B. THE CROSSING

A ship agent's contract with shipowners to carry emigrants, Bremen, 1833

Bek, "The Followers of Duden," pp. 42-46.

Bremen was the chief direct port of departure from Germany. The Bremen city government, unlike Liverpool, the Irish ports, and Hamburg, passed regulations for the protection of emigrants as early as 1832. Generally, however, these laws remained unobserved and, therefore, the services offered differed dramatically from those promised in the contract. The usual height of the steerage deck ranged from four to six feet. Steerage quarters five feet high often contained two tiers of berths. Below was the "orlop deck" — a hole to which no law applied. [1a]

Conditions under which J.D. Luedering in Bremen, the authorized ship's agent who has been appointed by the government to recede emigrants and to assist them to their ships, agrees to make contracts for the passage from Bremen to the United States of North America.

1) For the transportation of passengers only such ships are accepted as are provided with roomy steerage quarters and whose efficiency has been duly tested and investigated and vouched for by the insurance company prior to the beginning of the journey.

2) During the journey the passengers receive their board free, board such as it is customary to serve on board of ship, consisting of salt beef, salt and smoked bacon, shelled beans, green and yellow peas, groats, rice, farinaceous foods, potatoes, etc., everthing in sufficient quantity and well prepared; in addition to this—in the morning coffee or tea, toast, fresh water, etc. For the men a drink of brandy is provided in the morning. In case of sickness the patients receive appropriate food and necessary medicine, of which a sufficient supply is on board. In order that no want may arise during the journey, the above named supplies are taken in a superfluous quantity calculated sufficient for a journey of ninety days.

3) The ordinary traveling baggage of passengers is conveyed free of charge. Under the term “ordinary traveling baggage” is meant a trunk or chest of about twenty cubic feet content per passenger. In this matter only the size and not the weight of the chest is taken into consideration.

4) Passengers will find suitable bedsteads, but they must supply their own bedding or straw mattresses, as well as their own dishes, spoons, knives and forks.

5) The rate of steerage passage to Baltimore. New York, or Philadelphia is the following per individual:

Persons over twelve years of age 40 Thaler in gold. [1b]

Children from eight to twelve years 30 Thaler in gold.

Children from four to eight years old 20 Thaler in gold.

Children from one to four years 10 Thaler in gold.

Children from under one year of age 5 Thaler in gold.

Since however, according to an American to law, only a certain number of passengers may be transported on each steamer (for every five tons of the ship's displacement only two passengers and since children are estimated equal to adults in this matter, therefore it is assumed that under the above quoted rates for children their number will be such proportion to the number of adults that a sufficiently large average sum per head will be realized. [1c] The now customary sum, required of families or parties, amounts to thirty-five Thaler in gold per head, according to which only one child is allowed with three adults. If there are more children than can be apportioned according to the payment must be made. Families will therefore do well to combine with other adult persons whose fare is uniformly forty Thaler. I myself shall endeavor to make the passage of families as cheap as possible by securing combinations with other adults.

6) The age of children must be certified to by birth certificates, and every passenger must be provided with a passport to the foreign country.

7) In a few places in North America, especially m New York and Philadelphia, the government demands a poor-tax (Armen-Taxe) of immigrants upon their arrival. This amounts to a sum ranging from one to four Spanish Thaler or one and a half to five Thaler in gold. This fee passes under the term of Commutation money. All passengers sailing to any of these points must deposit this amount at the time they pay their fare.

The purpose of the undersigned is by no means to encourage emigration, but to assist those who have made up their minds to emigrate and to provide for them the best and at the same time the cheapest possible passage. This I am enabled to do since I am always sending suitable passenger ships to Baltimore, and also dispatch the regularly going packet ships to New York. I shall be glad to give further detailed information upon receipt of postage prepaid inquiries. Passengers are under no obligation to pay me any commission.

May 9,1833.

1a. Kapp, Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the State of New York, pp. 19-25.

1b. Forty thaler was approximately $16.00.

