Tom was not spared humiliation either. He was dragged off his chair to be initiated: ‘I was too young to shave, so was only dipped in the boat, but had my tot of grog and was kissed by Mrs Neptune. She had a precious hard beard.’
The ceremony aboard the La Belle Alliance was similar but, according to Ayliff, very intimidating, even for an adult. He described the emotions around him as he too was put through the initiation: ‘All of the royal party looked most frightful, and a lot of the young girls and children, and some of the young chaps, looked somewhat alarmed, and went off between decks to get out of the way.’
As John Ayliff describes it, the shaving implement looked crude and unhygienic – ‘a piece of iron hoop for the razor’ – and after that he was dumped in the lifeboat where as he was plunged in and out of the water bucket after bucket of water was thrown at him. ‘My eyes smarted so dreadfully with the salt water being dashed on them that it was some time before I could get right again.’
He concluded the day’s entry: ‘So passed this day, by a grand ball in the evening in which all the settlers seemed to enjoy themselves. I am certainly glad that I have passed the line, and the razor of Neptune’s barber.’
It would be unnatural if there had not been some serious conflict among a group of British people in such close confinement. The vinegar incident on the Zoroaster, insignificant as the cause of the conflict was, resulted in dangerous consequences for the ‘mutineers’ – expulsion from the ship and the prospect of being marooned on a remote island.
And there were more significant conflicts – some recorded but probably very many more unrecorded. Without doubt, the most notorious occurred aboard the Northampton, observed by Sophia Pigot and Tom Stubbs.
Although she was thrilled by Captain Charlton’s attention and the new friends she had made among the other teenage girls, Sophia was unsettled by the conflict all around her throughout the voyage, in both the domestic and the wider spheres. On 17 February she wrote: ‘Mr and Mrs Clark quarrelled very much – he beat her etc.’ And again: ‘Wed 1st March: Disturbances with Mr Clark.’
Mrs Clark must have sought comfort from the teenager because Sophia wrote: ‘She told me a great deal about it.’
However, the disharmonious chords on board the Northampton came mainly from the Irish settlers and their leader. These settlers, led by the colourful, eccentric architect Thomas Mahoney, were extremely violent and aggressive towards him, each other, the other passengers, the captain and the crew. They kept the Northampton in a state of constant turmoil with their drunken brawls and quarrels. Although Sophia was wrapped up in her own little preoccupations, their disruptive effect on life on board the vessel forced itself on her attention. ‘January 11,’ she wrote, ‘Two men handcuffed for striking the captain.’
‘January 20, a meeting of the gentlemen below, sad disturbance with these Irish people.’
‘Friday 3 February. Great disturbances with the Irish people, sharpening both sides of their knives. Rather frightened. They were threatening to put a sentinel at Mr Mahoney’s cabin door.’
The climax came when Mahoney refused to draw his party’s water ration. When the captain ordered him to perform the task, Mahoney became insolent and abusive. The captain tried to arrest him and a fight took place: some of Mahoney’s men rushed to his aid, the captain called for help and his officers became involved. Mahoney’s supporters resisted for some time but were finally subdued. The Irishmen were put in irons and locked up in the punishment cells.
When they were released, the disruptive behaviour started again. Party leaders Pigot, Stubbs and Dalgairn formed a committee of public safety to try to find a way through.
The first fortnight of March 1820 was a rather unsettled time, as Sophia noted: ‘Monday 6 – Holding consultations about Mr Mahoney … Mr Brown and a number of people ill after drinking at Mr Mahoney’s cabin the other night.’
It wasn’t only Mahoney and his Irish settlers, however. Some of the other leaders on the Northampton seemed to squabble a lot: ‘Saturday 11th – Disturbance on deck between Mr Clark and Mr Elley – fighting. Sunday 12th: Had prayers in our own cabin. A fuss in the cuddy the while. Poor Mr Elley was sent into his own cabin – very sorry for him.’
By the time they arrived at Algoa Bay, ‘Mr Mahoney and Mr Clark speak to no-one but the people forward.’
While party leaders Clark, Brown and Mahoney misbehaved badly, largely due to their nightly drinking, Pigot, Dalgairn and Stubbs behaved as gentlemen were expected to. They maintained a reserve as the other leaders got drunk and fought among themselves and with their settlers.
Thomas Stubbs gave a more comprehensive account than Sophia of one of the incidents involving Mahoney: ‘One morning, just after the deck had been swabbed, the cook called out for the settlers to come fore for their allowance of burgoo [a kind of porridge]. An Irishman … was leaving the caboose with his wooden bowl of burgoo, when the ship gave a pitch and threw the Irishman on his back, and the burgoo on the deck. Seeing what happened, the second mate, a little proud upstart fellow, who wore extravagantly large frills on his shirt front, came up to our Irishman with intention of kicking him. A stout-made settler seeing this, seized the man by the frill of his shirt and shook him as a terrier would a rat. The mate ran aft to the Captain calling out “mutiny.” The Captain immediately called a muster of sailors armed with cutlasses, and placed them across the quarter-deck. All the Irish rushed to the forcastle, some armed with pieces of wood, and some with pieces of iron hoop … The uproar continued for some time longer but eventually, after much trouble, it was arranged that the settler who shook the mate should give himself up.’
Drunkenness, class conflict and boredom may have generated disruption and division but religion, always the great divider, was present and on form as one of humanity’s most divisive forces on some of the ships.
The Brilliant carried the overspill of the huge Sephton party, the majority of whom occupied the whole of the Aurora. Also on board the Brilliant were the smaller Erith and Pringle parties.
Sephton’s party had undergone a leadership change before the ships had set sail. It had originated as a group of dissenters and Wesleyans, led by Richard Wynne, a zealous member of the Great Queen Street Wesleyan Methodist Chapel. He collected more than a hundred families together and they formed themselves into the United Wesleyan Methodist Society, with a committee responsible for the organisation of the party. Having more than a hundred souls, they were entitled, under the terms of the settler project, to take a clergyman with them and, as mentioned, the committee selected Reverend William Shaw, who would bring Wesleyanism to the frontier’s inhabitants, both Europeans and locals.
Wynne’s wife died in October 1819, and Wynne withdrew from the project. He was replaced by Thomas Colling, a builder from Wapping. Colling also stepped down, however, in November. The group then chose Hezekiah Sephton as the new party leader, and although he was deposed within a few months of arriving at their final settlement, a large tract of land between the Bushman’s and Kariega rivers, the party retained his name and, under the democratic approach of the committee that succeeded him, it became one of the most well organised and successful of the settler communities.
Richard Gush – who would later become a frontier legend in the Sixth Frontier War when he single-handedly and peacefully halted what would have been the sacking of Salem, and which would have incurred many deaths – was in charge of Sephton’s settlers on board the Brilliant. Also on board were two religious fanatics, who created unparalleled disharmony during the voyage – not without amusement for onlookers. Their dispute was a farce that ended with jaw-dropping irony. If ever there was a ship alone on a wide ocean that was a microcosm of society at large, it was the Brilliant.