with the seagoing home for married folk
between the two. They had tables, benches,
shelves, lamps, and such things. They had
sleeping berths in two tiers with room for a
man to settle comfortably down or sit upright
in any one of them. They got light through
strong panes of glass in the ship's sides, and
bulls' eyes in the deck overhead. Their place
was ventilated at some cost, and as the
Emigration Commissioners insisted on seven
feet of clear space between the decks, they
could let their tables down by the hinges, and
have exercise during wet weather. Acts of
Parliament regulate the amount of space each
emigrant shall have, the quality as well as
quantity of food to be provided, even when he
shall get up and go to bed. That is all very
good and very wise.

I mind me that I sailed in 1837 from
Liverpool to New York with Irish emigrants
when there was no such care taken, and the
people, having merely paid the passage money,
found their own provisions. The poor creatures
took chiefly potatoes, eggs, and oatmeal, and
few took more than enough to last them
through an average passage. The ship got
into heavy weather and the voyage lasted
eight weeks: no extraordinary time, but long
enough to cause a famine. We got into New
York with more than two-thirds of our
emigrants depending for life upon a biscuit
and two or three dried sprats daily. The
ship's stores could not furnish more, and as
it was it was found necessary to arm the crew
and garrison the cabin, that we might prevent
the poor hungry souls from breaking the store
rooms open. I remember, too, what we all
suffered on a voyage to Port Phillip with
emigrants, in 1840. The vessel touched at
the Cape for water, and the skinflint of an
agent, who was a passenger in her, prevented
the captain from laying in a full supply. The
consequence was that long before we made
the coast of New Holland, each man's daily
allowance was reduced from six pints to two,
and then to one pint. At length we were
obliged to alter our course and bear up for
King George's Sound, near Swan River, for
water. Off the entrance of the harbour the
ship lay for three days becalmed under a
roasting sun. The men went out in boats
prospecting in vain for springs upon the
sandy shore. There was not a drop of water
on board ship during those three days. Two
children died of thirst. Men lay moaning
about the decks. The cause of our distress
shut himself up in his cabin, where he had
no lack of bottled ale and soda water. A
breeze that sprang up on the fourth day
carried us through the long sound, and as
we got into the narrow channel leading to
the inner harbour, a boat from Albany—
where the report of our signal guns had at
length been heard—boarded us, and the crew,
finding our condition, pulled off to the nearest
spring, laden with kegs and buckets.

The strict regulations now enforced prevent
such scenes from occurring any more in
emigrant ships, but in vessels carrying merely
their crews—merely as sailors, for whose home
afloat nobody has yet begun to care—they
are common enough. In the very last vessel
of the kind to which I belonged, the Abbots
Reading of Liverpool, after a very quick
passage from South America, we came in sight
of the Azores, with no other provisions on
board than biscuits, beans, and water. Very
good provender for horses, but not quite the
right fare for hard-working men.

Well, then, to go back to the Hope, there
is all that care taken on board an emigrant
vessel—and very properly taken too—of men
whose whole experience of sea-going does not
come to more than a few months in all their
knowledge. What sort of care is taken of the
men who live aboard ship, sometimes by the
year together, and during all the chief part
of their lives?

In old-fashioned ships the forecastle is
beneath the main-deck, but as it there occupies
space which maybe profitably given up to cargo,
it is now, in almost all large vessels, superseded
by the top-gallant forecastle. The top-
gallant forecastle of the Hope, which is a fair
sample of the Sailors' Home at sea, was made,
as usual, in manner following. In the fore
part of the ship a second deck was laid, about
five feet above the main deck, reaching as far
aft as the windlass, and thus covering that
part of the ship included in the round sweep
of the bows. Under this roofing a low
cavern was formed, about eighteen feet wide
at the entrance, and gradually narrowing to
a point at the other end. The extreme
length of it was eighteen or twenty feet, and
it was barely five feet high between the
beams. A landsman might compare this
kind of sailors' home to the inside of a large
baker's oven. In this top-gallant forecastle,
containing less space and less air than is the
Government allowance for two solitary cells
in Pentonville Prison, sixteen people were to
eat, drink, and sleep, and keep their clothes,
and make themselves at home with one
another. It was the whole lodging provided
for the carpenter, nine seamen, five boys, and
the cook, that being the complement of hands
on board the Hope, or any other vessel
of four hundred and sixty tons register.

The front of this home of ours was boarded
off across its whole breadth, and was to be
entered on each side by a sliding door. The
anchor chains having passed through doors
of their own—two large square holes, left in
the front for that purpose—ran along the whole
length of the forecastle, to be carried through
the hawse-holes and shackled to the anchors.
As this ground tackle must be always ready
for instant use when the ship is near land, these
four holes were at such times left open: one
pair of them let in the wind, the other pair the
water. We had no windows, and could get
light only when the doors were open. In
rough weather, however, if we did not keep