text: On July 2 of that year, Pease checked out of the Revere House in Boston and boarded a steamship bound for Liverpool, returning home after a three-month sojourn visiting America's fashionable resorts in Saratoga Springs, Niagara Falls, and Newport.1 While still at sea ten days later, Pease wrote a cursory note by each breakfast item, recording which dishes were available and what he thought of them. His comments seem to reflect the psychological state of someone in the final stages of a transatlantic voyage. Although now forgotten, such feelings were well known to passengers at the time.
  The British and North American Royal Steam-Packet Company, later known as the Cunard Line, had a reputation for safety and reliability. Luxurious accommodations and fancy cuisine were of secondary importance. The dishes on its daily menus were described in simple terms, often using the old-fashioned abbreviation "Do." for ditto. The breakfast dishes and supper pastries were printed on the standardized forms in advance; the dinner entrees were written in each day under seventeen generic categories—soups, fish, beef, mutton, lamb, veal, pork, pigs, turkeys, geese, ducks, fowls, currie, stews, fricassé, made dishes, and calves' heads. On this voyage in 1856, the steward routinely crossed out the entire pastry section and inscribed the desserts that were available. (The 4¾- x 15½-inch format requires that each menu be shown in two scans.)
  Pease's comments about breakfast are shown on the menu below. The dishes are succinctly described as bad, not bad, and pretty good. Interestingly, over half of the dishes were not available that day. Unlike the pastries, which the steward dutifully crossed out, these items were still on the menu even though supplies had run out.
  Perhaps the reason Pease felt compelled to scribble down these observations was related to the cycle of life aboard ship. In Transatlantic, historian Stephen Fox notes that passengers typically went through five distinct phases during the transatlantic voyages of the nineteenth century. "The first day or two of steaming might go quite smoothly, to the relief of the passengers, thus provoking the most cheerful expectations for the rest of the voyage," recounts Fox. The second phase "began when the ship stopped hugging the shore and steamed out to sea…Many steeled themselves for the grim struggle not to surrender to the stalking, progressive discomfort they could feel rising within (as they slid) from queasiness into misery toward nausea…For most passengers, the worst ordeals lifted after a few days." During the long third phase, the passengers settled into a routine, an enforced vacation where they especially looked forward eating and drinking, reportedly their favorite activities aboard ship. The first three phases induced successive moods of curiosity, misery, and relief.
  During the brief fourth phase, "the limited diversions of the passage no longer looked interesting. The constant annoyances became more intolerable. Now a feeling of restless melancholy prevailed. Each day felt exactly like the last, and the next." Indeed, Pease seems to express the feelings of someone who has grown weary of the voyage. Happily, the ship approached land the next day. It was in this final stage that the waves usually subsided, prompting passengers to put on their best clothes and go on deck. "The last day—depending on ocean and weather—might turn into a playful lark…"2
  1. Henry Pease (1807-1881), member of the Quaker Pease family of Darlington, UK, and director of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, founded the seaside resort Saltburn by the Sea (including its famous Zetland Hotel) in North Yorkshire in 1861.
  2. Stephen Fox, Transatlantic: Samuel Cunard, Isambard Brunel, and the Great Atlantic Steamships, New York (2003).