Emigrants had good Living Conditions

on the Company's Ships

TO make sure that its emigrants would be carried to New Zealand as comfortably as was practicable, the New Zealand Company imposed a very strict form of contract on shipowners engaging in the trade. Only the most recently built ships were chartered. The Company could have them dry-docked for inspection before the voyage. They had to be adequately manned, at the rate of five men and a boy to every hundred tons. But it was easier to charter a sea-worthy ship than to be sure that the emigrants would fare well on board.

At first the Company left the victualling of the ship to the owners, though it imposed a scale of daily rations to be issued to the emigrants, and insisted that six months’ provisions should be carried. Later, when Canterbury and Otago were being founded, experience had taught the Company that it would do better to keep the victualling of passengers entirely in its own hands. The shipowners supplied only certain cooking utensils. The power of the Captain on board his own ship was considerably limited, for the. Company’s agent, who was usually the surgeon, was in complete charge of the emigrants—an arrangement that did not always make for harmony unless both men were blessed with tact. The whole ship’s company from the Captain downwards, was forbidden to sell liquor to passengers.

Whether the Company or the shipowner victualled them, the dietary of the emigrants was nourishing rather than dainty. They consumed about 16 Ibs. weight of food each a week and, between cooking and drinking, 21 quarts of water. (They washed in sea water.) The food was usually 31/2 Ibs. of salt meat and 51/4 Ibs. of biscuit a week. In addition they had flour, oatmeal, dried potatoes and peas, raisins, butter, sugar, with coffee and tea to drink. But as they did their own cooking, much food was wasted, and much proved unfit for use.