876.

73 Lightoller, 14 August 1878, p. 297.

74 Fenwick, 12 June 1854, p. 263.

75 Baker, 21 December 1857.

76 Lightoller, 14 August 1878, p. 297.

77 Davis, 13 June 1858, p. 280.

78 Lightoller, 16 July 1878, p. 292.

79 William Reay, 12 November 1877, quoted in Hassam, No privacy for writing, p. xix.

80 Lightoller, 15 July 1878, p. 292.

81 Brown, Kevin, Poxed and scurvied: the story of sickness and health at sea, Barnsley, S. Yorks.: Seaforth, 2011, p. 130Google Scholar.

82 Hedges, 9 October 1858.

83 Lightoller, 29 July 1878, p. 295.

84 Brown, Poxed and scurvied; Foxhall, Katherine, Health, medicine, and the sea: Australian voyages, c.1815–1860, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012Google Scholar; Haines, Robin and Shlomowitz, Ralph, ‘Causes of death of British emigrants on voyages to South Australia, 1848–1885’, Social History of Medicine, 16, 2, 2003, pp. 193–208CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; McDonald, John and Shlomowitz, Ralph, ‘Mortality on convict voyages to Australia, 1788–1868’, Social Science History, 13, 3, 1989, pp. 285–313Google Scholar.

85 Foxhall, Health, pp. 56, 196–7, 201.

86 Lightoller, 19 July 1878, p. 293.

87 Lightoller, 9 August 1878, p. 296.

88 Stephens, 6 and 15 January 1877; Maglen, Krista, ‘Quarantined: exploring personal accounts of incarceration in Australian and Pacific quarantine stations in the nineteenth century’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 91, 1, 2005, pp. 1–14Google Scholar.

89 Foxhall, Health, p. 72.

90 Fenwick, 31 May 1864, p. 259.

91 Lightoller, 22 July 1878, p. 294.

92 Hedges, 4 October 1858, emphasis in original.

93 Davis, 8 August 1858, p. 286.

94 Davis, 23 July 1858, p. 284.

95 Baker, Paul and Stanley, Jo, Hello sailor! The hidden history of gay life at sea, London: Longman, 2003Google Scholar; Burg, B. R., An American seafarer in the age of sail: the erotic diaries of Philip C. Van Buskirk, 1851–1870, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003Google Scholar.

96 Rowbotham, Sheila, Edward Carpenter: a life of liberty and love, London: Verso, 2008, pp. 151–159Google Scholar.

97 Deighton, 1 May 1867.

98 Baker, 12 July 1857.

99 Baker, 1 June 1851.

100 Maclean, 26 and 27 December 1865, p. 105.

101 Deighton, 28 April 1867.

102 Maclean, 11 December 1865, p. 102.

103 Stephens, 18 October 1876.

104 Brown, Kathleen M., Foul bodies: cleanliness in early America, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009, pp. 363Google Scholar ff.

105 For work on the gendering of the sailor, see Howell, Colin and Twomey, Richard, eds., Jack Tar in history: essays in the history of maritime life and labour, Fredericton, New Brunswick: Acadiensis Press, 1991Google Scholar.

106 Hedges, 5 October 1858.

107 Hedges, 14 November and 30 October 1858.

108 Maclean, 11 December 1865, p. 102.

109 Stephens, 9 December 1876.

110 Deighton, 12 June 1867, emphasis in original.

111 Fenwick, 7 July 1854, p. 269.

112 Davis, 14 June 1858, pp. 280–1.

113 Lightoller, 15 September 1878, p. 304.

114 Maclean, 18 February 1866, p. 117.

115 Haines, Life and death, p. 12.

116 Davis, 6 August 1858, p. 286.

117 Baker, 13 June 1857.

118 Reid, Kirsty, ‘Ocean funerals: the sea and Victorian cultures of death’, Journal of Maritime Research, 13, 1, 2001, pp. 37–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

119 Davis, 2 July 1858, p. 282.

120 Maclean, 4 March 1866, p. 120; MMM, DX/2223, ‘Account of William Molison Strachan’s passage to Australia on board the ship Panola’, 1 December 1852.

121 Stephens, 4 November 1876.

122 Foucault, Discipline and punish, pp. 8–10.

123 Deighton, 3 July 1867.

124 Davis, 21 July 1858, p. 283.

125 Coleman, Terry, Passage to America: a history of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland to America in the mid-nineteenth century, London: Hutchinson & Co., 1972, p. 115Google Scholar.

126 Foxhall, Health, p. 8.

127 Stephens, 13 December 1876.

128 Hedges, 4 November 1858.

129 Fenwick, 19 June 1854, p. 267.

130 Baker, 1 July 1857.

131 Deighton, 18 July 1867.

132 Deighton, 14 April 1867.

133 Lightoller, 19 September 1878, p. 306.

134 Stephens, 3 January 1877.

135 Clarke, Anne, Frederick, Ursula, and Williams, Anna, ‘Wish you were here: historic inscriptions from the North Head Quarantine Station, Manly, NSW’, Australasian Historical Archaeology, 28, 2010, pp. 77–84Google Scholar; Clarke, Anne and Frederick, Ursula, ‘“Rebecca will you marry me? Tim”: inscriptions as objects of biography at the North Head Quarantine Station, Manly, New South Wales’, Archaeology in Oceania, 47, 2012, pp. 84–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

136 Hedges, 3 January 1859.

137 Charlwood, Long farewell, p. 277.

138 Hassam, Sailing to Australia, pp. 3, 4.

139 Foxhall, Health, p. 56.

140 Divall, Colin, ‘Mobilities and transport history’, in Peter Adey, David Bissell, Kevin Hannam, Peter Merriman, and Mimi Sheller, eds., The Routledge handbook of mobilities, London: Routledge, 2014, p. 37Google Scholar.