Letter from an Alsatian Immigrant

I’ll start by giving you a few more details about the Havre; my stay in this town and my thoughts about the employees of the emigrant travel offices who are there for no other reason than to extort every last penny from these unfortunate people. Not only do they rob them through the price to travel abroad, but also by selling them poor provisions for the trip. On top of that, they distribute the provisions a mere two hours before their departure so they don’t have time to demand their money back. That only happens to those who purchase their provisions from the agents who are also responsible for the transportation. As for me, I purchased my provisions from a town merchant, away from these shady dealings. I could tell you a whole story just on what happens at the Havre, but we’ll leave that for another time.

After wandering around the Havre for eight days, I finally left May 28 at 5pm on board the three-masted American ship the Statesman. There were about 250 of us passengers on board and 20 crewmembers. Because of bad winds, the Havre’s tugboat Hercule towed us about a league before the steam power gave way to that of our sails. The weather was beautiful and I had a strange feeling as I watched the banks of France and the beautiful Lower Normand coast disappear before my eyes. Little by little all that faded away and I had to tell myself “I have to leave this country for better days.”

After a very short time on the ship I was already hit by seasickness, was the first to be hit and I was hit hard. The Sunday and Monday of Pentecost I was laid up all day, terribly ill, unable to lift my head. This was made even worse by the groans and cries of the 200 sick people on the middle deck. Just the sight of all this misery added to our suffering and in these moments, each passenger would have gladly given up on the journey and returned to land had it been possible. Anyone who has never experienced the suffering on the middle deck can’t imagine what it is like. Finally on June 4, my birthday, everyone started to adjust to the rocking, except for me and I needed another eight days before I was able to arise from this living tomb.

The first week went by peacefully with half good and half bad weather. We get up every morning a 6am and then we go help the sailors a little bit as they clean the middle deck. We consider ourselves lucky whenever we can sleep in to avoid this unpleasant chore.

Sunday, June 5^th at 8am, a violent wind from the South West kicked up and kept getting bigger. By noon we were in the middle of a furious storm; the majority of the men and women stayed on the middle deck and lied flat at the level of the sea, but it is really dangerous to stay there because you can easily be thrown out of the bed or have your legs broken by the trunks that roll all around. I can assure you that no one had any fun that day, and that was merely the beginning. The sails were all taken down, except for one in order to try to keep us pointed in the right direction. I thought that would all last about 6 hours, but I was wrong because that evening the storm got worse. We saw mountains of water, three times as high as the ship come crashing down on us. The ship would climb up these waves and then we would be thrust into the abyss. The sights were pretty, especially at night since the sky was clear and the moon was bright. I was on the deck, attached to a rope so as not to be thrown over the edge. This weather lasted all night and didn’t calm down until around 10am on Monday. This was extremely dangerous, but less so out to sea than if we had been near the coast, but we were near the opening of the English Channel. The rest of the week was extremely boring. Always being in the same place is certainly no fun. As for the kitchen (there are two of them on the deck), imagine a room surrounded by wood on three sides where a kettle is suspended over a coal fire and each person does their cooking if they find room to do so. It’s best to team up with others and that is what I did. There are 8 of us young people who work together and in the morning we make potato soup, at lunch omelets and in the evening we have tea with a little biscuit. We do what we can with the provisions we have in order to help pass the time. But the hardest part is eating because of the rocking of the ship. Just when you think you’re ready to eat, it all gets spilled on the floor of the deck and you have nothing. It’s disgusting but there is not much you can do and that’s life living in the midst of the wind and waves. There is no peace when eating, nor when resting and you’re not able to relax standing either. And don’t imagine any tables for eating since we pretty much do our best to eat on top of the travel trunks. After dealing with all of these challenges, you become bitter and disenchanted and so I am terribly impatient to see land.

