Free 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement by Jane Ziegelman

future husband), the focus of our present story.
    Bridget came first, in 1863, and Joseph in 1865, the final year of the American Civil War. As far as we know, both traveled alone, sailing from Liverpool to New York. If they had good weather, the transatlantic voyage took each of them roughly twelve days. Most of that time was spent in the ship’s steerage, a space designed for the transport of cargo, not people. A low-ceilinged deck of six feet or less, steerage was typically divided into three sections: one for single men, another for women, and the third for families. The portholes were the only source of light and fresh air, and during bad weather even they were shut tight. The passengers in steerage, a mix of Irish, English, Scots, and Germans, slept on bare wooden berths six feet long and eighteen inches wide. After 1849, ships sailing from Britain were compelled by law to allot each steerage passenger sixteen square feet of space, a good indication of the crowding that existed before the statute was passed.
    Two or more weeks at sea, confined in tight quarters, posed considerable health risks. Steerage passengers regularly came down with typhus, also called “ship’s fever,” and many died en route. An incubator for disease, the steerage compartment was also a tinder box for the emotions of frightened, drunk, frustrated, and bored travelers of diverse backgrounds, suddenly thrown together. The following travel advice came from a newly landed immigrant named Mary McCarthy, writing back to her family in Ireland:
Take courage and be determined and bold as the first two or three days will be the worst to you and mind whatever happens on board keep your own temper, do not speak angry or hasty. The mildest man has the best chance on board. 2
    Mary also recommends that her family travel with a bottle of whiskey, doling out an occasional glass of it to the ship’s cook and the sailors, as it could do “no harm.” But life in steerage wasn’t all grim. Passengers entertained themselves with card games, singing, music, and dancing. In the evenings, as an accordion player pumped out tunes, Irishwomen danced reels in the aisles. Children clapped to the music, while men drank toasts to the promise of their new lives in America, filling the compartment with a fog of blue tobacco smoke.
    As to the food in steerage, travelers have left us with dramatically conflicting reports. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, passengers were responsible for supplying their own provisions, and for cooking them, too. On the upper deck, in a primitive kitchen known as the steerage galley, they boiled potatoes, oatmeal, salt beef, and water for tea, their cooking pot suspended from a hook over a hot grate. They ate and drank from tin cups and plates, two more items they were required to provide for themselves. (A thin straw mattress, a pot, tin plate, fork, and spoon became known as the “immigrant’s kit.”) Another way for the shipping lines to increase their profit, the bring-your-own system was fraught with problems. The steerage galleys were much too small, and fights erupted as families vied for cooking time. A more serious drawback was that many steerage passengers were simply too poor to provide for themselves and either brought nothing or ran out of food before the ship reached its destination.
    To save the immigrant passenger from starvation and other dangers at sea, statutes were passed in both the United States and Britain to improve and regulate steerage conditions. One result of that effort was that, beginning in 1848, ships were required to furnish each passenger with the following: sixty gallons of water, thirty-five pounds of flour, fifteen pounds of ship’s biscuits, and ten pounds each of wheat flour, oatmeal, rice, salt pork, and peas and beans. It was just enough food to last through the transatlantic journey which, at the time, averaged thirty-five to forty days. The steerage galleys were still mobbed,