1c. The American law referred to here is the Act of March 2, 1819.

"If crosses and tombstones could be erected on the water . . . the whole route of the emigrant vessel from Europe to America would long since have assumed the appearance of crowded cemeteries"

Kapp, Immigration, pp. 19-25, 39-44.

Friedrich Kapp (1824-1884), journalist, historian, and New York state commissioner of emigration, 1867-1870, was born in Ham, Westphalia. Disappointed by the failure of the Revolution of 1848, he emigrated to New York in 1850. While practicing law in New York City, he wrote for newspapers and periodicals including the Nation, edited the New York Abendzeitung, and became an influential leader of the German community. After three years on the Board of Commissioners of Emigration he returned to Berlin in 1870, relinquished his American citizenship, and served as a member of the Reichstag from 1871 until 1884.

Thus the owner of the vessel had not the least concern or interest in the welfare or good treatment of the passengers; all he looked for 11 was the payment of the stipulated price for that part of the ship which he had let. The steerage passengers were simply additional and unwelcome freight; they had to follow the directions of the owner, and were subordinate to what he considered his more important interests. They had to wait for their departure as long as it pleased him, and had no right than to occupy the ten or twelve square feet which were allotted to them. To the owner, they were less than a box of goods, and handled with less care, as they did not break, nor, if injured, require to be paid for. The agents, in order to make the business lucrative, sent on board as many passengers as they could get hold of, without the smallest reference to the conveniences of the steerage, the number of berths, the separation of sexes, or anything, except their own immediate profit. Besides assigning a space, however small, to the emigrants, they had no responsibility and ran no risk whatever. There was no check to the overloading of the vessel. Even if it had more than double the number of passengers that it could accommodate, there was no authority to which the emigrants could apply for protection. The agents did just as they pleased. A vessel which was not good and safe enough to be used as a transport for goods and merchandise was, nevertheless, employed for the conveyance of passengers. Thus, for instance, the destruction of life by shipwrecks has been most appalling among the emigrants who have been enticed on board the worn-out vessels engaged in the Canadian timber trade; seventeen being shipwrecked in a single season in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and more than seven hundred lives lost.

To give an adequate idea of recent losses of human life on board of ill-provided, ill-ventilated vessels, it may be stated here that out of 98,105 poor Irish emigrants shipped to Canada by their landlords after the great famine of 1846, during the summer of 1847 there died 5,293 at sea, 8,072 at Gross Isle (Quarantine) and Quebec, and 7,000 in and above Montreal, making 20,365, besides those who afterwards perished whose number will never be ascertained. Thus the Lark reported at Quebec on August 12, 1847, from Sligo, sailed with 440 passengers, of whom 108 died on the passage and 150 were sick, almost all of whom died a short time after landing. The Virginius sailed with 496; 158 died on the passage, 186 were sick, and the remainder landed feeble and tottering; the captain, mates, and crew were all down. At that period, the ratio of the sick per one thousand was 30 on board British, 9 2/5 on American, and 8 3/5 on German vessels. Ship-fever and want of food were almost unheard of on board vessels from Northern Europe, and particularly those from Hamburg and Bremen.

The first law which prescribed the space to be allotted to each steerage passenger was that passed by Congress on March 2, 1819, according to which a ship was forbidden to carry more than two passengers for every five tons, Custom House measure. This law, however benevolent its purpose, proved insufficient; for it did not prohibit the orlop-deck, nor provide for proper ventilation or side-lights, nor deduct the freight-room and accommodations for the officers and first-class passengers from the computation of the total amount of tonnage. Thus a ship which measured 1,000 tons and had a steerage of only 500 tons, could nevertheless take steerage passengers for the whole tonnage, that is, 400 instead of 200. Nothing was said about the height of the steerage. It must always be borne in mind that the construction of ships for the express purpose of carrying passengers only began about the year 1830; that up to that time all space which could not be used for shipping merchandise was temporarily arranged for steerage passengers; that often at the last moment, a few days before going to sea, the superfluous room was sold to an agent, and that in those days a steerage five feet high was considered fully sufficient for making two tiers of beds along their sides. And the hole beneath this hole was called orlop- deck, and likewise used for the transport of passengers.