This is pretty much how we spend our days and we are continually running into new people in whom we can confide and with whom we can talk about the present situation and that helps us pass the time. When we are in a good mood, we goof around, trying to have fun any way we can in order to forget how bored we are. When the weather is bad in the evening, we sing and annoy those who are trying to sleep until the lieutenant comes to tell us to be quiet. Pretty much every morning our first activity is to go to the middle deck where we try to see if we’re going in the right direction or not and we check the compass. Whenever we would see a storm coming, like the one from June 6, we were used to it by then and anyway, nice weather makes for more boredom since we barely move. When the South East wind is strong, we zip along, the ship leaning to one side and we travel at 13 miles per hour, but we rarely see that since our winds are almost always from the West, in other words, the wrong direction.

There are fights almost every day because of the kitchen. The Swiss are particularly crude in this department, since they are used to eating six times a day back home. As a result, they are always around the kettle, keeping others from being able to use it. They are like a bunch of animals, dirty as pigs, and they say vulgar things to everyone. On June 19^th, for example, one of these guys threw a pot of boiling water on a German man and burned him really badly. The ship’s captain decided to slap him and chain him up for two days. When the weather is nice, nothing is more revolting than seeing all of these country folk, dirty from head to toe, eating on the deck before laying down in the sun to pick off their lice. When it gets too bad, we beg the lieutenant to throw a pail of water on them.

Today is June 23^rd and we are told that we should arrive on June 30^th. As a result, fresh water is passed out a little more generously. Thanks to our group of friends that we get along well with, we are able to have a good time. At night we contemplate the sunset, we stay on the deck when the weather is nice and we breath in the fresh air as long as possible. Each one of us sings a little song. Béranger’s songs are particularly popular, as well as the Hirondelles and the Proscrit. When singing this last song, we really emphasize the last couple stanzas, even though none of us are missing our homeland at the moment, which is also quite the strange feeling.

About ten of us on board are French and the rest are German and Swiss. Today it’s my turn to cook with my friend Philippe, a young tailor from Eckbolsheim; we don’t have a whole lot to choose from since there is no market or grocery store available. You just need to be a little creative is all. I certainly feel bad for the people in this position as prisoners on this ship who lived a peaceful life, oblivious to all this since once you are here, you feel like you will never escape from this group of completely uninteresting people. And yet nobody really talks about all the misery, but I get it because once you’ve been on board for twenty days, it’s as if you were born for this and once you are back on land again, it is as if all this was a mere dream. I’m sure there are people on board who, once they arrive, will be upset to find more worries since they don’t know the language, have no status or money and who will have to rely on American hospitality which is, as far as I can see, not the greatest.

So as I see it, all this European immigration is nothing but an illness. There are people on board who have considerable wealth and who sold their belongings at any price in order to join in on all this immigration. I feel sorry for them and they understand their mistake now. As for the French on board, they all left for the same reason as I did and otherwise would not have left in the first place. As for me, I didn’t come out of an obsessive sickness like the one that drove these others, and simply plan to work to regain the courage I lost through my challenges in Europe, make a fresh start and earn a living. I hope that God shows me the light so as to put me on the path to happiness.

Today is June 24^th and from time to time we pass other ships. We are filled with joy when we see them, knowing we are not alone out here and finding that we are not the only ones out there suffering. The evening of June 24^th it started to get cold, a thick fog closed in around us and the ocean fish began to skim the surface of the water. This is a bad sign and means a storm is coming and so we could feel that we were close to the confluence near Nova Scotia. Not one of us had any idea of the terrible night we were about to have. A violent storm from the Southwest took us onto the sandbars of Nova Scotia that stretch out 100 miles into the sea. The danger was imminent and walls of water slammed against the ship and it was like being hit by cannon fire. Add to that the roaring of the sea and it felt like our ship was going to be smashed into a thousand pieces. I was up all night, keeping watch from time to time through the opening in the middle deck and I felt like there wasn’t much hope to make it out of this. There was torrential rainfall and we couldn’t see each other from two feet away. The sailors were discouraged and were no longer listening to the lieutenant’s voice and the second lieutenant was on watch. On the main deck you could hear the captain’s voice yelling out to these poor sailors who were drenched to the bone and who were climbing on the yardarms of the masts, trying to take down the sails. It was just a terrible night and men, women and children were all lamenting their fate, crying and praying and we convinced ourselves that if we were to be eaten by sharks, at least our miserable suffering would at last be over. But at 9 in the morning, the sea became calm again.

