After the Highlander defeat at Culloden Moor in 1746, the British Parliament began enacting laws to disarm and destroy the clans. First was the Highlander Dress Act to deprive the clansman of his colorful highland garb, then clan chiefs had their estates confiscated. In the thirty years following Culloden, thousands of Highlanders sought refuge in America, with more settling in North Carolina than any other colony.
Deadly Passage to America
“The voyage to America was a trying experience, even under the best circumstances. The voyage was long – usually a month or two. Quarters, especially those below deck, were cramped and unventilated. Food became musty, moldy or infested with vermin. Drinking water turned dark and strong.
There are reports that captains and shipowners added to the inevitable discomfort of the emigrants by breach of contract and even maltreatment. The Earl of Selkirk attempted to dismiss the troubles of the Highlanders aboard ship as seasickness. However, accounts of three voyages to America substantiate the charges of mistreatment. Complaints center about the food provided for the passengers and the tyranny of the captains and crews.
In 1773, the brig Nancy left Dornoch in Sutherland with 200 settlers bound for New York. Of fifty children aboard under the age of four, only one survived the voyage. While at sea seven babies were born; all the mothers died, and all the babies but one. Of the 200 who had embarked at Sutherland, only a hundred survived to see New York. The cause of this great mortality appears to have been the food which these emigrants received. In obvious violation of contract, and in spite of an adequate supply of good food aboard the ship, the passengers were given only “corrupted stinking” water and an inferior, musty black oatmeal, “hardly fit for swine,” which had to be eaten raw. By the time port officials in New York began examining the charges brought by the disembarked Highlanders, the ship had slipped out of the harbor.
The Jamaica Packet made the voyage from Scotland to the West Indies and North Carolina in 1774 carrying settlers from the Orkney Islands. The settlers had been forced to leave the Highlands because of high rents. Crowded in small compartments below deck, the passengers were once confined for a nine-day period during a sea storm. The compartment was ventilated only by the cracks in the deck above them, which also allowed the sea to run in when the deck was awash.
According to contract, they were to have received each week one pound of meat, two pounds of oatmeal, a small quantity of biscuit, and some water. The provisions actually supplied them consisted of spoiled pork, moldy biscuit, oatmeal, and brackish water. The passengers were fortunate to have potatoes, which were eaten raw and used to supplement their diet. For this fare and accommodations, they were charged double the usual transportation fees because it was late-October and all the other ships had gone when they arrived.
Having only enough money for the regular charges, they were forced to sell themselves to the ship owner as indentured servants in order to pay for their transportation. Poorly nourished as they were and dreading the prospect of indentured servitude, the poor passengers were set upon by the crew at the crossing of the Tropic of Cancer. On threat of dragging the emigrants behind the ship with a rope, the sailors extorted the little property they had left.”
(The Highland Scots of North Carolina. Duane Meyer. North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, NC. 1968, pp. 16-18)