Free The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka by Clare Wright Page A

Swan’s ship was lodged firmly in the dead calm of the intertropical convergence zone—otherwise known as the doldrums. We can never get a night’s rest for the heat , she groused. The thermometer gauged an astonishing 108 degrees (42 degrees Celsius). With no breeze and no movement, the passengers were taking it in turns to row out to sea. Some ladies ventured out , tattled Jane, so that you may judge what sort of day it was! Strange days indeed. Fanny Davis, also stuck in the doldrums, was finding things most peculiar too. She could report that it was very hot , and they were almost completely becalmed. An awning had been rigged up on the deck for the ladies, but many did not use it. The sun begins to turn the colour of our skins , wrote Fanny, we shall all be black soon . The MARCO POLO CHRONICLE reported the same phenomenon: fair faces brown rapidly . What would James Hopkins have thought of this display of scorched flesh? Upon reaching the tropics, he was astonished to discover that the ladies from the First Cabin had nothing upon their heads . For sixteen-year-old Sarah Ann Raws, sailing on the Bloomer in 1854, reaching the tropics was a revelation. Although she and her brother could scarcely sleep in our beds for the heat , Sarah Ann delighted in lying on top of her mattress with only a thin sheet as cover, sweat rolling off our faces , sans stockings. 13 And it would have been an unearthly moment indeed when, traversing the Tropic of Cancer, Frances Pierson was asked by her dinner companions to carve the dolphin.

    All the mashing up and breaking down was but a prelude to the foremost conceptual navigation: crossing the line. The line-crossing ceremony, steeped in maritime tradition and still practised today, is a customary initiation rite celebrating a sailor’s first crossing of the equator and welcoming him into the Kingdom of Neptune. There is often an appearance by Neptune (Poseidon) and his wife, Amphitrite, a pantomime that provides an opportunity for sailors to compete for the accolade of being ugly enough to go in drag. The celebration is a ritual of reversal in which the inexperienced crew are permitted to take over the ship from the officers. If the full traditional fiasco is played out, a transition is made from the established order of the captain’s regime to the controlled mayhem of the Pollywog Revolt, followed by a return to order as the ‘Wogs’ pass certain physical tests and earn their right to enlistment in Neptune’s realm. Though the line-crossing ceremony is still honoured today, some of the more violent forms of ‘testing’—such as beatings and sodomy—have been outlawed.
    On immigrant ships, the line-crossing ceremony was practised as a rite of theatrical observance rather than brute harassment. Many journal-writers noted some aspect of the colourful proceedings. It took most ships at least five weeks to reach the equator, but a slow passage through the doldrums could delay that milestone by a month. Crossing the line was a symbolic mid-point in the journey, and crews and passengers alike enjoyed marking the occasion. On Sarah Hanmer’s ship the Lady Flora , there was a Grand Procession . Neptune and his wife were drawn in a car with attendants dressed in unique costumes, carrying tridents and accompanied by dolphins. The event concluded with a hornpipe, much drinking, fist fights and squabbling, as occurs on most days . On James Menzies’ ship, passengers were included in the ritual. Neptune hailed the ship , he recounted, the water began to fly about, a great many got a wetting as all who went on deck copped a bucketing. What came next was strictly for the sailors. Lathered with tar and muck, their heads shaved, they were festooned in pills and wigs and fine gowns. As the passengers looking on in delight knew by now, crossing the invisible lines of conformity, propriety and erstwhile identity could take many guises.
    During those first