‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz.
Seven-and-a-half hours: the 2025 travel time from Liverpool, UK to New York City (with a layover). Seven weeks (plus trial and error of an additional two weeks): the 1844 transit time, along the same route, for New Canaan resident David Ogden. His harrowing journey was chronicled by historian David Finnie in the 1967 Annual published by the New Canaan Historical Society.
From 1837 to 1844 David Ogden, (1811-1845), born in Fairfield, Connecticut, served as the Rector of St. Mark’s in New Canaan, a time in which he endured personal tragedies including the deaths of his wife and infant son. Suffering from tuberculosis, Ogden resolved to travel to Europe in search of health, and he withstood the remarkable yet trying journey home before passing away in 1845 – six months after coming ashore.
Ogden initially boarded “Remittance” where “The ship was literally alive with human beings so thick that when they were all on deck it was impossible to move around… [it] rolled and pitched a good deal, but not enough to overcome the whiskey of the Irish… they were dancing on deck and below, there being several flutes and violins. ‘Oh,’ says one, ‘I have not eat [sic] anything for two weeks for the joy of going to America.’ ”
The sea soon proved intolerable for the “Remittance” as waves breached the deck, tore the sails to shreds, tumbled the mast, and strewed luggage and passenger provisions about. Once in port, Ogden had the ability to swap ships, though the Irish, who were primarily in steerage, “must go on broken-down Remittance or lose their money.”
Ogden then boarded the “Kalamazoo,” similarly crowded with more than 300 passengers. Over the course of the journey, he witnessed theft, rebellion, injury, childbirth, disease, and hunger. According to Ogden, “the Capt has to exercise all the offices of judge and jury, lawyer, doctor, priest and surgeon.” Despite some quick fixes on the part of the Captain, Ogden thought “it is a barbarous custom to go to sea with such a number of human beings as we have without a well-bred physician, for his services are required every hour of the day. The law of the land ought to compel it.”
The “Kalamazoo” was specifically plagued by medical emergencies due to simple life and work aboard a ship. Sailors suffered torn lips and lost teeth from cable injuries and, in sudden pitches of the ships, a fall some 70 feet, from top of sail to deck, a crash against the railing of the main mast, and a break in an Irishman’s arm. In response to these injuries the captain displayed considerable skill in dressing wounds, offering the 19th century practice of bloodletting, moving bone in place, splinting and binding, and alleviating injuries in what Ogden termed “miraculous preservations.”
The mercurial sea was never more so highlighted than with a pitch that “almost threw [Ogden] from his berth” and water knee-deep that inundated the deck at the suggestion of a possible leak. Remarkably, “Kalamazoo’s” sailors were able to deter catastrophe.
The “Kalamazoo” advanced just 96 miles in one week with “constant head winds, sudden squalls and dreadful seas.” To the dismay of the Captain, A British vessel passed by who had departed Liverpool 14 days following the “Kalamazoo”; “she had taken a southern passage and had escaped all the weather we experienced.”
Dissimilar from the instantaneous communication which we enjoy, or do not enjoy, today, the “Kalamazoo’s” inhabitants were unaware of any happenings on land and jumped at the opportunity to consume newspapers brought onboard by a pilot once nearing New York. According to Ogden, “We read until about 2 o’clock and then turned in to dream of the news we had heard.”
Ogden then noted, “We [sighted] the land and all were wide awake; the passengers particularly to see our American shores which were to be their future homes for lives.”
By 1850 New Canaan municipal records list 106 Ireland-born persons out of a total population of 2600, some of whom must have arrived on ships not unlike the “Kalamazoo.” Through their resolve to endure a journey likely marked by disease, crime, filth or hunger, these people, and many of their descendants, succeeded in making New Canaan home and contributed greatly to the life of the town over the years.