By Lauren Peterson, University of California, Davis
lspeterson@ucdavis.edu
In Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (1857), Mary Seacole hauntingly describes the industrialisation of Jamaica and Panama. Seacole is also notably attentive to widespread illness in both locations. It is only when reading her memoir through a specifically eco-Gothic lens, however, that we realise the extent to which her depictions of disease go hand in hand with her depictions of steam power.
In a manner eerily akin to the current coronavirus pandemic—with variants rapidly spreading through high-speed travel and subsequent attempts at contact tracing—Seacole portrays cholera in the Caribbean as an invisible, spectral entity that spreads swiftly through steam-powered vessels, particularly steamers and the railway. As Seacole documents in the 1850s, by the time an outbreak becomes visible, the travellers have already left, whisked away by boat or train, and so the disease appears like a ghostly trace of those who had spent little time at the previous location.
Seacole’s autobiographical narrative may not at first appear to address the industrial scenes of Jamaica and Panama; however, her references to steam make the industrial backdrop of her narrative clear, as she alludes to the frequent arrival of steamboats full of travellers who spread disease. Seacole first describes this phenomenon in Jamaica: “In the year 1850,” Seacole explains in her second chapter, “the cholera swept over the island of Jamaica with terrible force. Our idea—perhaps an unfounded one—was, that a steamer from New Orleans was the means of introducing it into the island” (16-17). Even though there is some room to doubt the source of cholera—”perhaps an unfounded” idea—Seacole includes this passage at the time of her memoir’s publication, years after she made this observation. Seacole’s use of metonymy—”a steamer … was the means”—places emphasis on the steam power used in travelling and bringing disease to Jamaica.
Steamers likewise bring disease to Panama, and when Seacole first witnesses this outbreak of cholera, she uses spectral language immediately. Seacole describes the sick at Panama’s Navy Bay as “ghostly and wraith-like,” and then she gathers crucial information from witnesses: “According to all accounts,” Seacole finds “fever and ague” were rapidly taking over the area (18). She personifies both the fever and the ague, explaining that they “were having it all their own way at Navy Bay” (18). The illness is spectral and endowed with human qualities, and as Seacole continues to clarify, this language best captures a disease like cholera, which was difficult to trace in this newly steam-powered landscape.
When Seacole rides the newly constructed rail through the Isthmus of Panama, she further explains the mechanics of how steam power contributes to outbreaks, and here she again uses spectral language. Seacole notes that Americans—who first landed at Navy Bay on steamers and were now quickly crossing the isthmus by rail to join the Gold Rush—leave a path of disease behind them. In Cruces, Seacole makes this observation: “But it was destined that I should not be long in Cruces before my medicinal skill and knowledge were put to the test. Before the passengers for Panama [City] had been many days gone, it was found that they had left one of their number behind them, and that one—the cholera” (29). The Americans had left for Panama City before those in Cruces became sick, and the power of the new rail had allowed them to do this. In an earlier description of the new railroad, Seacole explains: “iron and steam, twin giants subdued to man’s will, have put a girdle over rocks and rivers” (18). As the passengers speedily cross this terrain, those passengers who are sick leave a trail of illness behind them. The diseases left behind are mere traces of the travellers themselves—a personified disease that was “one of their number,” a ghostly apparition much like the wraiths at Navy Bay (29).
Seacole’s spectral language also vividly depicts the devastating effects of cholera, where those suffering became shadows of their prior selves: “Generally speaking,” Seacole explains, “the cholera showed premonitory symptoms; such as giddiness, sickness, diarrhœa, or sunken eyes and distressed look; but sometimes the substance followed its forecoming shadow so quickly, and the crisis was so rapid, that there was no time to apply any remedies” (30). The sick individuals in Cruces have become so dehydrated that their appearance—the “sunken eyes,” in particular—mirrors Seacole’s prior description of the “ghostly and wraithlike” individuals at the wharf. Describing one cholera victim, Seacole explains, “the face became of an indigo tint” (30). In cholera patients, this deep blue colour reveals a critical moment of the patient’s dehydration, where the blood becomes starved of oxygen, which explains why cholera famously became known as “the blue death” (Morris 14). Again, Seacole’s spectral language shows her close observation and thorough documentation of disease.