Although the most lucrative article of import, emigrants were treated with the least possible care, with the utmost disregard of decency and humanity. With rare exceptions, they were robbed and plundered, from the day of their departure to the moment of their arrival in their new homes, by almost every one with whom they came in contact. They received less consideration on the voyage than even trees in course of transplantation. They were treated worse than beasts, and less cared for than slaves, who, whatever their condition may be in other respects, represent more or less capital, and as valuable chattels, are sure to receive protection and assistance in case of danger or sickness. There seemed to be a secret league, a tacit conspiracy, on the part of all concerned in dealing with emigrants, to fleece and pluck them without mercy, and pass them from hand to hand as long as anything could be made out of them. The poor foreigners were virtually helpless against any sort of imposition and fraud. The thousands who died, or were killed, on the voyage, were thrown into the ocean with as little ceremony as old sacks or broken tools. If crosses and tombstones could be erected on the water as on the Western deserts, where they indicate the resting-places of white men killed by savages or by the elements, the whole route of the emigrant vessel from Europe to America would long since have assumed the appearance of crowded cemeteries. And, what is still worse, the sufferings of the emigrants seem destined to last for ever. The experience of one does not help the other, for the emigrants, after their arrival in America, disperse into all parts of the great continent. They seldom bring charges or make complaints, being satisfied that they will not be heard, or being eager to reach their new homes. Only here and there some victims tell of their ill-treatment, and it is almost exclusively upon their recitals, and upon the meagre official data, that we have to rely for a history of later emigration.

Emigrant ships from Ireland declared worse than those in African slave trade

Extract from the Montreal Advertiser, in Niles' Weekly Register, Sept. 27, 1834, pp.55-56.

We have frequently heard the character of emigrant ships from Ireland declared to be worse than that of those concerned in the slave trade of Africa; the account given by the passengers of the "Thomas Gelston," from Londonderry, substantiates the opinion.

The passengers by this vessel state the number, including children, to have been somewhere from 450 to 517. They were nine weeks on the passage, and suffered much from want of water and provisions. Besides two tiers of berths on the sides, the vessel was filled with a row of berths down the center, between which and the side berths there was only a passage of about three feet. The passengers were thus obliged to eat in their berths, each of which contained a great many persons, say five and upwards. In one were a man, his wife, his sister and five children; in another were six full-grown young women, while that above them contained five men, and the next one eight men.

Although these people landed safely at Grosse Isle, a great deal of sickness has broke out among them since. A part of them came up by the "Canadian Eagle" on Wednesday, from which about a dozen persons were taken to the cholera hospital soon after their arrival.

The death ship Leibnitz, 1868

Report of Commissioners Kapp and Bissinger to the Board of Commissioners of Emigration of New York, Jan. 21, 1868, in Kapp, Immigration, pp. 189-195.

The case of the ship Leibnitz demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the United States Emigrant Passengers Act of 1855. In January 1868, the commissioners rushed to inspect the ship after 105 of its 544 passengers had died on the voyage. In concluding their report the commissioners recommended a petition to Congress for legislation requiring: 1. The appointment of a physician or surgeon on all emigrant vessels with more than fifty passengers; 2. The elimination of the orlop-deck; 3. A more stringent rule for enforcing payment of the penalty for dead passengers; 4. The power of obtaining redress to be lodged in the hands of the parties injured — the emigrants themselves; 5. Summary proceedings for the recovery of damages.

Last summer, she went to Quebec with about seven hundred passengers, of whom she lost only a few on her passage; this time she left Hamburg, Nov. 2, 1867, Capt. H. F. Bornhold, lay at Cuxhaven, on account of head-winds, until the 11th, whereupon she took the southern course to New York. She went by the way of Madeira, down to the Tropics, 20th degree, and arrived in the Lower Bay on Jan. 11, 1868, after a passage of 61 days, or rather 70 days — at least, as far as the passengers are concerned, who were confined to the densely crowded steerage for that length of time.

