MAITLAND - The Voyage of 1838

(sgd) John Smith, SURGEON R.N. Superintendent

P.S. I beg to add, having omitted it in its proper place that, the remedies resorted to for preventing the disemmination of the scarlet fever were: washing with caustic lime and chloride of lime, all the berths, decks and other fittings once a week, and sanitising often, also sprinkling the bedding and other articles frequently with the chloride of lime.

EMPLOYMENT- There was no employment for the people, they being too lazy and insubordinate to do any useful work.
Schools were established under the Chief Superintendence of one very able and Christian teacher John Vidler; whereby the children in general received some instruction and wherefrom they derived some advantage, the greater number having been, at the time of embarkation, perfectly illiterate, not having the most distant knowledge of the rudiments of the English language.

I beg further to report to your Lordship that, considering the disasters which have marked the voyages of both these vessels, the dirty state in which the Emigrants by the "Maitland" were reported to be on their arrival, and the enormous expenses which have fallen on the Colony by their long detention in Quarantine, I have not judged it proper to issue Gratuities to the Surgeon of the "William Roger" or to the Surgeon or officers of the "Maitland "; though, as the Master of the "William Roger" died in Quarantine, I have not withheld his Gratuity from his Widow. If the result of the voyage is not to be taken into consideration in the payment of Gratuities, I would respectively submit to your Lordship that there can be no sufficient reason for making any part of the remuneration of the Surgeon's a contingent one; for it will be scarcely ever possible to prove misconduct or inefficiency against a Surgeon, unless indeed it be of a nature to call for a far heavier punishment than the mere stoppage of a Gratuity.
I have no positive charge of misconduct to prefer against either of the two Surgeons of these two vessels; but the enterprise, in which they engaged, has been signally unfortunate. The loss of their expected Gratuities is also the less heavy upon them, as, in addition to their full pay, they have received the following sums for their services in Quarantine, vizt.:

The Surgeon of the "William Roger" ..... 64 Pounds
The Surgeon of the "Maitland" ............. 46 Pounds

The "Maitland", with her dirt, overcrowding and lack of discipline, was typical of the worst seagoing slums in the migrant traffic. She started her 134-day voyage with 223 adults and 127 children packed below decks. No fewer than 200 cases of sickness occurred during the voyage and the bodies of 35 of her passengers, including 29 children, had been fed to the sharks before she sighted Sydney Heads.
As the migrants and crew of the "William Rogers" (an earlier plague ship) occupied all the accommodation at Spring Cove quarantine grounds, another tented colony had to be established for the "Maitland"'s people, accentuating the desperate shortage of supplies. Fortunately not many from the "Maitland " needed attention, and only five more died after they were put ashore in quarantine. At the sinister little settlement on North Head, day after day victims were carried to the isolation huts, where they raved in delirium or lay in a stupor that ended only in death.
On November 22, 1838, Governor Gipps wrote in a dispatch to London: "The sickness and mortality at the quarantine station is unexampled, no fewer than 140 persons having been attacked with typhus of the most malignant kind..."
The quarantine station consisted of a couple of wooden shanties, a surgeon's cottage and a cluster of tents pitched among the scrub and sandhills.
On January 3, 1839, when the last sick patient was reported convalescing, the Governor allowed the two ships to disembark their passengers and bring them up the harbour.
A committee of inquiry report was a damning indictment of the ships and a system under which herds of immigrants were "transported to the colony like cattle."