As Jessica Howell argues, Seacole’s first-hand experiences contributed to her ability to effectively treat her patients: “Seacole also documents those skills by narrating her confident application of remedies and medicines” (45). Her success with patients in Jamaica, Panama, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, arose from witnessing the mechanics of communicable disease and the causes of outbreaks. When Seacole explains that cholera is contagious, she contrasts her view with the current, prevailing theory—the theory of “the faculty,” an undefined group: “the faculty have not yet come to the conclusion that the cholera is contagious,” Seacole suggests, “and the poor Cruces folks did not hesitate to say that this new and terrible plague had been a fellow-traveller with the Americans from New Orleans or some other of its favoured haunts” (29). Seacole again personifies cholera as a spectre with its own “favoured haunts,” and this spectral language captures the nearly invisible path that the disease had taken.
These ill passengers from New Orleans who contribute to Panama’s outbreaks include American slaveholders. At Panama’s waterfronts, scenes of ongoing slavery haunt Seacole. She explains that the wharf has a “large crowd” of Americans, who are “always uncomfortable in the company of coloured people, and very often show this feeling in stronger ways than by sour looks and rude words” (21). Seacole then states her relation to those enslaved in the United States and those who had been enslaved by the British, asserting that she has grown “impatient” with Americans’ “airs of superiority”: “I have a few shades of deeper brown upon my skin,” she states, “which shows me related—and I am proud of the relationship—to those poor mortals whom you once held enslaved, and whose bodies America still owns” (21). Seacole had closely observed numerous American slaveholders, since “Americans crossed the Isthmus, accompanied by their slaves” (52).
At the waterfront of Panama’s Gorgona, Seacole witnesses one such American who was also sick. She was a particularly “vicious” woman, who “fell ill at Gorgona, and was left behind by her companions under the charge of a young negro, her slave, whom she treated most inhumanly, as was evinced by the poor girl’s frequent scream when under the lash” (52). When a local magistrate becomes involved and tells the enslaved woman that “she is free,” the American slaveholder threatens her, saying that she will harm her young child in New Orleans if she accepts the magistrate’s offer (53). Seacole convinces the enslaved woman to take this risk, but Seacole is also left guessing what will happen to the child. The story then ends abruptly, since the American slaveholder leaves quickly by rail “into the interior of the country” (53). Seacole implies that the woman left in a hurry because of her interactions with the magistrate, and so this woman is most likely still sick as she boards the train; yet another ill American speedily spreading disease in Panama.
After months away, Seacole returns to find both Jamaica and Panama still full of spectres, noting that Panama’s Navy Bay is “but little altered” in terms of its cholera outbreak (61). The speed of travel, especially through Panama, would only increase in the years after Seacole published her memoir, as the landscape would monumentally transform again through steam power in the following decades. The Panama Canal, which followed the path of the Panama Railroad, was beginning to be constructed only two and a half decades after Seacole published her memoir. Robert Aguirre explains that the railroad was a “harbinger of the canal” (3). As the railroad was an ill omen of the canal, Seacole’s depiction of steam-powered, spectral illnesses was indicative of the death toll that would catastrophically increase in the following decades. As we now witness, Seacole’s findings also uncannily describe the ghostly mechanics of a global pandemic that would occur over one hundred and fifty years later.
Works Cited
Aguirre, Robert. Mobility and Modernity: Panama in the Nineteenth-Century Anglo American Imagination. Ohio State University Press, 2017.
Howell, Jessica. Exploring Victorian Travel Literature: Disease, Race and Climate. Edinburgh University Press, 2014.
Morris, Robert. The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink.
HarperCollins, 2007.
Seacole, Mary. Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands. Penguin
Classics, 2005.
Author Biography
Lauren Peterson is a PhD candidate who studies nineteenth-century transatlantic literature. Her dissertation focuses on mid-nineteenth-century literary depictions of haunted and interconnected locales of industry. The project is currently titled Industrial Specters of Nineteenth-Century Literature: Mills, Ports, and Mines.