The Emigrant Quay

1885 · Emigrant Port · Work 379 of 1,871

The Emigrant Quay, 1885, Emigrant Port

Emigrant families waiting on a harbour quay beside a steamer gangway, corded trunks and numbered tickets in hand, an inspector checking papers at a trestle table.

What it was used for
The emigrant quay was the loading point of a mass business. The Deutsches Auswandererhaus states that more than 7.2 million people boarded a ship at Bremerhaven, which from 1830 on developed into the largest emigration port of continental Europe; National Museums Liverpool gives nine million emigrants through Liverpool between 1830 and 1930. They travelled in steerage. The US Passenger Act, approved 2 August 1882, allowed 100 cubic feet per passenger on the main deck and the first deck below, 120 cubic feet on the second deck below, with a fine of 50 dollars for every passenger above the permitted number. For 1885 to 1899 Drew Keeling gives an average of 3.5 pounds per westbound steerage passenger at Cunard - a company average computed from revenue divided by passengers, not a published tariff.
What was new
Rules on steerage space existed before; whether enforcing them through the master's liability was new is not documented. The US Passenger Act of 2 August 1882 graded space by deck level, 100 against 120 cubic feet, and enforced it through the master's liability, 50 dollars per excess passenger and up to six months in prison. In July 1892 the emigrant barracks opened at Hamburg's Amerikakai; the City of Hamburg's history portal records 16,956 cases and 8,605 deaths in the cholera epidemic of that same year and suspects the infection was carried in by East European emigrants in transit. The barb: Torsten Feys writes that before the migrant boom of the first half of the 19th century many ships on this route left Europe in ballast; carrying migrants let them offer lower freight rates on the eastbound leg. The emigrants filled space that would otherwise have sailed empty.

Further reading