The Star of the Sea (45 page)

The shatter of thunder. The squeal of a skipping-chant. An old-soldierly cove was trudging the street with a placard on which had been painted
REPENT
; but the letters had begun to run in the rain.
A chancer perched on a dirty metal keg was declaiming the miraculous properties of a potion he was selling. Two sailors hurried past under a girl’s pink parasol. The women were preparing to start work for the night.

Some sat on their windowsills, sipping cups of tea; others stood in the doorways of their small, dark houses, calling out softly to passers-by.

‘Hello, my husband.’

‘Night-night, ducks.’

‘I have what you need, love. Nice and fresh.’

He crossed Mecklenburgh Street in his leaking boots and drifted down the tiny alleyway connecting Curzon and Tyrone Streets; so narrow you could touch both walls as you walked. A vagrant was crumpled in a stinking doorway, drunkenly lilting a music-hall tune. He came to a house. Stopped. Looked up. A red light was burning in the window of an attic, like the glow before the tabernacle in a Catholic church. He took off his wedding ring and slipped it into his pocket; and he knocked on the bolt-studded panel of the door.

The hatch shot back. Deadened eyes looked out at him. The hatch shot closed and the door was opened.

The doorkeeper had on a black sacking hood, a long black coat under a thick leather pea-jacket. A cudgel was clasped in the crook of his arm, through its handle a wristlet of chain.

‘Five,’ he murmured, jerking out his gloved palm. Merridith handed over two half-crowns. The door was slammed and locked behind him.

He was led down a flight of very steep stairs; past a door behind which a piano was jangling ‘The Bucks of Oranmore’. Another door further down was slightly ajar; three cadaverous girls in corsets were sitting on troopers’ knees.

The madam was a Dubliner, well dressed and muscular, and she spoke in the antique accent of the innertown Liberties. She was smoking a Turkish cigarette in an ivory holder; on her bosom a fancy necklace of bright golden coins. The visitor was greeted with professional hospitality. Would he have a cuppa tay? A nice toddy of punch? She spoke like an innkeeper with a little time to kill.

‘You’re not a son of Dublin, sir. To judge from your nice way of speaking. Is it English, Your Honour? Commerce or pleasure?
Well you’re welcome indeed and a thousand times welcome. No strangers here, sir: only friends we haven’t met. And Your Honour ’ud fancy a little sport on a cold night, I expect, sir. Banish all the cares and troubles of the day. Time enough tomorrow for sorrows, says you.’

Merridith nodded, shivering in the draught. She gave a mild chuckle, as though relishing his discomfort.

‘And why not, says you? Won’t we be a long time dead? Divil the jot of harm ever came from the gambol. We’ll rosin up your bow for you, sir: you see if we don’t.’

His hand was trembling badly as he handed over the money. The man in the mask had appeared again and was beckoning towards a corridor that Merridith hadn’t noticed. Up some stairs, along a shabby landing. He entered the dark room and quickly undressed. He realised he was crying as he lay on the filthy mattress; but he dried his eyes. He did not want to cry. The air stank of sweat and putrefaction and cats, but drenched in a fug of sickly-sweet perfume. From outside in the street he could hear strident laughter, the fatigued tread of cart-horses plodding the cobbles.

A long time seemed to pass before the black door opened. The girl entered quietly, as though she was tired. She had a candle in one hand, a ragged towel in the other. Her chemise had been loosened to reveal her breasts. Her hollowed, deathly face was a grotesquerie of rouge.

‘Good-night, sir,’ she said. And then nothing was said.

The candle flame flickered.

It was Mary Duane.

No words can describe this peculiar appearance of the famished children. Never have I seen such bright, blue, clear eyes looking so steadfastly at nothing. I could almost fancy that the angels of God had been sent to unseal the vision of these little patient, perishing creatures, to the beatitudes of another world.

Elihu Burritt
A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen
London,1847

¹
Hansard
, vol. 234, col. 21 (1846).

T
HE
NINETEENTH
DAY OF THE
V
OYAGE: IN WHICH THE
C
APTAIN RECEIVES A MOST WORRYING ITEM OF
I
NFORMATION
.

