The Hercules - A Longer Than Usual Voyage From Scotland to Australia
50 Day Blogging Challenge
A Harrowing Voyage: The MacPherson Family’s Journey to Australia
In 1853, my 3x great-grandparents, Alexander and Mary MacPherson, made the life-changing decision to emigrate from the Highlands of Scotland to Australia. What followed was not a simple voyage across the seas, but an exhausting and traumatic journey that took them across multiple countries, and involved deadly illnesses.
A Stormy Start
The MacPherson family boarded the Hercules, which departed from Campbelltown, Argyllshire on 26 December 1852. No sooner had the ship set sail, than it was met with fierce, boisterous winter weather, forcing it to anchor off Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute. The passengers had to wait there for almost three weeks, enduring freezing conditions, until the ship could resume its journey on 14 January 1853.
Quarantine and Death
Soon after departure, the ship was struck by outbreaks of smallpox and typhus. These illnesses spread quickly among the passengers, prompting a three-month quarantine off the coast of Cork, Ireland.
It must have been dreadful for the passengers on the Hercules. After four months of travel, they had only made it from Scotland to Ireland.
By that point, 56 passengers had died, including the ship’s doctor and matron. Seventeen orphaned children were sent back to Scotland, and many emigrant families were broken up and reassigned to thirteen different ships. Many of the family groups were separated for the remainder of the voyage.
The MacPhersons Stay Together
Amidst all this upheaval, Alexander and Mary MacPherson, along with their four children, were among the fortunate. The family was allowed to remain together and continue the journey aboard the Hercules.
The ship finally departed Cork on 14 April 1853, this time carrying only about 380 of its original passengers. On 26 July 1853, after more than three months at sea, they arrived in South Australia.
One More Voyage: To Geelong
Their journey was not yet over. Less than one month later, on 19 May 1853, the MacPhersons joined 41 other passengers and boarded The Banker’s Daughter, which had sailed from Liverpool.
The final leg of their migration ended in Geelong, Victoria, on 3 September 1853, over eight months since they had left Scotland.
Reflections on the Highland Departure
A poignant contemporary account captures the heartbreak of those leaving Scotland behind:
“The leave-taking was the most painful scene I ever witnessed. Sturdy Highlanders grasped each other by the hand, while the muscles of their faces and bodies quivered with emotion. Women hung on the necks of their friends, and were in some cases removed by force… they threw their arms into the air, giving full vent to their grief, as they gazed for the last time on the black peaty glen and bleak rocky hills, over which they had long been accustomed to roam and to which they were so devotedly attached.”1
These were people of deep faith and stoic dignity. As another observer wrote:
“Everyone who has seen these Highland emigrants must have been struck with the air of sedate respectability that belongs to even the poorest amongst them... They are no sooner collected in a depot, or onboard ship, than they establish family worship, and conduct it with reverence and composure.”
— Migration to New Worlds2
Image: Emigration from the Isle of Skye - slv.vic.gov.au
A Note from the Shipping Records
Alexander MacPherson was described in the shipping records as:
“Has been working as a mason’s labourer for the last 9 weeks. No previous employment for 12 months. Good man for Australia.”
Sources:
https://blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/family-matters/the-voyage-of-the-hercules/
https://blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/family-matters/the-voyage-of-the-hercules/
State Library of Victoria: The Tide of Emigration to the United States and to the British Colonies. (1850, July 6), Illustrated London News, p. 20.
The McPhersons - From Sky to Victoria by Terry Mann, Published by T. Mann
Day 22/50 Family History Blogging Challenge
"The Tide of Emigration to the United States and to the British Colonies", Illustrated London News (London), 6 July 1850, 1.
Accessed via: State Library Victoria, ‘The Voyage of the Hercules’, Family Matters Blog, State Library Victoria
Hugh Miller, Emigration from the Isle of Skye, in Essays: Historical and Biographical, Political and Social, Literary and Scientific (William P. Nimmo, 1862) vol 3.
Available online at: Minor Victorian Writers Project https://minorvictorianwriters.org.uk/miller/c_miscellanea_3.htm.
People of today think they have strong constitutions, nothing compares to what your ancestors lived through. Your relatives Jennifer were certainly deserving of better lives.
With all those delays, they must have thought they would never get on their way to Australia