JOHN WILLIAM'S VOYAGE TO AMERICA

We may not know WHY our ancestor, Johann Wilhelm Rittershaus, left his home in Germany and journeyed to America, but we do know WHEN and HOW he came. According to the ship record, William left the northern port city of Bremen, Germany May 2, 1848 aboard the George Washington. I've tried to imagine what that trip was like for the 28-year-old who was leaving the ancestral homeland of his family who had deep, deep roots in the Barmen, Germany area. William would have paid about $16 for his steerage passage from Bremen to America. The voyage could not have been a lot of fun. It lasted six weeks. He surely knew many of his fellow passengers since they mostly came from the same area of Germany that he did. But the quarters were close and uncomfortable. There was not a lot to do. And six weeks is a long time.

When I was in Germany last fall, I visited a museum in the port city of Bremerhaven, which is about 50 miles (via the Weser River) north of Bremen. The Washington would have traveled through Bremerhaven on its way to New York. The museum showed what the German immigrants would have looked like as they stood on the dock with their belongings piled around them. Dressed in simple, peasant clothing, with their faces a mixture of eagerness and anxiety, these ghosts of our ancestors convey the hopefulness they were feeling about their new life. This museum also had reconstructions of the boats the immigrants traveled in. The one most similar to the Washington showed just how cramped the space was. The shared bunks housed 20 or so people, many of them coughing, crying and vomiting (which the museum highlighted via a soundtrack of the varied noises passengers would have been making). For William's voyage, there were 186 passengers most of whom were crammed into steerage for the six week voyage.

Notes included with the displays at the Bremerhaven museum explained that for hundreds of passengers, the cramped quarters in steerage were dining hall, dormitory and lounge in one. When the weather was good, the steerage passengers could spend time up on deck with music and dancing provided a welcome change. But, when storms rose at sea, the passengers had to leave the decks. For steerage passengers that could mean days without fresh air or daylight. Close quarters and poor sanitary facilities were conducive to disease. Spoiled food and bad drinking water only made matters worse. There was no doctor on board. It was not unusual for passengers to die on the voyage across the Atlantic.

What was the George Washington like? According to the "Palmer List of Merchant Vessels", the George Washington was built in 1822, probably in Killingsworth, Connecticut. According to Bremen records, it weighed in at 450 tons. From 1839 to 1849, it was owned by the Bremen firm of C.L. Brauer & Sohn. William's 1848 voyage was captained by Mathias Probst. Another source, "The Ships List" website, describes the George Washington as a 2,000 ton steamship. This ship was described as "the first American Atlantic liner and also one of the ugliest ships ever put afloat" (in Mail and Passenger Steamships of the Nineteenth Century). In June 1847, a review of the Washington's trip to Quebec claimed that she turned out to be slow and "rolled rather than steamed along." A letter in 1832 described the voyage across the Atlantic to New York on the George Washington as "a most delightful passage." The Washington was a paddle steamship. Her paddle wheels were apparently 39 feet in diameter. She had two boilers and three furnaces. Here's what she looked like:

Imagining William's six week trip to his new life only increases my admiration for my immigrant ancestor. It seems like it would have taken courage, fortitude and optimism to leave his family, friends and known life and endure the journey, first to Bremen and then across the ocean to the unknown. Whatever drove him to the extreme decision to make the journey to America, I appreciate the sacrifices he made to start his new life!