It was the passengers on the barque Indian and their complaints who essentially caused The Passenger Act of 1842 to be changed.

There are several sections of The Passenger Act this section below deals with regulations to be observed on board passenger ships.


Issued by the Queen in Council : -

1. All passengers who shall not be prevented by sickness, or other sufficient cause, to be determined by the surgeon, or in ships carrying no surgeon by the master, shall rise not later than 7 o'clock a.m., at which hour the fires shall be lighted.

2. It shall be the duty of the cook, appointed under the twenty-sixth section of the said "Passengers' Act, one thousand eight hundred and forty-nine," to light the fires and to take care that they be kept alight during the day, and also to take care that each passenger, or family of passengers, shall have the use of the fireplace at the proper hours, in an order to be fixed by the master.

3. When the passengers are dressed their beds shall be rolled up.

4. The decks, including the space under the bottom of the berths, shall be swept before breakfast, and all dirt thrown overboard.

5. The breakfast hour shall be from eight to nine o'clock am.; provided that, before the commencement of breakfast, all the emigrants, except as herein before excepted, be out of bed and dressed, and that the beds have been rolled up, and the deck on which the emigrants live properly swept.

6. The deck shall further be swept after every meal, and, after breakfast is concluded, shall be also dry holy-stoned or scraped. This duty, as well as that of cleaning the ladders, hospitals, and round-houses, shall be performed by a party taken in rotation from the adult males above fourteen, in the proportion of five to every one hundred emigrants, and who shall be considered as sweepers for the day. But the single women shall per- form this duty in their own compartment, where a separate compartment is allotted to them,
and the occupant of each berth shall see that his own berth is well brushed out.

7. Dinner shall commence at one o'clock p.m. and supper at six p.m

8. The fires shall be extinguished at seven p.m., unless otherwise directed by the master, or required for the use of the sick, and the emigrants shall be in their berths at ten o'clock p.m. except under the permission or authority of the surgeon; or if there be no surgeon, of the master.

9. Three safety lamps shall be lit at dusk, and kept burning till ten o'clock p.m.; after which hour,
two of the lamps may be extinguished one being nevertheless kept burning at the main hatchway all night.

10. No naked light shall be allowed at any time or on any account.

11. The scuttles and stemports, if any, shall, weather permitting, be opened at seven o'clock, a.m.
and kept open till ten o'clock p.m.; and the hatches shall be kept open whenever the weather permits.

12. The coppers and cooking utensils shall be cleaned every day.

13. The beds shall be well shaken and aired on deck at least twice a week.

14. The bottom boards of the berths, if not fixtures, shall be removed and dry-scrubbed, and taken on deck
at least twice a week.

19. A space of deck-room shall be apportioned for a hospital, not less, for vessels carrying
one hundred passengers, than forty-eight superficial feet, with two or four bed-berths erected therein;
nor less for vessels carrying two hundred or more passengers, than one hundred and twenty superficial feet,
with six bed-berths therein.

16. Two days in the week shall be appointed by the master as washing days; but no washing or drying of clothes shall on any account be permitted between decks.

17. On Sunday mornings the passengers shall be mustered at ten o'clock a.m. and will be expected
to appear in clean and decent apparel. The Lord's Day shall be observed as religiously as
circumstances will admit.

18. No spirits or gunpowder shall be taken on board by any passenger: and if either of
those articles be discovered in the possession of a passenger, it shall be taken into
the custody of the master during the voyage, and not returned to the passenger until
he is on the point of disembarking.

19. No loose hay or straw shall be allowed below for any purpose.

20. No smoking shall be allowed between decks.

21. All gambling, fighting, riotous or quarrelsome behaviour, swearing and violent language,
shall be at once put a stop to. Swords and other offensive weapons shall, as soon as the passengers embark,
be placed in the custody of the master.

22. No sailors shall be allowed to remain on the passenger deck, among the passengers, except on duty.

23. No passenger shall go to the ship's cookhouse, without special permission from the master, nor remain in the forecastle among the sailors on any account.

24. In vessels not expressly required by the said "Passengers'Act, 1849," to have on board such ventilating apparatus as therein mentioned, such other provision shall be made for ventilation as shall be required, by the emigration officer, at the port of embarkation, or in his absence by the officers of customs.

25. And to prevent all doubts in the construction of this Order in Council, it is hereby further ordered that the terms "United Kingdom" and "Passenger Ship" shall herein have the same significations as are assigned to them respectively in the said "Passengers' Act, one thousand eight hundred and forty-nine."
And the Right Honorable Earl Grey, one of Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, is to give the necessary directions herein accordingly.

WM. L. BATHURST.


Electronically translated text taken from The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper issued on Wednesday 11 March 1850. Transcribed and corrected on the 8 January 2012 by janilye
Also, for your interest, I have added Post World War Two migrant ships and in particular the FAIRSEA.
From Museum Victoria and for other information on Immigration, Naturalisation &c. National Archives with their online index.

The photograph below Scene onboard an Australian Emigration Ship. taken from an Australian Newspaper 20 January 1849