Bay Harbour: October 25, 2023

Bay Harbour News Wednesday October 25 2023
18
TREASURES FROM THE PAST
Arduous journeys, uncertain futures
THROUGHOUT the 19th
century, many courageous
individuals heeded the call
to leave Great Britain to sail
approximately 12,410 nautical
miles (22,983km) to Aotearoa
New Zealand in pursuit of a
better life. Both the journey –
on fast merchant sailing ships
called ‘clippers’ – and arrival was
fraught with challenges.
The first wave of organised
migration under the Canterbury
Association’s planned Church
of England settlement saw 28
ships carrying 3500 people arrive
between 1850 and 1853. With the
demise of the Canterbury Association
in 1855, the Provincial
Government took over immigration
until 1870.
From 1870, working class
English, Irish, Scottish and a
few Welsh citizens were enticed
to migrate to New Zealand by
agents visiting rural villages,
selling the dream of a land of
plenty ‘down under’.
Of extra temptation was the
opportunity to have their passage
paid for by the New Zealand
Government. Treasurer Julius
Vogel was behind a massive government
borrowing programme
to fund public works projects.
This also paid for an assisted
migration scheme to provide
‘manpower’ to build roads, railways
and telegraph lines.
For a typical agricultural
labourer in Britain at that time,
one’s diet consisted mainly of
bread and potatoes with a little
cabbage or bacon fat thrown in.
Many were illiterate and there
was little hope of improving
one’s lot in life, nor one’s offspring’s.
The impacts of the industrial
revolution had exacerbated
poverty as traditional livelihoods
were eroded, which meant a real
risk of ending up in the workhouse.
Little wonder many chose
to take a perilous sea voyage, in
the sure knowledge they would
never see their birthplace again.
More than 100,000 assisted
migrants arrived during the
1870s, including a record of over
32,000 in 1874. The journey from
Britain to New Zealand took
about three months and individual
experience on board was determined
by the same social and
economic strata that then characterised
British society. If one
was a privileged cabin passenger,
there was space and opportunity
to stroll the poop deck and take
part in ‘entertainments’.
However, for steerage
passengers shipboard life was
mainly confined to the bowels
of the vessel. Timber bunks,
constructed in two tiers and
measuring about six by twothree
feet, with a canvas curtain,
provided one’s only privacy, rest
area, and storage space. A long
central table was the communal
space for cooking, sewing or
social activities. Washing was
done in a bucket, toileting
facilities were rudimentary, and
rodents, cockroaches and lice
abounded. Conditions were
crowded, damp, malodorous
and unsanitary; during storms,
hatches were battened down,
sometimes for many days at a
time.
Given these factors, and that
health clearances in Britain prior
to embarkation were cursory,
resulting in some ships having
disease on board prior to departure,
it is no surprise there were
deaths on many ships. When
enteric fever (typhoid), scarlatina
(scarlet fever), diptheria and
smallpox ripped through a
vessel, tolls could reach well into
double figures, with especially
high numbers of infants and
children. Ship’s doctors and the
matrons assigned to single women’s
welfare had little capacity
to minister to sick passengers. It
was largely up to an individual’s
innate resilience whether one
survived illness. Burials at sea
were mostly done with minimal
ceremonies.
Challenges were not over on
arrival in Whakaraupō Lyttelton
Harbour. Immigration barracks
had been erected in 1850 for
the arrival of the Canterbury
Association’s “First Four Ships”;
they provided temporary accommodation
while colonists found
their feet and a place for employers
to vet prospective workers
from steerage. Our very early
1862-1863 photograph shows one
of these barracks at the end of
the Government jetty, above the
small cottage.
By 1863, concerns about
infection spreading to the local
Reproduction
of sketch by
Sir William Fox
of immigrants’
luggage landing at
Lyttelton’s first jetty,
January 1851
Te Ūaka The
Lyttelton Museum
ref. 14985.16
https://www.
teuaka.org.
nz/onlinecollection/1135954
population were behind the Government’s
decision to establish a
human quarantine station at Te
Pohue Camp Bay, on a 50-acre
block originally set aside for
stock quarantine. It had a safe
anchorage from which to ferry
migrants ashore, but for the first
to be quarantined there off the
Captain Cook, it was just a wet
and miserable ‘tent city’. Seventeen
had died during that ship’s
voyage and another five deaths
followed in the bay.
Lobbying by passengers and
concerned citizens resulted in
the erection of timber barracks
in 1864. These structures were
levelled in a storm less than
a year later, testifying to the
exposed nature of the site. A
small cemetery on the headland
was the final resting place of a
probable total of 74 individuals
– burials took place from 1863-
1880, long after the bay stopped
being used for quarantine.
Fear of the spread of disease
continued to be voiced in the
Lyttelton Times and other
regional papers; in 1873, a third
government quarantine solution
was proposed on Ripapa Island.
A hospital and five large barracks
capable of accommodating 300
people were constructed.
Passengers from the 1873
typhus ridden Punjaubwere were
held there; 27 had died at sea
and a further 11 succumbed in
quarantine (they were buried at
Camp Bay). The site was taken
over for use by the Government’s
penal authority in 1876.
A fourth and final quarantine
complex was built on Ōtamahua
Quail Island in 1876. Evidently
it was little used for its intended
purpose. Many ships were
not required to quarantine;
that difficult decision was the
responsibility of Dr Donald,
then Lyttelton’s Medical Officer.
He must have felt immense
pressure from multiple quarters
– shipping interests, migrants
eager to start their new lives,
and a local populace wary of
infection. However, the facilities
were used until 1931, including
during the post WW1 influenza
epidemic and for a leprosy
colony.
View of Lyttelton and port, 1862-1863
Te Ūaka The Lyttelton Museum ref.14625.31
https://www.teuaka.org.nz/online-collection/1135465
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