The heat, for the period that they were in the lower latitudes, very often reached…94 degrees of Fahrenheit. Her passengers 544 in all—of whom 395 were adults, 103 children, and 46 infants — came principally from Mecklenburg, and proposed to settle as farmers and laborers in Illinois and Wisconsin; besides them, there were about 40 Prussians from Pomerania and Posen, and a few Saxons and Thuringians.

It is not proven by any fact, that the cholera (as has been alleged) raged or had raged in or near their homes when or before they left them. This statement appears to have been made by or in behalf of those who have an interest in throwing the origin of the sickness on its poor victims. Of these 544 German passengers, 105 died on the voyage, and three in port, making in all 108 deaths—leaving 436 surviving.

The first death occurred on Nov. 25th . . .The sickness did not abate until toward the end of December, and no new cases happened when the ship had again reached the northern latitudes; five children were born; during the voyage some families had died out entirely; of others, the fathers or mothers are gone; here, a husband had left a poor widow, with small children; and there, a husband had lost his wife. We spoke to some little boys and girls, who, when asked where were their parents, pointed to the ocean with sobs and tears, and cried, "Down there!"

Prior to our arrival on board, the ship had been cleansed and fumigated several times, but not sufficiently so to remove the dirt, which, in some places, covered the walls. Mr. Frederick Kassner, our able and experienced Boarding Officer, reports that he found the ship and the passengers in a most filthy condition, and that when boarding the Leibnitz, he hardly discovered a clean spot on the ladder, or on the ropes, where he could put his hands and feet. He does not remember to have seen anything like it within the last five years.

As to the interior of the vessel, the upper steerage is high and wide. All the spars, beams, and planks which were used for the construction of temporary berths had been removed. Except through two hatchways and two very small ventilators, it had no ventilation, and not a single window or bull's-eye was open during the voyage. In general, however, it was not worse than the average of the steerages of other emigrant ships; but the lower steerage, the so-called orlop-deck, is a perfect pest-hole, calculated to kill the healthiest man. It had been made a temporary room for the voyage by laying a tier of planks over the lower beams of the vessel, and they were so little supported that they shook when walking on them. The little light this orlop-deck received came through one of the hatchways of the upper-deck. Although the latter was open when we were on board, and although the ship was lying in the open sea, free from all sides, it was impossible to see anything at a distance of two or three feet. On our enquiring how this hole had been lighted during the voyage, we were told that some lanterns had been up there, but that on account of the foulness of the air, they could scarcely burn. It had, of course, much less than the upper-deck draft or ventilation, and was immediately over the keel, where the bilge-water collects, and adjoining part of the cargo, which consisted of wool and hides. And in this place about 120 passengers were crowded for 70 days, and for a greater part of the voyage in a tropical heat, with scanty rations and a very inadequate supply of water, and worse than all, suffering from the miasma below, above, and beside them, which of itself must create fever and pestilence!

The captain himself stated to us that the passengers refused to carry the excrements on deck, and that "the urine and ordure of the upper-steerage flowed down to the lower." As the main-deck was very difficult of access from the orlop-deck, the inmates of the latter often failed to go on deck even to attend to the calls of nature. There were only six water-closets for the accommodation of all the passengers.

All the passengers concur in the complaint that their provisions were short, partly rotten, and that, especially, the supply of water was insufficient, until they were approaching port.

The treatment of the passengers was heart less in the extreme. The sick passengers received the same food with the healthy, and high prices were exacted for all extras and comforts. A regular traffic in wine and beer, and liquors was carried on between the passengers on the one side and the steward and crew on the other. A man by the name of Frederick Hildebrand, from Wirsitz, in Posen, who lost two children, paid 35 Prussian thalers extra for beer and wine to sustain himself and his sick wife. A bottle of rum cost him one dollar; a bottle of bad wine even more.

