Emigrant Ships Sailed Round

The Cape of Good Hope

EMIGRANT ships followed one general course, seldom varied. They coasted round Africa till they rounded the Cape of Good Hope, then sailed in the ‘roaring forties’ straight across to New Zealand, sometimes travelling more than 200 miles a day for a week together. The voyage might begin badly with a long wait behind the Isle of Wight, or in some other Channel haven, till a favourable wind allowed the boat to move on towards the stormy Bay of Biscay. Passengers usually got ashore when the boat was held up like this. The Company, in chartering a vessel, nearly always made it a condition that they could touch at one port in the Channel, at the Cape Verde Islands, and somewhere on the coast of Brazil or at the Cape of Good Hope. This did not mean that the boat called at any of these as a matter of course. The majority of ships simply sailed straight from Gravesend to Port Nicholson. Although they sometimes passed within sight of the coast of Tasmania, the emigrant ships never touched at any Australian port, perhaps to pre­vent desertion to the older established settlements. Ships occasionally called at Madeira and the Canary Islands. Wherever the port of call, it was a wonderful relief to get ashore to stretch one’s legs and to buy fresh provisions.

Even if the ship did not call at a port, the mere sight of land was wonderfully heartening on a long voyage. Ascension, St. Helena, Tristan da Cunha, any rock or the shadowy loom of the African mainland through a wraith of cloud, could delight the emigrants with its reminder of a fuller life beyond the narrow prison of the ship. Even seaweed or a stray sperm whale breaking up the wastes of the ocean was something to gaze at and talk about.