it was a gray threatening morning when i came on deck. the boys of our party came up one by one, and were a very ill-pleased lot indeed when they found that if they wished to wash even their faces and hands they must use the salt water in the scullery-rooms forward, or else be content with half a tin cupful of drinking-water, for at the drinking-water taps a sailor was constantly stationed to prevent any one from taking more than was enough for drinking. in a short while, though, they learned to go often for a drink during the day, and save what they did not want in empty wine-bottles, unused flask-buckets, etc., and with care they secured enough for facial ablutions each morning. as for those fellow-passengers who were not overfond of washing, the scarcity of water was seized as an excuse for not washing at all.

about eight o’clock the steerage cooks and stewards served “biscuits” and coffee. the latter was what might be expected. the first named was a disk of dough, three quarters of an inch thick, and a hand’s length broad. it was as hard as a landlord’s heart, and as tasteless as a bit of rag carpet. the worst of it was that about half the biscuits were moldy. about some 3,000 were served out, and for the next half hour disks went sailing high in the air over the sides and into the sea. three times on the voyage were the biscuits moldy: considered from the egan war department commissary standpoint that is not bad.

mid-voyage scenes

mora—syrian jews—prostrated by the swell—children escaping seasickness

185i gathered our party in the lee of no. 2 hatch, and we breakfasted on food from the store brought from home, eked out with the coffee and the two sound biscuits we received. we used a corkscrew to separate the biscuit into edible fragments.

after breakfast the crowds on deck took to mirth and song. mouth-organs, tambourines, and accordions were produced, and it became evident that it would take a great deal to long repress the resilient italian spirit. before an hour had passed every man who had a set of lotto cards and numbered disks had started a game in some corner sheltered from the wind. a real gulf of lyons blow was coming on slowly, and i knew a few hours would see an end of the merriment. so far the ship was as steady as a dead man’s stare.

the dinner-bell rang, and the crowd, since it was happy, very, very hungry, and not at all sea-wise, ate to repletion of the fare, which was about the same as that of supper the night before, only being ladled out with more care. i warned our people that since they were where they were, and not engaged in their usual toil and exercise, and since it was likely to be rough, they should not eat very much. all obeyed except camela, concetta, ina, and little nastasia. they ate till the big pan was empty.

after the meal ina quizzed me as to why the ship floated.

“what does it sit on while it runs along?”

“the water.”

“just water? no rails?”

“no. it is water and nothing else for half a mile down.”

186she thought soberly a minute, and then her big eyes brightened.

“oh, i know why there are so many children on the ship. if they were all big folks they would be so heavy they would make it sink, wouldn’t they?”

in an hour the sea increased from a small jubble to a short swell, and the crowds on deck began to grow silent. as my wife and i walked about watching faces growing pale, it was a study indeed. those who have known the first throes of seasickness will understand why these poor people grew sorely afraid. if it had not been for the jesting of those who had crossed before, or who were inured to a reeling deck, they would have been almost panic-stricken. our party, all except nunzio giunta, my wife, and myself, wilted before the wave.

in fifteen minutes two thirds of the crowd had hurried below, and the other third were a sight to behold. i made camela and concetta, who were deathly sick as a result of their over-indulgence at dinner, stay up in the rushing air until both were unable to hold up their heads. concetta’s heart-action was very bad, and it seemed best to get her to bed, so nunzio giunta shouldered one and i the other, and though the ship was rolling savagely by this time we managed to get them aft and below. as i came back after ina, she was crying beside antonio, who was very sick indeed.

“what is the matter, ina?” i said.

“o, uncle berto, i’m all sicked, and i’m going to die, ‘n’ they’ll throw me overboard, ‘n’ i’ll never see giuseppe” [her father].

for the emigrants it was a frightful afternoon, and the compartments below and the deck above were in a condition that is beyond the scope of any tale.

187at supper time about one sixth of the crowd lined up to get rations. so many of the capo di rancio phalanx were sick that nearly all of those who did draw rations did it on borrowed tickets. i saw one man get the full portion for six. the others of his group were unable to touch a mouthful, so he sat down in a corner out of the wind and ate every particle. it was a gastronomic feat worthy of record.

the worst feature of this stormy afternoon was that the ship’s officers chose it as the time to deliver to the emigrants the passports which had been taken from them for inspection by the police in the capitaneria at naples. it was also made the occasion of the “counting of noses,” when it was made sure that caterina fancetti no. 214, and giovanni masuolo no. 468, etc., were duly aboard. since the united states authorities exact a fine of $200 from any ship which delivers less emigrants to the ellis island or other port authorities than the ship’s manifest shows to have been aboard, the ship’s people take great care that for every number and name they have on the manifest there is an emigrant to deliver.

