George Batty kept this daily journal as a long letter to his friends in England, as he voyaged from Liverpool to Montreal on the "Cleopatra" in 1854. Batty describes his very eventful journey in great detail and with significant humor, though he does not relate for posterity the reason for his visit to Canada. His adventures are vividly anecdotal. A drunken stowaway is discovered in the hold of the ship: "his lordship being informed that he is on his way to America gets into a rage and swears he will go back. he became raging Mad and stabbed one of the sailors with a big Knife. They tie him all fours to the foremast to face the Wind, where he spends the night calling for a Policeman." The ship encounters exceedingly rough storms: " Night comes on very rough again, and continues so several people get thrown clean out of bed by the rolling of the ship and the women scream and cry nearly all night never expecting to see morning." He expresses delight at icebergs: "...a day of sights and merriment on board on getting up in the morning we find we have Icebergs very near us and before 10 o'clock (AM) we are in the midst of some Hundreds the most beautiful sight ever seen. whole mountains of Ice which resemble old
castles... of white marble some of them are several miles round."Batty engagingly describes (and criticizes) his fellow passengers, expresses wonder at porpoises, whales, and Native American tribes, gives an account of a worship service on board, and relates his witty observations on "Yankees" in Montreal and Quebec. Though he finishes his daily account when he lands in Montreal on the "New Era," Batty adds an extensive description of living conditions in Montreal during the summer and winter, and writes anecdotes of frostbite, sleighrides, frozen rivers, and the fur and timber trades. An extraordinarily rich account (in a very readable hand), this item is available for further research in the Special Collections Reading Room.
