We had chosen the Prinzessin Irene because she is the largest and best emigrant-carrying ship in the trade, and the line to which she belongs stands toward the front among the others in its treatment of the third-class passengers. People who have crossed many times and know all the ins and outs of steerage travel prefer the Lahn or the Prinzessin Irene, so that we knew we should find the minimum of abuse in her. What must the conditions be in ships in the northern trade and in the cheaper ships running from Mediterranean ports. Almost the only time that the third-class people were treated as passengers was at the time of planking down their 200 lire. The men of the crew were inclined to treat them as inferior beings, to be knocked and pushed about, and I regret to say they took their cue from their immediate superiors.
The third day of the voyage was Sunday, and the weather was improving. The seasick people began to think life worth clinging to. The capo di rancio crowd at dinner was nearly the full size. My wife looked once at the mixture in the big pan and then turned away. Though I knew what the matter was I asked her.
“I was just thinking how far, how very far it is to Martin’s,” she said with a tremble in her voice.
Knowing full well that there are always secret channels on board a ship for the getting of food if one has money, I had been trying every steward, cook, page, etc., I could corner, and offering ridiculous prices for something to eat. Not that the food for the steerage was so bad we could not eat it. We had been eating it, and we expected to continue to eat it; but we wanted a supply to fill in with on those occasions when it was not what we wanted. When I sailed as a member of the crew in ships of the Hamburg-American and American lines, a very good source of revenue to the cooks and stewards was the secret sale of food to the third-class passengers who had money. On the Lahn we had been able to buy everything we wished. The trouble on the Prinzessin Irene on this voyage was that the inspector was aboard. At last, however, I found a petty officer who had a cabin down the alley-way, and I “persuaded” him. The result was a sudden and gracious increase in our comforts in all that one could expect in the steerage. The only drawback was the necessity for extreme care in coming and going.
Half a Dozen Races on Common Ground—His Brothcup—The Immigrant Madonna
In the Sunday afternoon chatting around deck, where the people sat on the hatches, the deck, the winches, in fact, anywhere they could get, there being no place in the entire steerage section that was distinctly intended for sitting down, I found numbers of people who had squeezed through the examination at Naples by little hooks and crooks.
Monday morning we were nearing Gibraltar. The peaked rock rose up out of the clouds in the west nearly an hour before we slid around Europa Point and came to anchor with the fortress frowning upon us and British warships lying all about. The tender of the company steamed out at once, bringing passengers and mail, and into the steerage there came quite a number of Spaniards, Portuguese, a Moor or two, etc. The bumboat-men swarmed about the ship on both sides, and came up and over the rail like monkeys, hauling up stuff from their boats in baskets.
By the knuckles of Mars! What a joy to get good Dutch, Havana, and Egyptian tobacco once more. In Italy the government so monopolizes the sale of tobacco that the demand for good cigars and pipe tobacco is very slight; therefore to find anything fit to smoke in a strange city is like hunting up lost heirs. When one does get a good Havana cigar in Rome it is as dry as an undertaker’s eye.
In addition to tobacco we laid in here a good supply of fruit and nuts, and if it had not been for our very limited baggage could have driven some fine bargains in smuggled goods.