British Columbia history can be quite fascinating. I am surprised that few Canadian historical novels have been written about our past. The four bride-ships that arrived in Victoria in the 1860's has enough material for several novels. In all, about one hundred women, mainly working class, sailed from England hoping to find a better life in British Columbia.
Victorian England was in the throes of recession. Women who became widowed, or were let go from factory jobs, or poorly educated unemployable women who had not married young faced desperate lives in workhouses or worse. There were far more women than men in Britain and even middle class women had difficulty in finding husbands. As the numbers of these poverty- stricken women grew, some churches and a few philanthropic upper class women formed the Columbia Emigration Society to both give these destitute women a new chance and to rid England of the expense of keeping them.
Meanwhile, in North America gold had been discovered on the Fraser River. The gold lured hundreds of men from the fizzled California gold fields and created towns in the Cariboo that were devoid of single, white, marriageable women. At the same time, Victoria and New Westminster were becoming thriving cities with growing families in need of domestic help.
The frontier towns here were more wild and dangerous than those in the American west. There was no law and order and only a few, mostly Anglican, missionaries were trying to create stability. Added to this mix were rigid religious and social attitudes which virtually forbade any contact with Native women. Murder, theft and drunkenness were the order of the day.
Local governments hoped that English women would marry and stabilize our wild west or alternatively provide domestic services in Victoria and New Westminster. Governments in England liked this idea because they wanted English people to populate the land north of the 49th parallel. And, they wanted to rebalance the population at home.
Between 1862 and 1870, as a result of the Columbia Emigration Society's initiatives, four steam driven sailing ships, the Tynmouth, the Robert Lowe, the Marcella and the Alpha departed England and delivered women around the horn and up the Pacific Coast to Victoria. During the voyages that could last several months, these women who were sponsored by the Columbia Emigration Society travelled steerage and experienced horrible on board conditions.
Crowded below decks into tiered bunks in groups of eight, there was little room to move. It was crowded, dark and dank with little fresh air. The sanitation was poor, movement up to the deck was limited to areas where the women often encountered smoke and soot from the coal- fired boilers. Unlike the people in cabins whose meals were prepared, people in steerage were given daily rations to prepare for themselves. Fresh water was in very short supply. There were storms and seasickness. The stench became unbearable. Then, to add to this misery, church sponsored chaperones made it their duty to make sure none of these women came into contact with any men on board ship.
Surprisingly, while there was some death and disease in their months at sea, most of the women made it to the shores of Vancouver Island. Once, landed most quickly found husbands or positions as domestics. Glimpses of their lives in Lillooet, Barkerville, Chemainus, Victoria, Vancouver and New Westminster while poorly documented, are fascinating.
Most of this information came from the book Voyages of Hope by Peter Johnson.
