Mobility, body and space: emigrant voyages to Australia, 1830s–1880s

Abstract

This article uses nineteenth-century migration-themed texts and images as a starting point for investigating the production of various patterns of seaborne mobilities en route to colonial Australia from the 1830s to the 1880s. Within the mobility framework, the floating world of emigrant ships provides a major venue for truthful representations of passengers’ daily practices on board ship in general and maritime historiography in particular. It is argued that the interplay between body and space at different scales enables us to foreground the mobile, therapeutic, and affective dimensions of migration along the lines of class and gender. To this end, the article considers the production of seaborne mobilities within a larger context of maritime culture by engaging with four central thoughts: ship-based mobilities and mobile bodies, bodily motion and spatial mobilities, bodily health and therapeutic mobilities, as well as bodily senses and affective mobilities. These central thoughts, the article further asserts, direct us towards considering how the ship comes to be the prime site for evoking the imagery of mobile Britons, especially with regard to the various ways in which every-day mobilities are intrinsically embodied, practiced and performed through a body in transit.

Keywords:

• Mobility
• body
• space
• Britain
• Australia
• emigrant ship
• maritime historiography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Ship newspapers were handwritten and usually reproduced in print at their destination. Following the custom of satirical journals on land, many ship newspapers adopted a light-hearted and humorous tone to address life at sea and record all matters of general interest. Most ship newspapers were circulated on a weekly basis, in an attempt to entertain, amuse, and relieve boredom during the long journey. Editing and publishing a newspaper aboard a moving ship began with the formation of an editorial committee. A few of the elite cabin passengers met and chose male editors or sub-editors to invite contributions from all passengers. Like shipboard diaries, passengers’ contributions were part of their self-produced writing for organizing feelings and keeping away from monotony or idleness. While the editor has authority over the choice of contributions as preferred narratives on the waves, it, nonetheless, implies his tendency to skew the content and elude the dark side of migration.

2 It was common for ship newspapers to contain medical officers’ reports about passengers’ general health. The Winefred Marvel, for instance, contains sanitary reports detailing the health condition of on-board passengers and the editor’s thanks to Dr. Concanon’s devotion to ‘the bodily health and to the moral and mental elevation of the emigrants’ (Hetherington 1875, 50). This, in part, affords valuable insights into an editor’s alternative role as an authoritative writer for strengthening health care regimes as a propaganda exercise.