When the first deaths occurred, the corpses were often suffered to remain in the steerage for full twenty-four hours. In some cases the bodies were covered with vermin before they were removed.

There was no physician on board. Although we found a large medicine-chest, it was not large enough for the many cases of sickness, and was, in fact, emptied after the first two weeks of the voyage.

The physicians above mentioned, to whose report we refer for particulars, most positively declare that it was not the Asiatic cholera, but intestinal and stomach catarrh (catarrh ventriculi et intestmorum), more or less severe, and contagious typhus, which killed the passengers. From what we saw and learned from the passengers, we likewise arrive at the conclusion that the shocking mortality on board the Leibnitz arose from want of good ventilation, cleanliness, suitable medical care, sufficient water, and wholesome food.

The present case is another instance of the mortality on board the Hamburg sailing-vessels, and increases their bad reputation. Of 917 passengers on board of two ships of the Sloman line, not less than 183 died within one month! As often as complaint has been made here, it has not induced them to make any improvement. It appears that the Hamburg authorities either did not care to examine the merits of the charges brought against their ships or that they were imposed upon by their officials. On the other hand, local interests, friendly feelings, family connections, and other personal considerations, usually prevailing in small political communities, seem to stand in the way of energetic administration of the police of emigrant ships, and of the removal of the several grievances.

In our opinion, it is of great importance for the interest of humanity, in which both Europe and this country are concerned, and as a matter of political economy, that the transportation of emigrants across the Atlantic to this port should be confined to steam-vessels, as they not only convey the passengers more comfortably and land them in better health, but, in consequence of the regularity and rapidity of the passage, save an immense amount of labor for their own benefit and that of this country.

We are sorry to say that our laws afford very inadequate relief for the punishment of these crimes against humanity, and that, in the majority of cases, the institution of legal proceedings for redress, and the prosecution of the guilty parties, is almost an impossibility.

Much of the suffering, disease, and death on board of emigrant ships could have been prevented, and a recurrence of such abhorrent scenes hereafter be avoided, by proper enactments of Congress, enforced by suitable penalties.

1. "The emigrant was utterly without protection of the law"

Testimony of Alderman George H. Purser in New York Assembly, "Report of the Select Committee to examine into the condition, business accounts, and management of the trusts under the charge of the Commissioner of Emigration," Assembly Doc. 34 (Albany, 1852),pp. 170-172.

The state of New York required masters of vessels to post a bond of $300 for each alien passenger who was a potential public charge. Shipmasters usually transferred the responsibility for indemnifying passengers to brokers, who abused the system. To avoid forfeiting bond money they placed sick or destitute immigrants in private hospitals and poorhouses maintained especially for this purpose.

…With the gradual but vast increase of emigration from 1843 to 1846, the competition in this [bond-brokerage] business increased, while it was conducted naturally with less humanity. In 184"5, 78,788 emigrant passengers arrived at the port of New York, of which 71,068 were bonded, and in 1846 about 110,000 arrived, of which 100,000 were bonded, the aggregate bonds taken amounting to $56,636,400. In 1846, within seven months, one passenger agent gave bonds to the extent of $3,360,600, who afterwards failed and absconded, and was very recently a prisoner in England. The proprietors of these establishments were always interested in giving insufficient and indifferent food and accommodation. In all cases their profits were measured by this economy, and in some instances when they had made a bad speculation in relation to a ship's entire passengers, cruelty, evasion, and neglect were resorted to as the only means by which they could escape bankruptcy. Under this system, the emigrant was utterly without protection of the law, the hopeless victim of private rapacity.

If a woman and helpless children in a starving condition applied to the alms house, and they appeared to be bonded passengers, all aid was refused. If they turned their weary steps to the counting house of the merchant who had actually bonded them, they were unceremoniously referred to some passenger agent, or the office of the proprietor of some emigrant hospital or poor house, where they almost universally received abuse, and too frequently denial as well as insult.

