How am I to do this? Can I pull off a fictional account of a sea journey that lasted one hundred and six days and included these two young women, my ancestors?
I want to get under the skin and into the lives of Brina and Esther. The only way possible is through words, of course, a good task for someone who loves them so much.
I have some historical records about the Travancore but, again, the generalisations don't seem to fit. These girls are not named or described in these records. Instead, the dominant group holds the focus, the Irish and English girls escaping poverty and a dead end and setting off to make good in a new place. To build up their chances of doing well in the life stakes.
I've attended a funeral or two, but over the period of my life there have only been a few deaths on this side of my family. Not bad for nearly forty years. Great grandmother, grandmother, great aunt, aunt, cousin. And at each of these occassions, we all get together and see each other and how alike we are. Faces in repose, or in deep grief; accentuated, sharper than usual. When you recognise your own features in multiple others, people you have come to believe you have nothing in common with, seeing your nose on all of those other faces, the thickening ankles that become positively elephantine at middle age.
All of this attention to coupling, the questions at the wake afterwards, follow up telephone calls to find out about these privacies. Nothing changes. The books I read of my forebears arriving in this colony are filled with the information of unions, of entwining families and blood.
The odd ways that we document the progression of our lives.
It must have been important, even crucial, for Brina and Esther to find men to be with when they arrived at this destination. But I am jumping ahead of myself now. I still need to get them here. And I can only do this with the only means available to me, my gift of words.
The opportunism of a colony, any colony, selecting what it needs in the form of human traffic. Making choices and filling in gaps with people. Firstly, the virtuousness of being the only colony in Australia not to accept convicts and then, in desperation, taking a better class of convict: petty crims and professional failures. Then the call to liberate poor Irish and English girls from the squalour of their limitations. And then the selecting that individual families managed about Catholic girls and Protestant ones; the impossibility of accepting a Catholic girl into your family.
The very nature of a colony a million miles from anywhere else gives rise to it becoming a refuge, a hiding place for people escaping something somewhere else. For generations Perth girls have been told by their parents (and probably sensible aunts) to beware of men from the East or even further afield. To avoid confidence men, of strangers to this hometown. They must be escaping a dark splotch in a grimy past to want to come this far, to a place they don't belong.You can take this idea right back to the first white settlers here: certainly the convicts didn't have much of a choice, but many of them, once given their ticket-of-leave, didn't allow wives and children back in England to follow them out here, despite the assistance provided by the authorities in the interests of family values.
But I'm still in avoidance mode. I have to write these women into my narrative. How? I haven't developed the skills of a historian, and there seems not to be enough evidence anyway: that I already know. So, I'll write it as a granddaughter, I'll project a voice, invent a voice through my imagination and this scant evidence I have found. There are, miraculously, remaining shipboard diaries and accounts by working class people of that jouney from England to Australia in the middle of the nineteenth century, so there is a genre to refer to, a model for me.
From Plymouth on the
30th September 1852
Brina and Esther Israel
May God Preserve
Them and
Keep Us From Evil
Journal of Brina Israel, a passenger of the Travancore, who was born on the 15th April 1833 and is now about to emigrate to Australia with her sister Esther in search of a new life for both of us. Both being the daughters of Samson Israel and Rachel Israel of Gray's Inn Lane, London, and the sisters of Abraham and Hannah Israel. I have never kept a journal before but I can write well. I have only one book to take on my journey to read, the Saturday Magazine.
30 Sept Weighed anchor at halfpast four set sail at six Oclock. This is the start of our adventure to the New World. A hard and sad journey, leaving our own life behind. Father still did not know when we joined the ship about Esther's baby. We have spared him, and Abraham, the shame of her downfall. And broken his heart that we have gone so far away for our new home. It is for me to protect her now and to make what we can of our chances in Australia. I will admit to some fear about what is before me. I do not know honestly what I will find in this new country. And with a baby to care for too.
1 Oct We were all rather sick last night on our first night at sea. We are living in a large dormitory with bunks side by side no privacy just curtains in front of our beds and then our eating tables in the middle space. Its all very cramped and close so you can hear everything thappening in beds. Esther was terribly sick all night I hope she can calm down soon because today she is still looking pale and suffering so. The water closets are few and a little...
We are all the single girls together. With the single men at the front of the ship and the married people between us. Already I can see that the Captain and Matron and other working people see it as their duty to keep the men and girls apart . They guard us like hawks and don't let us even talk to the men. What would happen if we did? No one can tell yet that Esther is carrying child. She has hidden this so well for all of these six months. We have heard about the terrible things that have gone on with other ships to Australia - about fights between men for one girl, about the favours promised by captains and sailors to girls about what could be done when they arrived in Fremantle, about jobs and ways that men can make it easier. Well, I just want us to get there and for Esther's baby to be born without fuss.
Dear Mother
I am already sad to be leaving you and Father and Abraham and Hannah. and we have had only three nights away from home and My own dear family. Setting out on this long journey makes me afraid. What about if we don't like this new place or if we cannot get work. I am afraid that it will be frightful, full of brutes. Already the girls on this boat are rougher than me and Esther. Irish girls who have to fight hard about everything. They are poor things, afraid too but showing it by protesting about everything. Some of these girls have been fighting each other at night. I'm not sure where they get the spririts for it. We are suffering, mostly Esther, with our seasickness and it is so hard there is never any rest from that rocking and the smells all held down together. The water closets are few and because they are connected to the outside of the boat it means that when the sea is rough water comes back in through the pipes and drenches the poor user of the convenience. Some big swells send water right through the underdeck, wetting everything.
Please send my love and Esther's to all of you. I will keep writing to you over the journey and send these letters to you when we reach Fremantle. It will be sad to be apart from you on your birthday, but I will be thinking always of my dear family and wishing you well.
With fond love
Brina
10 Oct Things have been terrible for us on this boat with Esther's sickness. I finally had to tell the Surgeon that she was carrying child. He had already known this he said but there was nothing to be done for her. The diarrohea started two days ago after she ate some probably spoiled meat, her first meal for days. The Surgeon gave her the chalk remedy and it had certainly stopped the problem and bound her up. He tells us that she is about - weeks gone and will in all likelihood deliver her baby before we arrive in Fremantle. I suppose I always knew that but was hoping that the timing might be different, that we could get to our destination first. My poor little sister is so afraid of this event and, I suppose I must admit, so am I.
(not yet completed...)