For first class passengers the splendid Blackwall frigates of Green, Money Wigram and Duncan Dunbar, and the beautiful little clippers of the Aberdeen White Star Line, provided excellent accommodation and a comfortable and safe, if not a particularly fast, passage. But the ordinary steerage passenger had to content himself as a rule with a ship that was little better than a hermetically sealed box: one as deep as it was long, with clumsy square bows and stern, with ill-cut ill-set sails—its standing rigging of hemp a mass of long splices; and with a promenade deck no longer than the traditional two steps and overboard. These Colonial wagons were navigated by rum-soaked, illiterate, bear-like officers, who could not work out the ordinary meridian observation with any degree of accuracy, and either trusted to dead reckoning or a blackboard held up by a passing ship for their longitude; whilst they were worked by the typically slow-footed, ever-grousing Merchant Jack of the past two centuries. Report on Steerage Conditions in 1844. Nearly everyone has read of the horror of the convict ships, but the following report of steerage conditions in 1844 plainly shows that in many respects the emigrant’s lot was every bit as hard and revolting: “It was scarcely possible to induce the passengers to sweep the decks after their meals or to be decent in respect to the common wants of nature; in many cases, in bad weather, they would not go on deck, their health suffered so much that their strength was gone, and they had not the power to help themselves. Hence the between decks were like a loathsome dungeon. When hatchways were opened, under which the people were stowed, the steam rose and the stench was like that from a pen of pigs. The few beds they had were in a dreadful state, for the straw, once wet with sea water, soon rotted, besides which they used the between decks for all sorts of filthy purposes. Whenever vessels put back from distress, all these miseries and sufferings were exhibited in the most aggravated form. In one case it appeared that, the vessel having experienced rough weather, the people were unable to go on deck and cook their provisions: the strongest maintained the upper hand over the weakest, and it was even said that there were women who died of starvation. At that time the passengers were expected to cook for themselves and from their being unable to do this the greatest suffering arose. It was naturally at the commencement of the voyage that this system produced its worst effects, for the first days were those in which the people suffered most from sea-sickness and under the prostration of body thereby induced were wholly incapacitated from cooking. Thus though provisions might be abundant enough, the passengers would be half-starved.” This terrible report was given before a Parliamentary Committee. A Shipping Notice of 1845.