A friend sent me this interesting excerpt from the West Briton on 23rd December 1853: Cheers, Edna - Ottawa >>>>>>>>>> DEATH ON THE ATLANTIC. The ravages of disease among the emigrant passengers, who cross the Atlantic at this season, are frightful, and almost rival the horrors of the famous "middle passage." Nearly every ship that arrives at New York reports a large loss of living cargo, averaging from twenty to thirty per cent, of all the souls on board. There is no doubt, as we learn from the physicians at Quarantine, that these deaths are mostly occasioned by the cholera, but we think that there can be as little doubt that the disease is generated by the ill-condition of our emigrant vessels. The mode of crowding human beings of both sexes and all ages promiscuously like animals destined for market, between the decks of emigrant ships, without ventilation, without sufficient water, without proper food, or beds, or the necessary care, amid filth and stenches accumulating from the beginning to the end of the voyage, and with the weakness caused by scanty diet and sea-sickness to predispose and prepare for fever the whole wretched mass, - all this is a disgrace to our progressive civilisation and to the nineteenth century, and it is one, too, which America has to pay for dearly in the end. A writer in the New York Tribune, describing a Liverpool ship in which he was a passenger, says that it was impossible to get anything cooked with any degree of cleanliness, or even cooked at all, so that women with families of young children often had to wait several hours each morning before they could procure a morsel of food to appease the hunger of their exhausted and fevered little ones, gives us the following revolting picture:- One of the most vitally important requisites on the emigrant ship are clean and commodious water-closets. On board this ship these necessaries were situated on each side of the forward hatchway, very near to the cooking galleys. They had just been erected by the ship's carpenter, and were composed of rough pine boards. They were ranged three together on each side of the deck, one being appropriated to the use of female, the other to the male passengers. They were about twenty inches in width and five feet in height. The interior of each consisted of a single crossbar, and a wooden shoot leading out through the bulwarks. So ill-adapted and incommodious were these places that in rough weather, or when the ship was rolling, the inmates were often thrown through the frail door, and precipitated upon the deck. The doors would thus get knocked off their hinges, and the carpenter would let them stay knocked off. It was almost impossible to escape defilements in their places, even with all the advantages of the most favourable weather. There was no supply of water to keep the channels clean, and every time a wave broke against the ship's side, or she plunged, the accumulated filth would be washed out upon deck. This often occurred when there were several of these places occupied, and the inmates presented the most pitiable spectacles. The stench at all times emitted from these places was not unlike that which would arise from two laden night-carts anchored on each side of the deck. So totally unfit were these houses for the use for which they were designed, that even the most reckless and vermin-crawling passenger entered them with loathing. The case of the male passengers is distressing, but that of the females were wretched beyond description. The effluvia arising from these places, together with their general repulsiveness, is undoubtedly a pregnant cause of much of the disease which prevails upon emigrant ships." With such facts before us, the wonder is not that cholera and ship-fever destroy thirty per cent of the emigrants, but that so many escape. The same kind of miscalled accommodation on land would breed a contagion, and what they must be their effects on ship-board, where, under the most favourable circumstances, the condition is sufficiently disagreeable and unwholesome?