Wandrahm inquiry

Wandrahm inquiry

The little family, now without baby Carl, arrived in Moreton Bay on 13th January 1866.  Despite their long journey, they were unable to disembark because the government doctor found illness, including typhus, on board and the ship was to be quarantined at Dunwich on Stradbroke Island.  However, because a previous German migrant ship, the La Rochelle, was also quarantined there, the Wandrahm was towed to Dunwich and the passengers had to remain on board until tents could be provided to accommodate them!

At the end of January, the healthy passengers were allowed to leave the ship and were landed on Bird Island (the red dot on the map, now only a sandbar) and camped there for some weeks

Bird Island as it was in 1990

It may have seemed to them initially a tropical paradise (the island was much bigger then). 

However, four of the men tragically drowned that month while trying to paddle a log for firewood to their camp.  (Brisbane Courier 30/01/1866)

When the passengers were finally permitted to go ashore in February, the Central Immigration Board conducted an inquiry between February and April into conditions on both the La Rochelle and the Wandrahm and the huge number of deaths that occurred on both vessels.  Reports in the Brisbane Courier and the Queenslander make fascinating reading, not only for the descriptions of conditions on board, but also for the insights they provide about attitudes of the day to social class, race, medical care and diet.

Even well-run voyages would be regarded today as nightmarish.  All assisted immigrants, and most of those paying their own fares, travelled in steerage, a low-ceilinged space beneath the main deck. This was divided into three sections, separated by bulkheads: single men and youths at one end; married couples and young children in the centre section; and single women at the other end. In each section, the accommodation consisted of a double tier of bunks on each side and a long table with fixed forms down the centre. Commonly, the bunks were three feet wide and were shared by two people. It was cramped and noisy, and in the tropics it was stifling. There was little privacy. Because poor emigrants, and certainly our family was among them,  had been accustomed to great hardship, they were able to tolerate conditions on the voyage out that today seem intolerable.

 

  

An extract from the passenger list of the Wandrahm showing the Pflugradts

The Inquiry:




The Chairman of the Board stated the main complaints brought by the passengers were:

-That the water and provisions were bad and deficient in quantity; that the weights and measures used in weighing them out were short; that the passengers when sick could not obtain wine and other medical comforts without paying for them; that the captain made a profit out of the sale of these medical comforts; that the ventilation was insufficient; that most of the children who died, died from want of proper food; that there was an iron tank on board full of good water, but that none of the passengers were allowed any; that dead bodies were put in sacks, and thrown overboard at night; that dancing was going on while the dead bodies were on board; that the sailors engaged in dancing, and sometimes left off to throw bodies overboard, and immediately recommenced; that divine service was never held; that the cook stole the fat from the meat and sold it; that he was insolent and brutal, and that he would not prepare food without being paid; that the captain supported the cook in this conduct; and that as soon as the ship anchored good water was served out, as also wine and other medical comforts.


The ship's doctor observed:

I do not think that the ventilation of the ship was sufficient; the space between decks was about
seven feet.  The passengers were oblliged to remain a good deal below; they had no other
place to go to.                        From Dr Kampf, medical superintendent on La Rochelle
 

The captain, however, disagreed:

I think the accommodation for the passengers was sufficient; it is the same as I have always had; the regulation is to allow twelve feet to every adult; four were placed in each berth; the berths were six feet long, six feet broad, and three feet and a half high ; the lowest was about nine inches from the floor; the height between decks was seven feet; the ship was kept clean; the 'tween decks were scraped by the passengers daily ; the berths were brushed out, and the beds aired; I used chloride of lime and other disinfectants; there were five water-closets, and all were washed out every morning; the medical comforts consisted of spirits, wine (of which there was a large quantity), arrowroot, sago, rice, preserved broth, plums, and apples, also preserved milk; they were served out to the sick as ordered by the doctor.                  From the captain of the La Rochelle

The editor of the Brisbane Courier made his views very clear:

On whom does the responsibility lay, (sic) that in not one ship alone something like accumulated murder has been permitted. Has our Government heretofore taken any - even the slightest - care to prevent those evils which now, for not the first time, are prominently and unmistakeably brought before us. Patient they (the German migrants) must be, for nothing but the most extreme power of endurance would enable any human being to bear what the unhappy sufferers in the Wandrahm had to submit to. Prudent, or they could not have subdued the risings of human resentment against those by whom they had been deceived, were defrauded, and for whose profit, in too many cases, they laid themselves, starved and broken-hearted, down to die. 
Let our Ministry-our legislators-our people resolve to redress the crying evils of which we have spoken ; but let them not with those 58 skeletons lying at their doors, address the Creator for mercy, when refusing to do right.


 [I believe he is taking journalistic licence in referring to the 48 people who died as the '58 skeletons']

The Findings                                  from the Brisbane Courier 17th April 1866

The report of the Board has since been published, and the charges of provisions being insufficiently served out, bad water, want of medical comforts, besides breaches of the Hamburg Act, as well as that of this colony, were substantiated. The Board, however, conclude by observing, "that it would be most unfair to condemn German ships and German immigration in toto, on the strength of an enquiry into the condition of two ships (the La Rochelle being one of them), on board of which sickness and mortality were unusually great."
"It must not be forgotten," says the Board, that many German ships have landed their passengers in good health, and that when landed they formed a valuable addition to our agricultural population."

Basically, everybody got off scot-free. However, As a result of the inquiry into conditions on the Peter Goddefroy ships, poor supervision by the agents in Germany was blamed and immigration from Germany were suspended from 1866 to 1869.