this would have been all well and proper the next day, for instance, but this afternoon one half of the steerage passengers were so wretchedly sick that it was nothing short of cruelty to compel them to get up out of their beds and come up on deck, where they were passed in line before the officers, and the passports were delivered as names and numbers were answered and checked off.

nunzio giunta, who had no qualm of seasickness, attended to getting antonio and the men and boys up, while i went below for the women. they were in a condition that was truly pitiable. concetta’s white 188face had a purple tinge in it, and she lay gasping for breath; her heart-action really dangerous. camela could scarcely lift her head. the steerage stewards in their dirt-smeared working rigs were in the compartment, pushing, shoving, jerking, and cursing the women and children to get them out and up the companion-way. the result of their efforts was to clear the place of those who were not too sick to go readily, but the large number that remained in bed were not given any great length of respite. one of the stewards came around with a stick, a piece of pine box, rapped on the sides of the bunk, and poked them with it, and soon they were herded at the foot of the steps, where the greater number of them sank down in a heap, unable to attempt to force their way up through those who had dropped down on the stairs. my wife and i contrived to get camela and concetta up the companion-way. the others were able to help themselves. in the alley-way we found a state of things of which it is as revolting to write as it is to read. there was not a spot on which it was fit to step, yet here was jammed a mass of sick women and children, many of them sunk down against the wall. the officers were not yet through with the people coming up from the next compartment forward, and so two sailors were guarding the door to prevent any more women coming out. i contrived to work concetta through to the door, and just outside the portal, in order that she might get the air, and in so doing placed some ten feet between my wife and myself.

just then there came along one of the steerage cooks, bearing a big can of supplies from the storeroom. there was no room for him to pass in the alley-way. he cried out in german for the people to 189make way for him, but of course they did not understand, and were too closely packed to do so even if they had. he was a big fellow of a very brutal type, and when he found that the path was not cleared he turned his shoulder, drew back, and drove his shoulder into the mass of women and children. i saw what he was going to do, but could not reach him. women with babies in their arms, children deep down in the press of their elders, were knocked back in a heap. one of the women he struck was my wife. quick as a flash, she recovered herself and drove a blow straight from the shoulder, landing under his left ear. one of the sailors from the outside started in, but i blocked him. a more surprised man than that steerage cook it would be difficult to imagine. he went on about his business very meekly. the women around gazed at my wife in awe, and one of them asked camela later what manner of woman she was to imperil her chances for admission to the united states by striking one in authority.

we had chosen the prinzessin irene because she is the largest and best emigrant-carrying ship in the trade, and the line to which she belongs stands toward the front among the others in its treatment of the third-class passengers. people who have crossed many times and know all the ins and outs of steerage travel prefer the lahn or the prinzessin irene, so that we knew we should find the minimum of abuse in her. what must the conditions be in ships in the northern trade and in the cheaper ships running from mediterranean ports. almost the only time that the third-class people were treated as passengers was at the time of planking down their 200 lire. the men of the crew were inclined to treat them as inferior beings, to be 190knocked and pushed about, and i regret to say they took their cue from their immediate superiors.

the third day of the voyage was sunday, and the weather was improving. the seasick people began to think life worth clinging to. the capo di rancio crowd at dinner was nearly the full size. my wife looked once at the mixture in the big pan and then turned away. though i knew what the matter was i asked her.

“i was just thinking how far, how very far it is to martin’s,” she said with a tremble in her voice.

knowing full well that there are always secret channels on board a ship for the getting of food if one has money, i had been trying every steward, cook, page, etc., i could corner, and offering ridiculous prices for something to eat. not that the food for the steerage was so bad we could not eat it. we had been eating it, and we expected to continue to eat it; but we wanted a supply to fill in with on those occasions when it was not what we wanted. when i sailed as a member of the crew in ships of the hamburg-american and american lines, a very good source of revenue to the cooks and stewards was the secret sale of food to the third-class passengers who had money. on the lahn we had been able to buy everything we wished. the trouble on the prinzessin irene on this voyage was that the inspector was aboard. at last, however, i found a petty officer who had a cabin down the alley-way, and i “persuaded” him. the result was a sudden and gracious increase in our comforts in all that one could expect in the steerage. the only drawback was the necessity for extreme care in coming and going.

half a dozen races on common ground—his brothcup—the immigrant madonna

in the sunday afternoon chatting around deck, where 191the people sat on the hatches, the deck, the winches, in fact, anywhere they could get, there being no place in the entire steerage section that was distinctly intended for sitting down, i found numbers of people who had squeezed through the examination at naples by little hooks and crooks.

