Life in steerage

Life in steerage

Most accounts of the voyage from Britain to New Zealand by steerage passengers record the crowded conditions, poor food, damp bedding and other trials of travelling in the low-ceilinged space below the main deck. John Pearse made this sketch of the sleeping arrangements on board the Duke of Portland, bound for Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1851. At the time leaks from the deck above were so bad that the beds had to be shifted.