It was a gray threatening morning when I came on deck. The boys of our party came up one by one, and were a very ill-pleased lot indeed when they found that if they wished to wash even their faces and hands they must use the salt water in the scullery-rooms forward, or else be content with half a tin cupful of drinking-water, for at the drinking-water taps a sailor was constantly stationed to prevent any one from taking more than was enough for drinking. In a short while, though, they learned to go often for a drink during the day, and save what they did not want in empty wine-bottles, unused flask-buckets, etc., and with care they secured enough for facial ablutions each morning. As for those fellow-passengers who were not overfond of washing, the scarcity of water was seized as an excuse for not washing at all.
About eight o’clock the steerage cooks and stewards served “biscuits” and coffee. The latter was what might be expected. The first named was a disk of dough, three quarters of an inch thick, and a hand’s length broad. It was as hard as a landlord’s heart, and as tasteless as a bit of rag carpet. The worst of it was that about half the biscuits were moldy. About some 3,000 were served out, and for the next half hour disks went sailing high in the air over the sides and into the sea. Three times on the voyage were the biscuits moldy: considered from the Egan War Department commissary standpoint that is not bad.
MID-VOYAGE SCENES
Mora—Syrian Jews—Prostrated by the Swell—Children Escaping Seasickness
185I gathered our party in the lee of No. 2 hatch, and we breakfasted on food from the store brought from home, eked out with the coffee and the two sound biscuits we received. We used a corkscrew to separate the biscuit into edible fragments.
After breakfast the crowds on deck took to mirth and song. Mouth-organs, tambourines, and accordions were produced, and it became evident that it would take a great deal to long repress the resilient Italian spirit. Before an hour had passed every man who had a set of lotto cards and numbered disks had started a game in some corner sheltered from the wind. A real Gulf of Lyons blow was coming on slowly, and I knew a few hours would see an end of the merriment. So far the ship was as steady as a dead man’s stare.
The dinner-bell rang, and the crowd, since it was happy, very, very hungry, and not at all sea-wise, ate to repletion of the fare, which was about the same as that of supper the night before, only being ladled out with more care. I warned our people that since they were where they were, and not engaged in their usual toil and exercise, and since it was likely to be rough, they should not eat very much. All obeyed except Camela, Concetta, Ina, and little Nastasia. They ate till the big pan was empty.
After the meal Ina quizzed me as to why the ship floated.
“What does it sit on while it runs along?”
“The water.”
“Just water? No rails?”
“No. It is water and nothing else for half a mile down.”
186She thought soberly a minute, and then her big eyes brightened.
“Oh, I know why there are so many children on the ship. If they were all big folks they would be so heavy they would make it sink, wouldn’t they?”
In an hour the sea increased from a small jubble to a short swell, and the crowds on deck began to grow silent. As my wife and I walked about watching faces growing pale, it was a study indeed. Those who have known the first throes of seasickness will understand why these poor people grew sorely afraid. If it had not been for the jesting of those who had crossed before, or who were inured to a reeling deck, they would have been almost panic-stricken. Our party, all except Nunzio Giunta, my wife, and myself, wilted before the wave.
In fifteen minutes two thirds of the crowd had hurried below, and the other third were a sight to behold. I made Camela and Concetta, who were deathly sick as a result of their over-indulgence at dinner, stay up in the rushing air until both were unable to hold up their heads. Concetta’s heart-action was very bad, and it seemed best to get her to bed, so Nunzio Giunta shouldered one and I the other, and though the ship was rolling savagely by this time we managed to get them aft and below. As I came back after Ina, she was crying beside Antonio, who was very sick indeed.
“What is the matter, Ina?” I said.
“O, Uncle Berto, I’m all sicked, and I’m going to die, ‘n’ they’ll throw me overboard, ‘n’ I’ll never see Giuseppe” [her father].
For the emigrants it was a frightful afternoon, and the compartments below and the deck above were in a condition that is beyond the scope of any tale.
187At supper time about one sixth of the crowd lined up to get rations. So many of the capo di rancio phalanx were sick that nearly all of those who did draw rations did it on borrowed tickets. I saw one man get the full portion for six. The others of his group were unable to touch a mouthful, so he sat down in a corner out of the wind and ate every particle. It was a gastronomic feat worthy of record.
The worst feature of this stormy afternoon was that the ship’s officers chose it as the time to deliver to the emigrants the passports which had been taken from them for inspection by the police in the Capitaneria at Naples. It was also made the occasion of the “counting of noses,” when it was made sure that Caterina Fancetti No. 214, and Giovanni Masuolo No. 468, etc., were duly aboard. Since the United States authorities exact a fine of $200 from any ship which delivers less emigrants to the Ellis Island or other port authorities than the ship’s manifest shows to have been aboard, the ship’s people take great care that for every number and name they have on the manifest there is an emigrant to deliver.
