When the S.S. Lake Manitoba carried two thousand all-British Barr Colonists across the Atlantic a quarter of a century ago, she didn't exactly cover herself with glory. Her Board of Trade passenger rating was eight hundred odd.
In one cabin for'ard there were packed three hundred human beings--single men; or what practically amounted to the same thing (as a facetious wag whose wife had run off with the milkman put it)--married men travelling without their wives.
A similar cabin aft enclosed a like number of males. Amidships, but a story or two higher up, the steerage accommodation was crowded with unattached females and married people with their younger children. Recently used as a transport in the South African War, the Lake Manitoba had had her decks and holds painted a snowy white, and divided into compartments with gunny sacking. Into numbers of these elastic cubicles as many as six married couples were squeezed.
Privacy was impossible. No one could undress properly. The drinking water was rotten; the food was worse. The sanitary conveniences would have shamed a monkey cage. The snow-white paint on the woodwork turned out to be merely whitewash, and, when the vessel received a smart smack from a wave, large flakes of it fell off along with the dried undercoat of manure.
Up above, the aristocrats travelled first-class. Theirs was the only passenger accommodation the ship really possessed. Nearly everyone aboard could have afforded to travel cabin, but only those whose applications were received first managed to secure the limited number of berths available. The rest--about sixteen hundred of them--put up with the crudest of steerage fare.
For an interesting view of life aboard an emigrant ship, the single men's cabin for'ard was unique. All sorts and conditions of British middle-class homes were represented, and although it was rather a lot of men to cram into one room, it speaks well for British love of law and order to record that only eleven fights, seven incipient mutinies, three riots, and twenty-two violent interviews with Barr, the party's leader, occurred during the voyage.
This cabin was deep down below the water line. When any of the fellows felt that they needed air, they went up on deck for it. Quite right, too. Why should young single men have things carried down to them?
Climbing to the deck for air worked all right for everybody except those who were dying from seasickness, of whom there were about a score. These poor devils stuck in bed throughout the whole of the voyage. Fortunately, the ship crossed in twelve days, so they didn't have to breathe the same air above a million times.
This cabin stretched clean across the boat. It was one of the holds. As previously stated, it was well up in front, where the men got a longer ride for their money--up and down, as well as forward. The "beds" were in tiers of three, with long tables placed with charming thoughtfulness down the aisles, so that the seasick sufferers might obtain a clear view of the grub.
The occupants of the cabin were pretty quiet during the first couple of days out from Liverpool. The band on the dock had played some haunting melodies, and everyone knows how greatly young single men are affected by such things. Besides, there was only an old plank floor separating them from the place where the bilge was stored.
But presently they became more sprightly. Some chap started a little hymn singing, in between two tiers of bunks where a couple of fellows lay dying. It was highly pathetic. One of the invalids, a little, sallow-faced beggar, was in frightful throes; but, in spite of being almost a goner, he revived sufficiently to curse something awful every time the glee singers struck up "Shall We Gather at the River?"
Across in one corner, a gang played ha'penny nap throughout the trip. Bottles of Guinness, like labelled black ninepins, stuck up all round them. Everyone in the cabin smoked, of course; thus any germs propagated by the overcrowding were quickly choked to death.
About half-way along one side of the stateroom, a dozen budding scalp hunters had crucified the effigy of a man--Barr, it was supposed to represent--on the wall of the ship, and were practising knife throwing. Many men wore bowie knives. Indeed, barring bows and arrows and 8-inch howitzers, they had brought almost a complete arsenal aboard. No man who considered himself sane would dream of venturing into the Far West in those days without being thoroughly armed, so why shouldn't a green Englishman protect himself?
In the middle of the cabin, in a sort of island of space--which the authorities had apparently overlooked--an orchestra practised many times daily. Two fiddles, a melodeon, a cornet, and a telescopic harmonium ground out the music.
Those were the days before civilization had sunk into the depravity of jazz. The orchestra dispensed such noble airs as: "Count Your Blessings," "Daddy's on the Engine," and such like popular tunes of the day, interspersed with a few of Lottie Collins' and Moody and Sankey's special hits. Some of the dying men frequently called for encores. These were hardly ever refused.
In another corner, a chap, who several years previously had spent three weeks in Alaska, lectured on prairie farming. His dialect was pure Tyneside. It was hard work for him, particularly during orchestra rehearsals, but he managed quite well in the intervals.
Those who have heard the Tyneside idiom will know it for a rather desperate affair. In the best society, the vowels are supposed to be sung as limpidly as possible, the consonants being thrown in here and there in shovelfuls of gutturals. As no one understood a single word the lecturer said, he was extremely impressive.
