And then, a couple of years ago, I attended a kitchen party in New Brunswick, where I learned all about the warm and lively Acadian culture, and so I couldn’t resist giving Louis, the stagecoach driver, an Acadian heritage.
The Vancouver Maritime Museum featured an art installation in 2019 called The Girls Are Coming! It was a wonderfully evocative artistic interpretation of the story of the brideships—of which the Tynemouth was just one of three ships—and the women involved. Most of the news articles about the exhibit emphasized how little the story is widely known.
In the scene that takes place in the London Tavern, Charlotte is eager to understand why women are being encouraged to emigrate. I have paraphrased some of the real speeches given that day to show the prevailing concerns of the time. Prostitution, racial intermarriage, the need for English families to bolster Britain’s claim to the land, and Dickens’s concern for the lives of impoverished women are all brought forward. What I did not mention was the other prevailing worry of the day, homosexuality. While I did not introduce this into the narrative as I was quite certain it would not have been spoken of in polite society, the clergy’s desire to stamp out what they considered to be immoral sexual activity was a behind-the-scenes driver for the resettlement scheme.
During the meeting, Charlotte ruminates on whether those who immigrate to the colony will have better futures. In spite of her doubts, history has proven that many of the brides not only led more fulfilling and financially sound lives but they also left lasting legacies, which I soon discovered.
Most days when I’m in Vancouver, I take my chocolate Labrador, August, out for a walk and pass Hastings Mill Park, home of the oldest building in the city. I have passed this building countless times and only discovered the connection to the brideships while writing this piece. One of the brideship women, Emma Alexander, née Tummage, had been a domestic servant before emigrating from England on the Tynemouth to Victoria. She married and moved to Vancouver. Her husband, Richard Alexander, was made manager of the Hastings Mill store and built her a fine house nearby. Over the years, Emma and Richard acquired land throughout the city and eventually became two of Vancouver’s most prominent citizens. One of the only structures to survive the Vancouver fire of 1886, the Hastings Mill store was barged to its current site in 1931 from nearby Burrard Inlet and made into a museum.
Emma Lazenby, one of the emigrant women in the novel, was a real person, but in fact she travelled on another brideship, the Robert Lowe. Emma had seen much misery in England due to the hardships of Lancashire cotton mills and the English Poor Laws—an unsuccessful social assistance program—that led to high rates of alcoholism in northern England, which led her to become a Methodist and an advocate for temperance. In Victoria, she married David Spencer, a Welshman who shared her views. Emma worked hard to establish a shelter for destitute women while raising thirteen children. Her husband established Spencer’s Department Store, became wealthy, and built a mansion for them near Governor Douglas’s residence.
Another emigrant woman, twenty-year-old Jane Anne Saunders, got a job as a domestic soon after the Tynemouth arrived and quickly earned a reputation as a hard worker. She married a failed gold miner, Samuel Nesbitt. Together, they established a very successful bakery and eventually built Erin Hall, an elegant manor house overlooking the ocean.
Margaret Faussett started her life in Victoria as a governess but soon married a teacher, John Jessop. She also became a teacher and, with her husband, she championed a new public education system that would be nonsectarian. Their proposal for the first Public School Act was accepted by the government. As a result, and contrary to the education system in England, British Columbian schools are free and open to all.
These were just some of the stories that I discovered in my research, and while little is known about many of the women, I feel optimistic that, by and large, the women had much better lives than they could have had in England.
I didn’t intend that my novel be an exact portrayal of true incidents, but rather that those events inspire and inform the narrative. Other than the meeting in the London Tavern, all that takes place in part one is fiction, but part two is a blend of fact and fiction. I made the Tynemouth much grander than she was in real life in order to incorporate the drama that unfolds among the first-class passengers. Still, readers might be surprised to learn that the actual voyage was much more hellish than Charlotte’s, with two mutinies by the seamen, one of which resulted in a fight between passengers and crew where Captain Hellyer was injured. There were a few big storms, with the worst said to have been hurricane force, causing the ship to very nearly sink.
My depiction of the colonies in part three is mostly true to time and place, and some scenes are based on stories that were widely reported at the time. There was a wild reception for the emigrant women upon arrival in Victoria, and a man named Mr. Pioneer really did propose to one of the brideship women by thrusting a handful of money towards her for a splendid gown and wedding. Apparently theirs was a long and happy union. The story of the two doctors who shot each other in a drunken dispute is also said to be true. Having found diary excerpts written by Dr. Walter Cheadle of
