Java emigration poster

Broadsheet offering emigration to South Australia via the Java. From a larger group of records and letters written by Cornish settlers in South Australia and Victoria to their families in England.

Leaving home for a foreign land would have sounded like the last thing anyone wanted to do, but with skilled labour in short supply, Mr. I. Latimer and the Colonization Commissioners wanted to sweeten the proposal as much as possible by offerring free passage. The intended benefactors of the free passage were agricultural labourers, shepheards, carpenters, blacksmiths, stone masons, and all persons connected with building. The new colony was about to be inundated with an instant workforce. However, if the emigrants survived the voyage, would they be able to adjust to the foreign South Australian landscape? 'The province of South Australia is a delightfully fertile and salubrious country, in every respect well adapted to the constitution of Englishmen, and is one of the most flourishing of all our colonies. It is well watered,-- and there have never been any complaints from the colonist of a want of this valuable element.'

The colony was perhaps well watered in Port Adelaide, which was the Java's destination, but it was likely the emigrants from this voyage would end up working and living further inland. With South Australia being the driest state in the continent, the advertisement was somewhat misleading.

The true betrayal turned out to be the conditions on board ship: 'That fine first-class teak-built ship the Java...This ship's accommodations are unusually spacious and lofty, and are so arranged as to insure the comfort of all passengers. She will carry two Surgeons, and two School masters, the latter of who will be regularly employed in teaching the emigrants and their children.'

According to documentation from ship board diaries in the Library's collection, the accommodations were severly cramped and the management of the ship in general was poor, with many cases of starvation and death reported.