One of the things that fascinates me about working on a 19th-century ship, and which I love communicating to visitors, is the idea of the ship as a social bubble.
Though social hierarchies were nominally upheld, the lines that separated steerage passengers from their first-class counterparts, and offi cers from crew, were often blurred.
The ship was a transitional space where, during a voyage, social rules surrounding gender, class and race could be subverted before order was restored when a ship entered port.
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, the first novel in his Ibis Trilogy, exemplifies this beautifully. The book is set in the Indian Ocean in the mid-19th century, shortly before the outbreak of the opium wars.
The ship, which lends its name to the trilogy, is bound for Mauritius, transporting indentured labourers from Calcutta. On board, fate throws together a host of characters from a number of different social worlds.
During the course of the voyage a terrible storm and a mutiny inextricably link the stories of the widow of a Bengali opium farmer, the orphaned daughter of a French botanist, a disgraced raja, a free-born African-American mate and a young Bengali seaman.
Many of the events that run through the narrative – disputes among crew bordering on violence, emerging love affairs and the presence of stowaways, to mention a few – can also be found in the personal testimonies of the passengers and crews who travelled on the ss Great Britain.
Jude Holland is the interpretation manager at Brunel’s ss Great Britain in Bristol
Though social hierarchies were nominally upheld, the lines that separated steerage passengers from their first-class counterparts, and offi cers from crew, were often blurred.
The ship was a transitional space where, during a voyage, social rules surrounding gender, class and race could be subverted before order was restored when a ship entered port.
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, the first novel in his Ibis Trilogy, exemplifies this beautifully. The book is set in the Indian Ocean in the mid-19th century, shortly before the outbreak of the opium wars.
The ship, which lends its name to the trilogy, is bound for Mauritius, transporting indentured labourers from Calcutta. On board, fate throws together a host of characters from a number of different social worlds.
During the course of the voyage a terrible storm and a mutiny inextricably link the stories of the widow of a Bengali opium farmer, the orphaned daughter of a French botanist, a disgraced raja, a free-born African-American mate and a young Bengali seaman.
Many of the events that run through the narrative – disputes among crew bordering on violence, emerging love affairs and the presence of stowaways, to mention a few – can also be found in the personal testimonies of the passengers and crews who travelled on the ss Great Britain.
Jude Holland is the interpretation manager at Brunel’s ss Great Britain in Bristol