The provision made for the sick in these miscalled hospitals was wholly inadequate. The buildings employed were usually selected in the suburbs of the city, rather for economy than for adaptation, and almost necessarily deficient in ventilation. In a two-story dwelling house at Bloomingdale, 46 by 40 feet, the proprietors admitted that 120 patients had been crowded, though several of the rooms were exclusively occupied by the officers and servants. The food, clothing and attendance, insufficient; the sick and convalescent, the old and young huddled together, and police arrangements, so essential in such establishments to maintain health and morals, utterly disregarded ...

One peculiar and deplorable result was the neglect of the children in these establishments; they were permitted to wander where they pleased; they were placed under no special government; never in any instance received the elements of education, but were exposed to influences and language calculated to corrupt and degrade them. Frequently so scantily provided with food that they were constrained to go out begging with their parents, and the neighbors informed me that they often furnished them with meals; on many occasions they were separated from their parents and handed over to employers from distant locations with the probability of never seeing their friends again.

Another evil was the want of reliability in the information given in relation to labor, the object was to get rid of them and they were often induced to accept cheap conveyances to distant States with the expectation of employment where none could be obtained. In one instance 500 Germans, chiefly aged paupers and young children, were shipped by subscription from their homes and arrived in a fearful condition of suffering and destitution; the passenger agents engaged lighters to take them to Albany, but being alderman of the ward in which the ship landed them, I interfered, and they were removed in wagons to the alms house where many died. The city eventually received 4 or 5 dollars per head from the shipping merchants as a commutation fee…

2. Abuse and death of children in the Topscott Poor-House and Hospital

New York City, Board of Assistant Aldermen, "Visit of the Committee of the Board of Assistant Aldermen to the Topscott Poor-House and Hospital, 1846," Doc. no. 20, Proceedings and Documents 1845-1846, XXVII.

The Topscott Poor-House and Hospital was established by the firm of W. & S. T. Topscott, passenger-brokers in New York. It was used as a dumping place for sick and indigent immigrants.

Margaret Bertram, an inmate for nearly twelve months in the institution, "recollects that two children died there. The mother of one died at sea; no particular nurse took charge of it; several of us had milk, perhaps four or five, and each took it by turns; it died of summer complaint. The other infant died five weeks since; it was brought here by a woman not its mother; it was a weakly child; we suckled it turn and turn about; no particular person attended to it; several now in the New York Almshouse nursed it."

Fannie Mitchell: "That the child referred to by Margaret Bertram was sent over from Topscott's office, and lived about a fortnight afterwards; that it came on Saturday, and Mr. Topscott called on the Sunday following, and, an objection being made to nurse the infant, declared that any one who refused should be turned right out of doors. Under such circumstances the women consented, and took it turn and turn about."

Ann Doyle: "While I was there, some of the women induced a man who was cutting up some meat to give them a few slices, one of the women alleging that she wanted it for a sick child. They obtained about a pound, and Miller (the superintendent) discovered it in the evening, and went and informed Topscott, who came the next morning and turned the women out: one had the sick child before mentioned."

3. Exploitation of the immigrant

"Walks among the New-York poor: Emigrants and emigrants' children," New-York Daily Times, June 28,1853.

If you would see, for a moment, one of the streams in the great current which is always pouring through New-York, go down a Summer afternoon to the North River wharves. A German emigrant ship has just made fast. The long wharf is crowded full of trucks and carts, and drays, waiting for the passengers. As you approach the end you come upon a noisy crowd of strange faces and stranger costumes. Moustached peasants in Tyrolese hats are arguing in unintelligible English with truck-drivers; runners from the German hotels are pulling the confused women hither and thither; peasant girls with bare heads, and the rich-flushed, nut brown faces you never see here, are carrying huge bundles to the heaps of baggage; children in doublets and hose, and queer little caps, are mounted on the trunks, or swung off amid the laughter of the crowd with ropes from the ship's sides. Some are just welcoming an old face, so dear in the strange land, some are letting down the huge trunks, some swearing in very genuine low Dutch, at the endless noise and distractions. They bear the plain marks of the Old World. Healthy, stout frames, and low, degraded faces with many stamps of inferiority; dependence, servitude on them; little graces of costume too — a colored headdress or a fringed coat—which never could have originated here; and now and then a sweet face, with the rich bloom and the dancing blue eye, that seem to reflect the very glow and beauty of the vine hills of the Rhine.

