Read Online The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka by Clare Wright - Free Book Online

shown, wherever people were bargaining over rights and bound together by geographical proximity, they formed a ‘community’ of interest, a local consensus, that had nothing to do with class cohesion or ethnic homogeneity.
    The duration and conditions of the journey to Australia made the formation of a ‘community’, in Bohstedt’s definition, quite straightforward. Authorities feared hostile crowds, and most ship captains, carrying large numbers of people in confined spaces, were willing at the very least to hear petitions and delegations without taking umbrage. Indeed, they expected to be held accountable for the safe and healthy passage of the ship. In 1853, there were over seventy prosecutions against captains of private passenger ships bound for Australia for breaches of the Passenger Acts, largely relating to substandard provisioning and the illegal sale of alcohol.
    When the ship docked in Port Phillip, the harbour master would board and ask each family these three leading questions: Have you any complaint against anyone on board? Have you been treated well on the voyage? Are you quite able to work? 9 The stage was set early for the performance of individual and communal grievance.
    By the time most gold seekers arrived on dry land, they had already made significant transitions, casting off old allegiances and forging bonds of sympathy based on a new understanding of shared space and common interest. Many passengers referred to the social organisation of the ship as being like one well regulated family . The MARCO POLO CHRONICLE put this clannish feeling down to the depression that associates with ‘goodbye’ followed by the vast amount of physical suffering to be surmounted through seasickness. The MARCO POLO CHRONICLE called the ship our Floating World . Thomas Pierson agreed: You can have no idea how much we love our ship…we feel so much interested for each other and so free towards each other just like one family .
    This intense shipboard bonding, coupled with a sense of maverick privilege at having endured the ordeal, would become an important precursor to goldfields solidarity. And relationships forged on board could develop into important commercial and social associations on land. Charles and George Evans travelled on the Mobile with Henry Wright, Duke Paine and William Denovan, all men with whom they would later form business relationships in Ballarat. The Evans brothers’ close friend from Shropshire, George Morgan, came out on the Star of the East with brothers John Basson and Frederick Humffray. Both in turn would also become business associates of the Evans brothers. Anne Keane, travelling with her two brothers and a sister-in-law on the Star of the East , would ‘marry’ shipmate Martin Diamond (de facto, if not before a priest) once the young sweethearts reached the relative permanence of Ballarat.

    Shipboard relationships often led to important expatriate networks. But this didn’t mean that everyone cohabited snugly, like peas in a floating pod. Where is the family that does not crack as much as it coheres? Quarrels are quite the fashion , noted Fanny Davis, there is not an hour in the day but the doctor is fetched to quell some riot. Indeed, it is one of the stubborn myths of the gold rush era that the months of fraternisation and friction on the sea voyage worked to dismantle old-world social structures irrevocably. In this widespread reading, ship society becomes a template for the new egalitarian society that will be re-created on the diggings. But, as many ship diaries reveal, the ‘Floating World’ embodied rudimentary signs of status demarcation, prejudice and snobbery. Community does not signify equality.
    Englishman John Spence considered the third class rabble to be the scourge of the ship. These Irish poor are the greatest nuisance we have on board , ranted Spence. They were worse than vermin, stale biscuits, wild children or rank