The Crossing

Tuesday, September 24^th 1850 on the three-mast ship the Charlotte Jane in Mid-Atlantic, off Cape Verde, 17 days out from Plymouth bound to Lyttelton, New Zealand with the Canterbury Pilgrims

‘Thermometer at breakfast at 85 degrees in the cuddy.

Heard that a child had died in the night - it had been sickly before but, strange to say, that the father and mother, though aware of the extreme danger of the child, did not wake anyone or take any means to gain assistance till the morning. It is believed that, not even when it was dead, did they take the trouble of informing the doctor.

After breakfast, the funeral was performed and the body of the poor child, swathed in a Union Jack with a shot at its feet, was plunged into the sea.

At that very moment a huge school of porpoises appeared, playing just abreast of the ship opposite the port hole where the body was lowered down. This was the first appearance of these porpoises, and strange to say, as soon as the body was committed to the deep, they disappeared.

Superstitious people might have made have said that a troop of angels had appeared to bear away the soul of the child through the deep to heaven.

The air is fearfully hot, and the emigrants fear it greatly’.

 

THE CROSSING

 

I needed to know who you were,

The neglected and hidden child,

Borne to paradise with porpoises.

 

Nobody seemed to care.

The ship’s surgeon Dr Barker

Received 10 shillings for

Every passenger safely delivered to Lyttelton

But had to pay back 20 shillings

For every passenger who died.

Economists have a label

For this kind of arrangement –

If you write the script -

It is 'moral hazard'.

 

But there is a name

Crossed out in the Passenger List –

Bridget Maitland, aged 11.

 

It seems that she was travelling

With George and Ann Allan

And their daughter Ann Elizabeth

Aged 9.

 

And that George and Ann’s indifference

Betrayed the fact that she was an orphan

Tagging along as a shadow -

A sometimes servant

A sometimes playmate -

At the ragged sleeves

Of the family of a poor labourer.

 

But how majestic Bridget

That you should be welcomed

To the deep by heavenly creatures,

Following God’s purpose

Across Enchanted Seas

To the Land of Beulah.

 

 

[After reading: ‘The Journal of Edward Ward – Canterbury 1850-51’]