Pages from ss Great Britain Passenger Diary, 1874
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Object number1998.066.3
TitlePages from ss Great Britain Passenger Diary, 1874
DescriptionOne sheet containing pages 13-14 of a diary believed to be from an unidentified passenger on the SS Great Britain. It is possible that this diary belonged to someone called George Prengt Hughes, who travelled with his younger brother Charles P Hughes on this voyage in 1874. This would have been the 42nd voyage the ship made- it was travelling from Liverpool to Melbourne on the 4th of June 1974, carrying 601 passengers and 141 crew. The voyage took 57 days, and in these pages the writer remarks on how rare it is to see wildlife during this part of the voyage- ‘as a rule we are favoured by a sight of few living objects in the Tropics while at sea’. He talks about the contrast with the Northern climate at sea, where passengers would see no shortage of whales, and ‘birds are abundant’. However after days of wildlife being few and far between, he writes of dolphins swimming alongside the ship, ‘rising like salmon from the water, in pursuit of flying fish, which were flying in flocks from their huge, rigorous enemies’. The author writes about the variety of seabirds he has seen, ‘from the majestic albatross to the Cape Steirs and pigeons’, and of the birds they begin to encounter as they near Australia, like the ‘Molly hawk and Dobie’. The writer says that on the other side of the tropics, the temperature becomes ‘inconvenient’, and that an awning has been stitched up towards the stern of the ship for the passengers’ protection.
Transcript available.
Production date 1874 - 1874
Object namediary sheet
Object categorypersonal record
Materialpaper
Techniquehand-written
Dimensions
- height: 200 mm
width: 185 mm