It is a new world to them — oppression, bitter poverty behind — here, hope, freedom, and a chance for work, and food to the laboring man. They may have the vaguest ideas of it all—still, to the dullest some thoughts come of the New Free World.

Every one in the great City, who can make a living from the freshly arrived immigrant, is here. Runners, sharpers, peddlers, agents of boarding-houses, of forwarding-offices, and worst of all, of the houses where many a simple emigrant girl, far from friends and home, comes to a sad end. Very many of these, who are now arriving, will start to-morrow at once for the far West. Some will hang about the German boarding-houses in Greenwich-street, each day losing their money, their children getting out of their control, until they at last seek a refuge in Ward's Island, or settle down in the Eleventh Ward, to add to the great mass of foreign poverty and misery there gathered. From there, you shall see their children sallying out these summer mornings, as soon as light, to do the petty work of the City, rag-picking, bone-gathering, selling chips, peddling, by the thousands, radishes, strawberries and fruit through every street.

Federal legislation for the protection of immigrants aboard ships, 1860

U.S. Congress, "An Act to Amend an Act entitled, 'An Act to regulate the Carriage of Passengers in Steamships and Other Vessels,' approved March third, eighteen hundred and fifty-five, for the better Protection of Female Passengers, and Other Purposes," U.S. Statutes at Large, VIII, 36th Cone., 1^st Sess. (1860), 3-4.

Every master or other officer, seaman or other person employed on board of any ship or vessel of the United States, who shall, during the voyage of such ship or vessel, under promise of marriage, or by threats, or by the exercise of his authority, or by solicitation, or the making of gifts or presents, seduce and have illicit connexion with any female passenger, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction, shall be punished by imprisonment for a term not exceeding twelve months, or by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars: Provided, That the subsequent intermarriage of the parties seducing and seduced may be pleaded in bar of a conviction.

. . . Neither the officers, seamen, or other persons employed on board of any ship or vessel bringing emigrant passengers to the United States, or any of them, shall visit or frequent any part of such ship or vessel assigned to emigrant passengers, except by the direction or permission of the master or commander of such ship or vessel first made or given for such purpose; and every officer, seaman, or other person employed on board of such ship or vessel, who shall violate the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall forfeit to the said ship or vessel his wages for the voyage of the said ship or vessel during which the said offence has been committed. Any master or commander who shall direct or permit any officer or seaman or other employed on board of such ship or vessel, to visit or frequent any part of said ship or vessel assigned to emigrant passengers, except for the purpose of doing or performing some necessary act or duty as an officer, seaman, or person employed on board of said ship or vessel, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, on conviction thereof, be punished by a fine of fifty dollars for each occasion on which he shall so direct or permit the provisions of this section to be violated by any officer, seaman, or other person employed on board of such ship or vessel.

... It shall be the duty of the master or commander of every ship or vessel bringing emigrant passengers to the United States to post a written or printed notice in the English, French, and German languages containing the provisions of the second section of this act in a conspicuous place on the forecastle, and in the several parts of the said ship or vessel assigned to emigrant passengers, to do, he shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars.

... In case of the conviction of any person under the provisions of the first section of this act, and the imposition of a fine, the court sentencing the person so convicted may, in its discretion, by an order to be entered on its minutes, direct the amount of the fine when collected, to be paid for the use or benefit of the female seduced, or her child or children, if any.

. . . No conviction shall be had under the provisions of this act on the testimony of the female seduced uncorroborated by other evidences, nor unless the indictment shall be found within one year after the arrival of the ship or vessel at the port for which she was destined when the offence was committed.

        APPROVED, March 24, 1860.