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water. The great majority are a dirty disagreeable lot . Spence attributed the frequent robberies from insecure cabins to be the work of the Irish mob. I expect before we reach Melbourne we shan’t have a spoon left on us , he lamented. They are such expert thieves .
    Sectarianism was not debunked; indeed, its prejudices and comforts were likely to be enforced in close quarters. Spence, for example, attributed ethnic tensions to the excessive drinking of the Irish, and personally attempted to encourage the entire third-class cabin to take the Temperance Pledge until Melbourne. His evangelism was sorely misplaced. Spence would have done well to follow Emma Macpherson’s resolution for shipboard sanity: think charitably and associate sparingly .
    Religious intolerance surfaced too. During a fierce storm, James Menzies found just cause to disparage another denomination of his Protestant faith. The Methodists , he wrote, went to prayers, thought they were going to the bottom, they were all oh Lord have mercy on my soul enough to give any one the belly ache . Menzies wasn’t much for the Brotherhood of Man. Later in the voyage, he confided that he’d sooner be among a lot of Irish for they are all Cornish people except two or three and a more ignorant set I never was with in my life . 10 Bear in mind that in the mid-nineteenth century, the Irish, Welsh, Cornish and Scots were just as likely to communicate in their native languages as in English. Prejudice against non-English speakers would have provided another obstacle to egalitarian integration.
    Fanny Davis, ever an eagle-eyed narrator, sketched a more piquant montage of her floating world. On 21 July 1858, six weeks out from home, she sat on deck on a warm, clear night. As she looked around, she saw in one corner two dozen folks singing . In another corner, there was a group talking scandal about everyone , making complaints about certain cabin-mates that would make a cat laugh . In another section of the deck, there were a lot of Scotch girls dancing —one imitating bagpipes—not a one of them with shoes or stockings on . Then there were the Irish. The Irish will be squatting down under the boats talking over everybody’s business but their own and vowing eternal hatred of the English . Gossip, tittle-tattle, innuendo. Cultural kindling for the eternal flame of bigotry.
    Ethnic and sectarian divisions weren’t the only forms of demarcation. Discriminating between types of women based on their sexual conduct, always a favourite cultural pastime, was evident on passenger ships despite the literal loosening of stays. As ships sailed towards the tropics, and temperatures rose, women stripped back their layers of feminine restraints: corsetry was unlaced, hosiery removed. And, liberated from the prying eyes of kin, single women and men indulged in flagrant acts of exhibitionism. On clear nights there was dancing on the poop; in stormy weather there was always a dark corner for a liaison. Of all the places of iniquity my eyes ever beheld , wrote one passenger sailing on the Star of the East in September 1853, an emigrant ship is the worst, men and women packed indiscriminately together, married couples and young girls, and I am sure some of the girls will have cause to remember the STAR OF THE EAST .
    Anne Keane was one Irish lass who may have arrived in Victoria with an unexpected souvenir of her trip. By the time twenty-seven-year-old Anne and partner Martin Diamond played a pivotal role in Ballarat’s history just over a year later, they had already lost a baby.
    Captains and surgeon-superintendents, particularly on government ships, had powers to keep the peace and could punish reprobates. Though women were ostensibly ‘free’, they were expected to conform to acceptable standards of respectable femininity. This was particularly true for the single ladies. On James Menzies’ government-assisted ship, the doctor was fetched to see