This would have been all well and proper the next day, for instance, but this afternoon one half of the steerage passengers were so wretchedly sick that it was nothing short of cruelty to compel them to get up out of their beds and come up on deck, where they were passed in line before the officers, and the passports were delivered as names and numbers were answered and checked off.
Nunzio Giunta, who had no qualm of seasickness, attended to getting Antonio and the men and boys up, while I went below for the women. They were in a condition that was truly pitiable. Concetta’s white 188face had a purple tinge in it, and she lay gasping for breath; her heart-action really dangerous. Camela could scarcely lift her head. The steerage stewards in their dirt-smeared working rigs were in the compartment, pushing, shoving, jerking, and cursing the women and children to get them out and up the companion-way. The result of their efforts was to clear the place of those who were not too sick to go readily, but the large number that remained in bed were not given any great length of respite. One of the stewards came around with a stick, a piece of pine box, rapped on the sides of the bunk, and poked them with it, and soon they were herded at the foot of the steps, where the greater number of them sank down in a heap, unable to attempt to force their way up through those who had dropped down on the stairs. My wife and I contrived to get Camela and Concetta up the companion-way. The others were able to help themselves. In the alley-way we found a state of things of which it is as revolting to write as it is to read. There was not a spot on which it was fit to step, yet here was jammed a mass of sick women and children, many of them sunk down against the wall. The officers were not yet through with the people coming up from the next compartment forward, and so two sailors were guarding the door to prevent any more women coming out. I contrived to work Concetta through to the door, and just outside the portal, in order that she might get the air, and in so doing placed some ten feet between my wife and myself.
Just then there came along one of the steerage cooks, bearing a big can of supplies from the storeroom. There was no room for him to pass in the alley-way. He cried out in German for the people to 189make way for him, but of course they did not understand, and were too closely packed to do so even if they had. He was a big fellow of a very brutal type, and when he found that the path was not cleared he turned his shoulder, drew back, and drove his shoulder into the mass of women and children. I saw what he was going to do, but could not reach him. Women with babies in their arms, children deep down in the press of their elders, were knocked back in a heap. One of the women he struck was my wife. Quick as a flash, she recovered herself and drove a blow straight from the shoulder, landing under his left ear. One of the sailors from the outside started in, but I blocked him. A more surprised man than that steerage cook it would be difficult to imagine. He went on about his business very meekly. The women around gazed at my wife in awe, and one of them asked Camela later what manner of woman she was to imperil her chances for admission to the United States by striking one in authority.
We had chosen the Prinzessin Irene because she is the largest and best emigrant-carrying ship in the trade, and the line to which she belongs stands toward the front among the others in its treatment of the third-class passengers. People who have crossed many times and know all the ins and outs of steerage travel prefer the Lahn or the Prinzessin Irene, so that we knew we should find the minimum of abuse in her. What must the conditions be in ships in the northern trade and in the cheaper ships running from Mediterranean ports. Almost the only time that the third-class people were treated as passengers was at the time of planking down their 200 lire. The men of the crew were inclined to treat them as inferior beings, to be 190knocked and pushed about, and I regret to say they took their cue from their immediate superiors.
The third day of the voyage was Sunday, and the weather was improving. The seasick people began to think life worth clinging to. The capo di rancio crowd at dinner was nearly the full size. My wife looked once at the mixture in the big pan and then turned away. Though I knew what the matter was I asked her.
“I was just thinking how far, how very far it is to Martin’s,” she said with a tremble in her voice.
Knowing full well that there are always secret channels on board a ship for the getting of food if one has money, I had been trying every steward, cook, page, etc., I could corner, and offering ridiculous prices for something to eat. Not that the food for the steerage was so bad we could not eat it. We had been eating it, and we expected to continue to eat it; but we wanted a supply to fill in with on those occasions when it was not what we wanted. When I sailed as a member of the crew in ships of the Hamburg-American and American lines, a very good source of revenue to the cooks and stewards was the secret sale of food to the third-class passengers who had money. On the Lahn we had been able to buy everything we wished. The trouble on the Prinzessin Irene on this voyage was that the inspector was aboard. At last, however, I found a petty officer who had a cabin down the alley-way, and I “persuaded” him. The result was a sudden and gracious increase in our comforts in all that one could expect in the steerage. The only drawback was the necessity for extreme care in coming and going.
Half a Dozen Races on Common Ground—His Brothcup—The Immigrant Madonna
In the Sunday afternoon chatting around deck, where 191the people sat on the hatches, the deck, the winches, in fact, anywhere they could get, there being no place in the entire steerage section that was distinctly intended for sitting down, I found numbers of people who had squeezed through the examination at Naples by little hooks and crooks.
Monday morning we were nearin............