The Highland Scots of North Carolina

VOYAGES TO AMERICA

Voyage to America

In the last half of the eighteenth century, the migration of Highlanders to America proceeded in two major waves. The first, beginning in 1749, was stemmed in 1775 by the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. At the end of the war, a second wave surged toward the New World and continued to bring Highlanders through the first half of the nineteenth century. Since we are here concerned with the history of the Highlanders before the Revolution, our attention will be centered on the first wave of migration.

The two waves of Highland emigrants can be differentiated on the basis of leadership. From 1749 to 1775, the emigrant groups were organized and led by tacksmen who were themselves forced to leave the Highlands because of economic and population pressures. During the second wave, either the movements were spontaneous or they were the result of promotion by ship agents.

Before 1775, with few exceptions, the tacksman was the key to the emigration. Having made his decision to move, the tacksman placed a notice on the church door publicizing his plans and inquiring whether others in the parish desired to join him. In some instances, several tacksmen agreed to leave together and jointly published their intent. Sometimes a meeting was held for all those interested and the project was explained. Those who desired to join the venture signed an agreement and made a payment as token of their good faith. On one occasion 3,000 people joined such a group in a period of two days. The tacksman then traveled to a port city and contracted with a ship owner to transport the group. When transportation costs were determined, each passenger was asked to pay half of his fare so that the ship owner received half of his money in advance. All money transactions were made through the tacksman, who received a fee for his services.

The tacksmen had legitimate reasons for guiding Highland groups to America. Often tenants and tacksmen were related and these blood ties resulted in genuine concern for the tenants. Also, as was noted above, the tacksman earned a certain sum of money by organizing an emigration group. This money paid part or all of his own transportation costs. The tenants, meanwhile, agreed to accompany him, not because of the habit of obedience, but because America was popularly believed to be the land of promise or because a tacksman assured them employment in the New World.

For those who were emigrating, funds were obtained from the sale of stock and agricultural equipment. Tacksmen, who traditionally had larger herds, departed for America with larger sums of money. Accompanying the tacksmen and sharing the cost of transportation were those tenants who could secure sufficient funds to finance the voyage. The Highland Society at the turn of the century estimated that the average tenant could sell his stock and equipment for £10. Since the cost of transportation was usually about £3 10s. per adult and half that sum for children, the average tenant had enough money to secure passage for his wife, his two children, and himself. Cotters or subtenants could not migrate to America since, as day laborers, they had no property that could be converted into money.

The emigration movement reached its peak in the 1770’s. Wherever they went, Boswell and Johnson in 1773 found people contemplating emigration. The Reverend Alexander Pope in 1774 wrote that half of the people of Caithness would have left for America immediately, if they could have obtained shipping. The desire to migrate was reflected in the popular lyrics of the day and in ballads which proclaimed the glories of the New World. Farewell laments by emigrants were set to melodies and distributed from settlement to settlement. On the island of Skye, in 1774, the inhabitants performed a dance called “America.” “Each of the couples … successively whirls round in a circle, till all are in motion; and the dance seems intended to show how emigration catches, till a whole neighborhood is set afloat.” All ages were captured in this emigration frenzy. A company from Strathspey in Inverness included a woman of 83 years of age, on foot, with her son before her playing Tulluchgorum on his bag pipes; some of them had children of a month old, which the fathers carried on their backs in wooden baskets.

It is impossible to determine the size of Highland emigration to America in the years 1730 to 1775 with any accuracy. Existing periodical accounts and government records are woefully incomplete. The best figures may well be the contemporary estimates. John Knox, writing in 1784, estimated that 20,000 Highlanders emigrated between 1763 and 1773. Thomas Garnett suggested in his Tour, published in 1800, that 30,000 left Caledonia between 1773 and 1775.

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 in 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 the fact that an adequate supply of good food was aboard 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 a small compartment 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, moldly 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 these 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 unfortunate 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 attempted to extort the little property they still possessed.

A historian of the Highlands has described the outbreak of smallpox and dysentery aboard the ship Hector on the way to America from Ross. Eighteen children died and were buried at sea. Contrary to contract provisions, the food was both scanty and wretched. During the last days of the voyage, the passengers searched the ship’s refuse for edible morsels.

Thus, shipboard life, which was difficult at best for the mass of emigrants, was a terrifying experience for those on ships where contracts were not fulfilled. Even aboard James Hogg’s ship, the Bachelor, on which the passengers were provided with food rations of meat, meal, and biscuit twice as large as those on the Jamaica Packet and the Nancy, and were furnished barley, peas, and molasses as well, eleven of 234 passengers died on the first leg of the journey to the Shetland Islands.

When transportation conditions such as these were openly reported in the periodicals of the day, certainly some would-be emigrants were dissuaded by them. The emigration probably would have been larger had life aboard ship been less trying.

Once in America, the Highlanders, preferring to live among those who spoke their language and shared their customs, usually settled in groups. New York, Nova Scotia, and Georgia were the destinations of many emigrant groups, but the largest Highland settlement on the America continent was that established in North Carolina.