monday morning we were nearing gibraltar. the peaked rock rose up out of the clouds in the west nearly an hour before we slid around europa point and came to anchor with the fortress frowning upon us and british warships lying all about. the tender of the company steamed out at once, bringing passengers and mail, and into the steerage there came quite a number of spaniards, portuguese, a moor or two, etc. the bumboat-men swarmed about the ship on both sides, and came up and over the rail like monkeys, hauling up stuff from their boats in baskets.

by the knuckles of mars! what a joy to get good dutch, havana, and egyptian tobacco once more. in italy the government so monopolizes the sale of tobacco that the demand for good cigars and pipe tobacco is very slight; therefore to find anything fit to smoke in a strange city is like hunting up lost heirs. when one does get a good havana cigar in rome it is as dry as an undertaker’s eye.

in addition to tobacco we laid in here a good supply of fruit and nuts, and if it had not been for our very limited baggage could have driven some fine bargains in smuggled goods.

while we lay there taking in the last lighter-loads of freight, the hatches were open and the crew at work on deck, so that, with all the emigrants up from the compartments to see the sights, the space forward of the hurricane deck was one seething, jostling mass of 192people. i improved the opportunity to get my kodak out while the sun was bright and the ship still, and had climbed up on a refrigerator by the forward rail of the hurricane deck, and with my camera hidden was waiting my chance to get a group without having them all looking at the lens. i had given out my occupation as photographer to explain to the ship’s people and my fellow-passengers my possession and use of a camera. they are not often seen in the steerage. as i stood there two men and two women from among the first-class passengers came by and paused at the rail to look down on the steerage crowd. the one man, a well-fed elderly person, i have since ascertained is an influential western banker and politician. one woman is his wife, the other woman a friend of the first, while the other man is an architect of some repute.

said mrs. banker: “dear me, just see all those children. what dirty little imps they are.”

a tin-cupful of drinking-water to cleanse a family of faces!

answered mrs. banker’s friend: “oh, terrible to think of admitting such people wholesale into the united states. just look at the slovenly dresses of those women, wrinkled and dirty—ugh.”

sleeping in one’s skirts does not improve their freshness!

“yes, yes,” observed the architect, “there ought to be a stop put to it: they are a menace to our civilization.”

his grandfather came over to montreal in the coop of a french sailing-ship about 1840.

“these italians are the worst of the lot. they are a dangerous element. stick a knife in you in a minute. look at that villainous-looking fellow standing right here on this box, smoking a cigar.”

193the wise and superior four turned their eyes on me, for it was i the banker meant. he went on.

“there is a fair sample of your mafia member. criminal? why, criminal instinct is written in every line of his head and face. see the bravado in the way he holds his shoulders and the nasty look in his uneasy eyes. i’ll bet he has a bad record a yard long behind him in italy, and he will double the length of it in america. by george, i should hate to meet that man at night in a lonesome spot.”

i could not resist the temptation. i stepped over to the other end of the box, within a few feet of him, looked up, and said:

“pardon me; but you are one of the fools who are not safe from their own errors, even in a daylight throng.”

at noon i had an opportunity for which i had been waiting: fine, high sunlight on a dinner crowd, and the purser in charge.

this man was a huge fellow, tall and heavy, as powerful as an ox, and one would have thought the two silver stripes on his sleeve were the decorations of a czar. at every meal, when he superintended the ladling out to the capo di rancio corps and their helpers, he had taken upon himself the handling of the crowd. he had no set system of lining them up as the men on the lahn had, but would pick out groups of three and four as the fancy occurred to him and pass them on to the servers, pouring forth a flood of directions, commands, and oaths in german which of course no one but his own men understood. his use of italian seemed to be limited to “avanti! avanti!” which seemed to mean to him, “hurry up!” “come on!” “stand back there!” “let me pass!” “that is enough!” “come back here!” “don’t push!”—and forty other things. 194the crowd in the rear always pushed the front ranks up nearer the entrance to the “lane of food,” as the italians dubbed it, and this seemed to irritate the czar immeasurably. forgetting that it was all the fault of his lack of system and constant change of method, he would charge into the press like an angry bull, and clear a lane through them by hurling his own huge bulk into the mass of human beings.

the unfortunate feature of this was that the italians, with their natural deference, allowed the women and children who were doing capo di rancio duty to have the foremost places. i had seen him hurl about women with babies in their arms, and children clinging to their skirts, as if they were mere bundles of rags, and i determined that he should be reckoned with, and, as evidence, sought a photograph of one of his charges in the very act.

taking a position on the top after rail of the fo’c’s’le head on the port side, i set the shutter at one fifteenth of a second and gave the diaphragm a sixteen opening. one of the pictures i took, which is herewith reproduced, tells its own story.

