No Plum Pudding aboard the Edwin Fox

Researched and written by Richard Senior

George Wilcock was born at the Hope & Anchor Inn in Pontefract in 1843, the second son of John Wilcock the Elder of Pontefract (1810-1885) and Martha Wilson (1810-1875). He spent his early years at the Hope & Anchor and served his apprenticeship as a wheelwright under his father, later moving to work in his elder brother John's sawmill business at Mill Dam.

George seems to have had itchy feet and travelled away from Pontefract, marrying Elizabeth Collins of Birkenhead in the late 1860s. Their first child Martha was born in 1868 in Gorton, Manchester, although, by the time their first son John was born in 1871, they were back in George's home town of Pontefract. They didn't stay in Pontefract for very long though; in the winter of 1874, George and Elizabeth took their children down to London to embark on a voyage to a new life in New Zealand.

So far this is not a particularly remarkable story; many family histories contain emigrant branches. However, what makes it interesting is that William Manning, one of George and Elizabeth's fellow passengers, kept a detailed diary of the voyage from start to finish. His diary provides a fascinating account of the conditions that emigrants had to endure in exchange for a new life.

William Manning actually joined the emigrant party late. His diary starts on December 18th 1874, by which time the "Edwin Fox" had already sailed once and was back in dry dock for inspection after becoming caught up on a sandbank in the Channel. Manning's first impression of the ship was positive, declaring that he, "liked her appearance very well". His family took their place among the complement of 218 emigrants, replacing another family who had been struck down by illness and whose child had died. They were allocated two bunks, each measuring 6'2" long by 3'4" wide, composed of rough boards nailed together and furnished with rough sheets and blankets "of a colour not likely to show the dirt".

The Edwin Fox sailed for the second time on December 23rd, almost ending in a premature disaster when it struck a collier schooner near Gravesend, the schooner sinking with the loss of one of its crew. At this point, if I had been George and Elizabeth, and I had been involved in two collisions before reaching the Isle of Wight, I would have been having second thoughts about the wisdom of sailing to the other side of the world! Obviously they were made of stern stuff (or had no choice about going back) and stayed aboard for the third departure on Christmas Day. Despite a deputation to the Captain, the passengers were unsuccessful in a bid to have plum pudding for dinner and had to settle for boiled beef and soup, "the worst Christmas dinner I ever saw or wish to see again", as Manning described it. There was no plum pudding that Christmas Day aboard the Edwin Fox.

Having negotiated fog in the Thames estuary on Boxing Day, the Edwin Fox made it to deeper water by the 27th and was sailing under its own sails by the 28th, off Plymouth. Two children died that day.

As the small ship made its way out into the Atlantic Ocean, the waves and wind began to take their toll and sea-sickness was widespread. This could hardly have been a pleasant experience on a ship packed tightly with 218 passengers who had no recourse to modern remedies. Arrowroot mixed with water was the best solution that the ship's doctor could prescribe and the period of rough weather lasted for over two weeks, until mid-January.

It wasn't just the sea that was turbulent. The "fiery spirit" of an Irish girl was raised in a disagreement with the matron of the single women's quarters, who received a scratched face and black eye in the process. The girl was put into solitary confinement until she promised better behaviour, which she apparently did quite quickly. This was just the first of a series of similar incidents, with two Scotsmen fighting over furniture, several Irishmen fighting over petty squabbles and two women agreeing to settle their differences with an organised boxing match!

By February, having picked up the trade winds, the emigrant ship made good progress, passing Madeira and crossing the line on February 8th. The weather was "awfully hot", according to Manning and in such heat it must have been very difficult to cope with the two pints a day of fresh water that each passenger was allocated for washing and drinking. Variety in diet also seems to have been a problem and this prompted some of the passengers to catch a shark using a 4lb piece of salt-pork as bait. This apparently proved a welcome change at dinner-time from the salt-pork itself; Manning himself refused to eat it but his wife and children "pronounced it first class"!

As the Edwin Fox approached the Cape of Good Hope in mid-March, they were again plunged into rough seas and bitter cold and had to cope with the danger of icebergs, several collisions taking place. A man who had slipped and broken his leg some weeks earlier died and was buried in the icy waters. The following day, the 27th March, Elizabeth Wilcock gave birth to George and Elizabeth's third child, who they called Edwina Fox Wilcock - after the ship. Manning described the conditions at the time as "wind blowing hard and sea rolling heavily, making it, with the cold weather, anything but pleasant". Not the ideal conditions for childbirth.

The harsh discipline aboard a Victorian emigrant ship was vividly demonstrated in early April when a man was tried, complete with prosecuting and defending counsels attired in wig and gown, for the crime of stealing a messmate's rations. A guilty verdict was returned and the sentence passed that the man be plastered with a mixture of oatmeal and treacle. Anyone offering relief with a donation from their own water ration was promised the same treatment!

Land was finally sighted on the 14th April and, as they approached Wellington harbour, the ship was replenished with fresh provisions. This gave the passengers their first taste of New Zealand produce - a feast of rump steak and fresh potatoes. It wasn't a case of immediate relief from the cramped conditions aboard ship however, as all the passengers were held in a cramped quarantine station for a week before being put up in the relatively spacious immigration barracks.

From there George and Elizabeth and family went on to settle successfully and produce a new branch of the Wilcock family. I still have to do some work to trace them extensively but I know Edwina Fox Wilcock, born in those harsh conditions of March 1875, survived to produce children of her own. Some of these descendents have visited the Edwin Fox museum in Picton, New Zealand, where they have added their names to a register of the descendants of the passengers of its three voyages. The Edwin Fox herself survives in dry-dock and the Edwin Fox Society is in the process of raising funds to restore the ship as a museum.

I'll leave it to William Manning to sum up his voyage to New Zealand aboard the Edwin Fox as, "one-hundred and twenty-two days of misery, anxiety, discomfort and semi-starvation" and that he hoped that he would, "never again fall to the lot of an unfortunate emigrant in a slow but sure emigrant ship."