Last
update July 2009 Created by Tony Maple: imlac2005@grapevine.com.au
Passage in the Shackamaxon
In
September 1852 Thomas and Elizabeth Maple together with their three children,
Charles, Caroline and Stephen, would have left the town of Adisham south east
of Canterbury. At the time they were living in the Adisham mill house. They
would have travelled to London and then north to Liverpool, probably by
covered dray.
Liverpool
was then the major port for the immigration trade. In October 1852 they
boarded the Shackamaxon, a new American ship chartered by the British
Government’s Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners for government
emigrants. The ship had the appropriate crew and a doctor, school master and a
trained crew.
Along
with
Amongst
the other settlers at Yankalilla were the Tonkin and Polkinghorne families.
The original Tonkin pioneers, Enoch and Betsy, had arrived on the Java in 1840
and had suffered the rigours of starvation. Some 40 passengers had died of hunger.
Despite being well regulated, the passage by sailing ship often had many
shortcomings. Three grand-sons of Thomas later married Tonkin women.
Many
emigrants had family or kinship links in the places they were travelling to.
This does not appear to be the case with Thomas. However three years later
Thomas’s unmarried younger brother, James, arrived in SA on 25 May1855
on the ‘Punjab’. James settled at Normanville on a farm close to
Thomas and Elizabeth, married an Irish girl and converted to Catholicism.
The
Shackamaxon by C. P. Field
A
recreation at the of the
living conditions emigrants experienced once aboard the Shackamaxon