Voyage to Australia 1878
I have come across a hand written journal written by a Mr ASA Whelen, a second-class passenger aboard the iron clipper Hesperides that departed London 27th September 1878 for Australia, arriving in Melbourne 93 days later on 28th December 1878.
The account of the voyage is simple in its telling with often only short entries recounting his meals, tales of card playing, and what time he went to bed. But interspersed with the daily mundanity of occupying oneself for 93 days in the confines of “our not too spacious bedroom (12ft x 6ft) to hold 3 by the bye (the Guv’nor, Arthur and myself)”, I’ve found it a fascinating insight into travel at the end of the nineteenth century – a journey that took the writer to the other side of the world from the temperate climes of England across the stifling equatorial tropics and down into the depths of the roaring forties where they came into close contact with an iceberg.
The joy of a journal transcends time
so over the coming weeks I thought I’d share and reproduce extracts retelling this travelling tale as it occurred 131 years ago.
No related posts.
September 21st, 2009 at 22:00
Always amazes me how small the ships were and how large the journeys!
When you tour a replica, you cannot imagine the conditions they lived and worked under.
September 22nd, 2009 at 01:13
It always astounds me that anyone made it out here. I have a number of convicts in my ancestry and what they had to endure for some really insignificant ‘crimes’ was amazing!
June 1st, 2010 at 00:58
[...] September, to emphasis how a journal transcends time, I started a series on September 27th reproducing journal extracts on the day they had been written 131 years previously recounting the [...]