ABSTRACT
A man who was much more than bronzed-as he was actually red in the face and neck-gave me the following statement. He had free and jovial manners, but sometimes evinced much feeling, especially when speaking of the emigrant ships. He wore three shirts-a clean one over two which were not perfectly clean-for he could not bear, he said, to show dirty linen. This happened only, however, he told me, when he was "out on the spree," for then he was in the habit of buying a clean white shirt as soon as he wanted "a change," and putting it on over his soiled one, in order to obviate the necessity of carrying his dirty linen about with him; so that by the stratification of his shirts he could always compute the duration of "the lark." He wore only a jacket, and felt inconvenience, when on the spree, in having a dirty shirt to carry about; and to obviate this he adopted the plan I have mentioned:
"I was boatswain of an emigrant ship [to Australia] last voyage. They were Government emigrants we had on board. The ship was 380 tons according to the new mode of measurement, and 500 tons according to the old mode. She had eight able men before the mast, four apprentices, a second mate, steward, cook, first mate, and captain. In addition to these, there were eight supernumeraries. You see, sir, all the Government emigrant and convict ships are obliged to take out four men and a boy to each 100 tons. We were near upon 400 tons burden; so we were obligated to have 16 able seamen and four boys; but, as I told you before, we had only eight able seamen. To make up the deficiency, we shipped eight supernumeraries. These supernumeraries were no sailors at all-not able to go aloft-couldn't put their foot above the shearpole. They were mostly men that the Government had refused to assist to emigrate. The shipping masters had put them on blue jackets, and told them the names of ships to say they had served in, so as to get them a berth. The shipping masters will get them a register. ticket and all; and these are the men who are taken in preference to us, because they go upon nominal wages of a shilling a month. I tell you what it is, sir. I saw to-day half a dozen of these fellows taken instead of six good able-bodied seamen, who were left to walk the streets: that's the candid fact, sir. It's a shameful thing to see the way we are treated. We are not treated like men at all; and what's more, there's no dependence to be placed on us now. If a war was to break out with America, there's thousands of us would go over to the other country. We're worse than the black slaves; they are taken care of, and we are not.