Mixed in with these more artistic entertainments were the usual English gymnastic games; boxing and wrestling; miniature rifle practice, and a few real scraps. Time, therefore, didn't really hang. The dying men appeared to be wonderfully bucked.
Numbers of the men had recently been demobilized from the British Army's South African forces, so the language used in course of ordinary conversation was naturally somewhat vivid.
The largeness of the crowd of passengers had apparently taken the steamship company (The Elder-Dempster Company) unawares, their kitchen staff being completely overwhelmed. The Captain soon rectified this, however, by enlisting, in return for a free passage, a number of stewards from the single men's "stateroom." These, not having had much experience in dealing with riots and revolutions, were quite content to stand in the cabin entrance and shy jacketed potatoes, slices of meat, and chunks of plum duff across the heads of the scrambling crowds. Only good all-round cricketers were chosen for stewards; and only first-rate wicket-keepers got plenty to eat.
This far-famed, all-British Colony idea was sired by an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. Isaac M. Barr. Its dam was the pursuit of wealth; grand-dam, adventure; grandsire, the Britisher's intense longing to own a bit of land.
Though a parson, Barr knew a thing or two about business. The more cynical of the passengers aboard the Lake Manitoba, chiefly those from London and the larger cities, had it pretty well reckoned up that if he received commissions--which he was quite entitled to do--from all the interests concerned in supplying the party with things, he would pull down sufficient of "the ready" to enable him to start preaching again.
One chap in the single men's cabin had thrown up a bank manager's berth in one of London's suburbs to try his luck in the Far West. Being clever at figures, he calculated that at only half a sovereign a head from the steamship company, and another from the Canadian Pacific Railway, Barr's perquisites from these sources alone would aggregate two thousand five hundred pounds.
As this rather involved calculation was made, and the result communicated to them after they had enjoyed a magnificent banquet of slices of sour beef, and balls of plum duff whose soggy in'ards had seemingly been shot at with raisins out of a sawn-off shotgun at about two hundred yards, the men promptly flew into a riot. This was one of the disturbances already mentioned.
After its inception, Barr's scheme grew like a toadstool in a hothouse. In a very short time he was inundated with applications from people all over Britain for permission to join his party. Precisely why he did not charter another boat; two, three, a fleet, in fact; or why he refrained from squeezing a few more passengers on to the Lake Manitoba, is not recorded.
Large sums of money were deposited with Barr in London by the members of the party in payment for such things as C.P.R. land; homestead entry fees; bell tents; shares in the community hospital, and in the great co-operative trading company which was to be founded--for the scheme was slightly tinged with that communistic ideal which has for one of its minor aims the coaxing of a rather coy millennium about three centuries nearer.
The emigrants were to be settled in groups corresponding with the localities from which they hailed in Britain. That is to say: Londoners were to be allotted so many townships all to themselves; the people from Nottingham so many; from Yorkshire so many; and so on. Complete freedom of choice was, of course, permitted. For instance, if any poor trusting soul from Lancashire cared to risk his future among the Londoners, or vice versa, there was no rule against it.
It was freely advertised in the Canadian newspapers that the total wealth of the party in specie alone was considerably in excess of one million dollars. It is more than likely this estimate was much too low. Many men brought to Canada with them anything from one to ten thousand pounds, with easy access to more, too, in lots of cases.
On the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and three, the S.S. Lake Manitoba lay in the dock at Liverpool, ready to sail. At last everyone was aboard. Slowly the little liner, with her triple load of human freight, edged away from the quay. Spirits ran high. Cheer followed cheer. Then the band started playing in a haunting, muffled way, "God be with You Till We Meet Again."
The crowd on the quay was suddenly hushed. Women wept. Tears trickled down many a male cheek aboard the boat. Handkerchiefs fluttered, hearts throbbed, and throats filled, as the emigrants stood on the decks, their memories overflowing with the tranquil beauty of dear old England.
But all was well. The weight of the crowds of passengers, and of their profusion of luggage, and dogs, made the tiny boat ride low in the water, but steady. Life belts were noticeably scarce: so were rafts, and lifeboats; but with pocketfuls of money, plenty of armament, and at least three clergymen aboard, the colonists were quite all right should Fate have decided to send the boat to the bottom.
The party was comprised of lawyers, tradesmen, clerks, two or three farmers, commercial travellers, teachers, remittance men, gentlemen (meaning those who were sufficiently wealthy to live without work), ex-varsity men, and artisans. Males predominated. This magnified the attractiveness of even the plainest girls, a situation they curiously enough quickly took advantage of.
