"Just A Thinking of the Past" (Part 2)

Great-Great Grandma and Grandpa Rasmussen

CROSSING THE ATLANTIC

Finally we boarded the great steamship. When we came near Ireland, a little way out, emigrants were taken on board. It was very cold. The children wore half socks and their legs were blue with cold.

In the part of the ship where we were to stay was a very long room, a long table through the middle where people ate their meals. We all had our own dishes. We each had a large tin dish with a handle on one side. I think the dish held about two quarts. That was for soup. We always had soup for dinner. It was more like slop than anything else. The waiters came with great buckets, people crowded around with their dishes.

Our mothers, with the little ones stayed in their berths (or beds) and we brought their food to them. They would have been trampled on had they come out where they were dishing out. It was worse than when a coffee lunch is passed at an auction. The rooms where our berths were had two berths across from each other on the floor and two berths above them again. Four families in a little room like that, just room enough to walk between. We slept there with our clothes on. 

For supper they passed around great large biscuits, one apiece. People and children of my age would get one then when the waiter would go around on the other side some would be there and get another one. A little boy, whose father was a drunkard, one night did not get his biscuit, cried for hunger. I gave him mine. I can’t recollect what breakfast was like but we had coffee sweetened with molasses. There was no danger of overeating in that place. It was a good place to go on a diet.

One day the drunken father of that little boy had delirium tremens. They caught him just in time to keep him from jumping over into the ocean.

We had a great windstorm lasting about three days. We drove away out of our course, so it took us much longer to cross. I never was seasick until then. We, three children, myself and those two we traveled in company with, had found some barrels of hard tack. We ate just all we could hold. They were so dry and hard it took a lot of moisture to wet them up and we just stuffed ourselves. When the ship began to rock we got sick, nearly choked us to death – the seasickness probably saved our lives.

Another incident happened, and I never found out the cause of it. The water came into our cabin so we had to get out. I said to mother, “Are we going to drown?” She said, “I don’t know.” Sailors carried the water out in buckets. Some said a window or loophole had been left open to the sea.

I cannot recollect how long we were on the ocean, but when land was in sight there was real joy. We sailed up the St. Lawrence River to Quebec where we landed on Canadian soil.

From there by rail to Detroit. Those two children and I were outside the car door and sat down on the steps to see the trees and things pass by, (carelessly) from Detroit to Grand Rapids - that was a just a small place then.

Tomorrow: Coming Home

Read my previous post: "Just A Thinking of the Past" (Part 1)
Read my next post: "Just A Thinking of the Past" (Part 3)