All The Servants, Who
Could Not Find Accommodation Elsewhere, Slept Under The Table; Thus
Adding To The Abominations Of This Frightful Place.
And yet we were
congratulated upon our good fortune, in being accommodated in the
Berenice, being told that the
Zenobia, which passed us on our way,
had been employed in carrying pigs between Waterford and Bristol, and
that the Hugh Lindsay was in even worse condition; the Berenice
being, in short, the crack ship.
Every day added to the heat and the dirt, and in the evening, when
going upon deck to inhale the odours of the hen-coops, the smell was
insufferable. When to this annoyance coal-dust, half an inch deep,
is added, my preference of my own cabin will not be a subject of
surprise. With what degree of truth, I cannot pretend to say, all
the disagreeable circumstances sustained on board the Berenice were
attributed to the alterations made in the docks. Previously to these
changes, we were told, the furnaces were supplied with coal by a
method which obviated the necessity of having it upon deck, whence the
dust was now carried all over the ship upon the feet of the persons
who were continually passing to and fro.
Occasionally, we suffered some inconvenience from the motion of the
vessel, but, generally speaking, nothing more disagreeable occurred
than the tremulous action of the engines, an action which completely
incapacitated me from any employment except that of reading. The only
seats or tables we could command in our cabin consisted of our boxes,
so that being turned out of the saloon at half-past one, by the
servants who laid the cloth for dinner, it was not very easy to make
an attempt at writing, or even needle-work.
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