Friday, 26 November, 1847
Seven days remaining at sea

L
ONG:
48°07.31′W. L
AT:
47°04.02′N. A
CTUAL
G
REENWICH
S
TANDARD
T
IME:
02.31 a.m. (27 November): A
DJUSTED
S
HIP
T
IME:
11.19 p.m. (26 November). W
IND
D
IR
. & S
PEED:
E. (92°). Force 6. S
EAS:
mountainous. H
EADING:
W. (267°). P
RECIPITATION
& R
EMARKS:
Peak wind gust of 51 knots recorded. Tore mizzen-sail loose. Churning over easterly Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

The crippled person is lodged in the lock-up. He has slept for almost all of the past thirty-six hours. Surgeon Mangan has cleaned the wounds of his face, small lacerations and swellings. No broken bones. It seems that his name is indeed ‘Mulvey’ as was said; the error of calling him Swales being my own. (From the name on his bible, but he had received it from a friend.) Leeson is of the view that he is most extremely untrustworthy; but there never was a man so entirely bad that life had boiled all the goodness out of him.

Last night seven of the steerage passengers died and their mortal remains were committed to the deep. Their names were John Barrett, George Fougarty, Grace Mullins, Denis Hanrahan, Alice Clohessie, James Buckiner and Patrick Joseph Connors. God have mercy on them.

Just after dawn we made sighting of the brigantine
Morning Dew
out of New Orleans for Sligo and accordingly signalled to belay. Signal being received was returned.

We dropped anchor at 47°01.10′W, 47°54.21′N and prepared a boarding party. I went across in the launch with the Mail Agent Wellesley and some of the men (also some of the stronger passengers, and a boy) to load and receive several bags of mail. Also to put on to her Eliza Healy, seven yrs, a child whose mother and father have died on board and who has no relative to care for her in America.

I took coffee and a little brandywine for my chest with Captain Antoine Pontalba of Shreveport in his quarters. He had most worrying information to divulge.

He first enquired if we were bound for Quebec, and when I said no, he remarked that this was a mighty good thing. We discussed the horrible events which occurred there this past summer,
¹
which were yet the talk of his ship; but I was most extremely alarmed when he said that the catastrophe has not yet run its appalling course but is still claiming hundreds of souls every week. I had thought the dreadful crisis ended but alas it is not. Indeed some say much worse may yet come.

Master Pontalba confided that his First Mate had met a man at New Orleans who had come down recently from Quebec, the latter asserting that a large section of the St Lawrence River, which course forms the main channel in to Canada, is entirely frozen over, also an enormous area on the banks, comprising many score of miles all around. This man, a Russian merchant of furs, had many stories of the sufferings now being endured by the unfortunate people in that place. Reportedly he could not speak English very well but the gist of what he said was frightful.

Forty or more ships are reported to be waiting to go in to
Canada, lined several miles down the river, with upwards of fifteen thousand emigrants on board, almost all from Ireland; many of these with cholera and typhus and entirely without means to be treated or even quarantined. It is accounted that on some vessels not a single man, woman or child is without affliction, neither passengers nor crew. On two vessels, it is said, all have died: every last human soul on board. Nothing less than an undiminished calamity may be expected now, with enormous loss of life.

To add to this heavy news, there had been rumours that the authorities at New York and Boston might turn back all ships deriving from Ireland, those ports being now choked with many vessels unable to go in to Canada, and the authorities at New York greatly fearful of epidemics.

I begged him not to let any of my passengers know of it but I fear it was perhaps too late, for returning in the launch I observed that several of them looked most frightened and chapfallen. I made the bosun lift the oars for a moment and said to all that we had a solemn duty not to spread alarm among our fellows, that the traveller’s best friend is a cool mind. Everyone agreed to keep his counsel, even the boy, who was very afraid. But as soon as we returned to the
Star
and unfurled, I noticed that many of them were congregating on the foredeck and appearing most extremely distressed. Presently they commenced to pray aloud, in that fervently incantatory manner they have, the many strange names they give unto the Mother of Jesus.

I know from many years that this is a sign of their deepest dread.

I lay down in my quarters, intending to rest me for a moment, but fell into a deep and very troubled sleep. And I dreamed I saw the ship as from a terrible height, its body crying out for mercy to the Queen of High Heaven.

¹
Captain Lockwood is alluding to the tragedy at Grosse Ile in the summer of 1847, when the Quarantine Station on the St Lawrence river was overwhelmed by an enormous number of sick and hungry immigrants, many from Ireland. Thousands died; Quebec and Montreal suffered devastating fever epidemics. By the time of the
Star
’s voyage, the river was in fact closed to all shipping and the authorities had at least begun to gain control of the crisis; but clearly, from the above, terrible accounts of what had happened must still have been circulating among travellers. – GGD.