June 28^th. We are still cold with opposing winds so we’re not advancing much. We’d like to be in New York for July 4^th, America’s Independence Day, but I’m doubtful. All we see today are a few fishing boats out trying to catch cod. At noon we passed by an English schooner and the two captains used megaphones to talk. We found out it took 38 days at sea coming from Gibraltar to go to Boston. That gave us a little something to stay entertained for a while. Tonight we have a supper planned and we’re inviting 4 others so there will be 12 of us. Our first and last dish will be a potato salad and we will have dessert once we’ve landed.

June 30^th. We run into another ship from Bremen full of immigrants going to New York. We hoist the flag and again using megaphones we find out: 35 days at sea with contrary winds. We quickly lost sight of them since we’ve been passing all the others. I’m going to bed tonight at 11pm, sleeping on the trunks and using a sack of potatoes as a pillow. To me, there doesn’t seem to be much difference between this and sleeping on the bed. On July 9^th we start to see land and what a joy! Everyone was on the deck and we only had 150 miles to New York. Finally on July 13^th we arrived in the bay of New York. The sight was sublime and the weather superb; I could see at least 300 ships in the bay. We were towed in by a steamer and on July 13^th at noon I was seated at a table, on a chair, dining at the “Schweizerhaus” (Swiss house) on Greenwich Street. I didn’t stay long and went to find a boardinghouse where I still am now.

New York is, without a doubt, the most beautiful port in the world, and the best situated and most advantageous for the arrival of ships. To the left, as you arrive, you can see the citadel with its cannons all lined up. The city itself is really dirty and city sanitation is non-existent. The majority of the residents are Irish and German but there are about 2000 French people. The French Legion, that I saw at the burial of Henry Clay, is 90 men strong. Then there are the Scottish, Irish, English and Americans Legions. Along each street you can see a flagpole topped with a liberty cap (Phrygian cap). Things are a little slow right now because of the upcoming presidential election, but it will pick back up. I was out of commission for about ten days because of the intense heat (122º), but I’ve gotten more or less used to the weather here and since July 26^th have been working at a factory where I found a job with the help of Rochling who is a wine merchant and has a company called the République universelle. The wine generally costs 26 cents per bottle and all the wines are from Bordeaux. For normal boarders like me, we pay $2.50, including the bed, but you are usually not very comfortable and cramped in rooms with 2 or 3 beds. On average, workers make around 35 per week, but that goes down constantly because of the incredible number of people arriving and who are willing to work at any price just to be able to eat. We start work at 7am and finish at 6pm. The sheer number of machines being built is impressive and every little industrialist has a steam engine so as a result, there are plenty of mechanics. I’m not exactly cut out for this sort of work, so I’m looking to find work with a clockmaker who makes huge church clocks because there are churches and hostels a plenty here. It’s hard to get adjusted here because the language, the values and behaviors are so different from back home. The Germans are certainly the dominant group here and the homes of the rich Americans are closed and hidden away in quiet streets.

I saw former representative Hochstuhl and there is nothing for him here. There are so many of these professors who work for the railroad that nobody even pays attention.

Everyone for himself is the motto. Hypocrisy and plunder are so prevalent here that a brother would sell his brother just for another dollar. This is particularly true for the Irish. When you read about America, all the literature makes you think it must be a paradise here, but you have to see it to believe how bad it is: a man scoops up money, but is reduced to an idiot. Who are the great men that have come out of America? They’ll tell you Washington because he wielded a sword. There are no good newspapers here and they are nothing more that weekly ads and announcements. You’ll probably read about the catastrophe of the steamship called Henry Clay where 100 people perished; here, people hardly even notice. The warning bell tolls 5-6 times every day because of all the fires. You can leave in the morning and come home to find your home gone. Or you go bankrupt and burn your house down.

I’ll send you sometime soon my day-by-day impressions of the trip on board the ship; it’s too large to send through the mail. A thousand hugs to you and to all those who have remained friends.