as we sailed away from gibraltar on a smooth sea, the steerage, well-fed on bumboat delicacies, gathered on the main deck and fo’c’s’le head, and games of lotto, cards, and mora, the guessing game, were soon in progress on every hand. here and there groups were singing or struggling with a few simple sentences in english. gaetano mullura and several of the boys were gathered about my wife, and she was teaching them how to count money and ask for something to eat, two of the essentials in america. gaetano and felicio pulejo saved one sentence mass of new information: “give me some bread, please,”—but lost the “some,” the “please,” and the expression in the shuffle. all during the voyage they went about observing to their admiring fellow-passengers:

life aboard the prinzessin irene

men’s sleeping-quarters—ladling out food—the purser hurling passengers about—on the fo’c’s’l-head

195“gifa me bret,” or “gifa me meat.”

there were scores of musical instruments among the steerage people, and an impromptu band was gotten up. it might have been worse.

the next morning all the steerage passengers were sent below after breakfast, and allowed to stay for two hours in the reeking crowded compartments, while the health inspection was made by the ship’s doctor as prescribed by law. the doctor and an officer stood by each companion-way in turn, and as the men and boys, then the women and children, poured up, a steward punched their health tickets, the same which bore the name, ship’s manifest number, vaccination stamp, and sheet of manifest letter. it was the second time this was done, and we had been four days at sea.

the next day was very rough, and the following one a beautiful season in which we spent the greater portion of the time watching the picturesque azores as we glided along so close to the shores that the people at their work in the vineyards and gardens were very plainly seen. all about were little fishing-boats with half-naked boatmen who stood up and shouted to us. there was another medical inspection that day.

the next day, the 9th of october, marked a heavy gale, and, despite the size of the ship, quite a bit of water came aboard. the decks were almost deserted, and wherever the seasick women and children were gathered they were for the most part prostrated on the planks. below decks there were music and song close by where fellow-passengers were in terrible suffering from vaccination and seasickness. fortunately the 196high wind ventilated the compartments sufficiently to make them bearable. i found my left arm beginning to swell and throb, and by midnight it was in very bad condition. the little trick of rubbing off the virus in naples had failed to work, because i was so anxious to get a photograph that i had done it carelessly.

in my talks with the men below, this day, i found a man who has two wives, one in italy and one in america, and did not seem to consider any very great harm done. he looked at the matter from no standpoint of sentiment, merely from one that was utterly practical. in investigations since that time i have found that there are many italians in america who have wives and families on both sides of the water, and if there are many italians there are more jews and germans.

i also found a man who lives in pittsburg, who had just been home to messina to get himself a wife. his family sent him one from home, but he went down to ellis island to meet her, and was informed that he must marry her then and there before she could be admitted. since the photograph of her that had been sent him for approval was taken when she was fourteen, and she had changed very much at twenty, he fled the place and allowed the ellis island authorities to deport her. now he had gone home and married her younger sister. he is employed by the pennsylvania railroad on a section job at $45 a month and perquisites, and had arranged while in messina for ten men to leave on the liguria, the next ship sailing. they were “recommended” to friends in pittsburg, but he had paid their fare and had promised them work. he had been twelve years in the country. thus is the contract-labor law evaded.

some time this day guiseppe rota had stolen from 197him seventy lire, money which it was most desirable for him to have on entering the united states, as proving him not likely to become a public charge, and he was wild with the fear of being sent back. i assured him that i would take care of him, but from that hour he followed me everywhere i went, like a big newfoundland dog, and until the moment i delivered him into the hands of his friends in new jersey he was a most unhappy mortal.

the night was extremely stormy, and the tons of water that fell on deck shook the ship so much that few of the emigrants slept. a priest who was voyaging in the steerage in mufti sat up with a group of friends in a corner, praying, and all the men of our party alternately moaned and prayed. the pain in my arm inspired me to anything but words indicative of a religious state of mind.

about two o’clock the italian commissario, the naval surgeon, came down and made an inspection. he found five men very sick in one corner, and discovered a drain there which a lazy steward had allowed to become choked. the corner was worse than a pigpen, and some of the things that commissario said and did raised him higher in my esteem than ever.

in the morning i was myself in such a state that i made my way down at ten o’clock to the hospital, the companion-way of which lay just abaft that leading to the women’s compartment. there the italian commissario had over fifty sick men, women, and children awaiting his care. i waited till the last, in order to observe the manner of handling the patients. it was expeditious, thorough, and gentle, and all of the patients whom i questioned later said that the german doctor was not to be compared with dr. piazza.