Moving Swiftly Upon the Waters | Conway B. Sonne, Saints on the Seas: A Maritime History of Mormon Migration 1830-1890

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After the Latter-day Saints began building Zion in the Great Basin it was natural to celebrate crossing the plains as pioneers. Succeeding generations of land lubbers have been less inclined to remember a similarly pivotal drama in Mormon history, the crossing of the oceans by more than 80,000 converts and the river voyages which often preceded the overland trek. 

Seldom has an avocation been pursued with more persistence and intensity than Conway Sonne’s study of Mormon immigrant ships. From Tasmania to England to continental Europe to South Africa, he has consulted the relevant records. This, his first volume on the subject, shares much information hitherto untapped by researchers. 

Describing six decades of Mormon travel by water, 1830-90, is an ambitious task which Sonne has broken down into five main divisions. First are the far-flung missionary travels which yielded the con verts. Next, the initial “gathering” for most European Mormon emigrants to Liverpool. The transoceanic travel to America by sail is described in detail, followed by steam boat trips up inland rivers. Finally, Sonne covers the immigrants’ ocean passages on steamships. 

Saints on the Seas performs a valuable service for most readers by gently putting them in touch with the nautical world. Sonne shows restraint in the use of specialized jargon. Helpful descriptions and illustrations identify the major types of sailing vessels. Conditions aboard ship for both passengers and crew are described. One cannot avoid gaining an appreciation for the challenges, hazards, and vicissitudes of traversing rivers and oceans in the nineteenth century. 

Sonne’s writing style is compact and vivid. He is particularly effective in narrating some of the classic episodes involving Mormons on the waters: the survival of the Olympus on an emigrant voyage to New Orleans, with resultant conversions; the missionary passage to India aboard the John Brightman in 1853; the hazardous emigrant experience on the Cimbria in the North Sea in 1854; and the explosion of the Saluda on the Mississippi in 1852. Sonne covers much ground (or water) in only 145 pages of text, by virtue of generally apt summarization. The diverse needs of readers are met by a briny solution of narrative, analysis, and data, with much of the latter judiciously confined to eleven appendices. However, the flow of the narrative occasionally ebbs, with events only loosely chained together and with departures from the overall chronological approach within major topics. I found Sonne’s subdividing both immigrant sailing and steamship voyages into two chapters each to be somewhat confusing and repetitive. 

Sonne’s analysis of immigrant shipping data yields interesting insights. For example, from the 1840s through the 1860s there was virtually no improvement in the aver age duration of Mormon voyages by sail from Liverpool to New York. The author does not suggest to what extent this reflects a plateau in shipbuilders’ achievement of speed, identifies only one or two clipper ships among the 144 sailing vessels used by Mormon emigrants, and observes that they were not significantly faster than the aver age packet ship which carried most Mormons. 

One of the finest results of Sonne’s prodigious research is the wealth of little used illustrations which grace the book. Paintings, engravings, and photographs of ships and facilities; a broadside advertise ment; a rare poster; and maps give a tangible dimension to the topics discussed. 

Family historians, genealogists, and others will particularly appreciate Sonne’s information about ships and shipping. His achievement in identifying 325 vessels which carried Latter-day Saints is in itself monumental. However, while his treatment of the human element is good, it only begins to plumb the depths of rich sources which could yield more. He does well to call attention to such valuable compilations as Andrew Jenson’s three-volume manuscript, “Church Emigration”; the manuscript histories of various missions; the Journal History of the Church; and Daughters of the Utah Pioneers’ lessons. Still, their process of selection limits the consideration of much that can be found in original sources. Andrew Jenson, for example, was concerned largely with “historical events” more than with process, motivation, or causation. Sonne apparently used only a half dozen diaries extensively, others to a limited degree, and many others only through excerpts in the compilations. Davis Bitton’s Guide to Mormon Diaries and Autobiographies lists more than two hundred Mormon immigrant diaries for the period involved, and many more have been acquired by major repositories since Bitton’s work was published. Many of these accounts have information that could add depth and precision to topics covered in this study. Had he consulted records of Latter-day Saint shipping agencies, particularly the Liverpool Office, Sonne could have given more specific attention to the Mormon role in shipping operations and at least mentioned such topics as their organized provisioning of ships through provision merchants and the use of their own passenger agent fees to pay fares of emigrants. 

Occasionally Sonne’s summaries over simplify complex issues. His discussion of emigrants’ motivation could have probed more deeply. There are also instances in which he has drawn tenuous conclusions from his sources, like the assumption that Orson Hyde mastered German in eight days or that the Loven, registered at ninety four tons, was the same ship that carried 447 passengers from Copenhagen to Grimsby in 1855. Relying on statistics that excluded children under the age of eight, he places the total Scandinavian Mormon emigration for 1850-90 at 19,500; using William Mulder’s calculations from ship ping lists, which include children, the total is about 26,000. 

More precise delineation of the processes of change could have been made without greatly multiplying words. For ex ample, rather dramatic changes came at the time Mormons started sailing to New York and the East Coast rather than New Orleans. For the first time, they were shipped on two decks, in larger vessels. The British Passenger Act of October 1855 required more room on each ship per in dividual and the addition of peas, beef, and potatoes to a shipboard diet previously dominated by oatmeal. These improvements—and the shortening of time aboard ship by an average of more than two weeks—must have made the voyage much easier. 

Sonne paints a rather negative picture of conditions for steerage passengers on nineteenth-century sailing vessels and steamships. True, they were “primitive” by comparison with today’s living standards. However, three persons in a bunk and one cooked meal a day was hardly a step down for many Mormon emigrants. Franklin D. Richards was probably not exaggerating when he told Brigham Young in November 1855 that with recent improvements “many of our people are . . . enabled to live much better on ship board, with nothing to do, than they can at home with hard, laborious work.” 

Sonne’s treatment of Mormon mortality at sea also begs for further analysis. Although he suggests that overcrowding and other conditions aboard the ships were to blame, the greatest losses were overwhelmingly due to epidemics, usually measles, which struck down Scandinavian infants and children. These came mostly after improvements were made in diet and living space. Unaccountably, Sonne misses the forty-five deaths aboard the Monarch of the Sea in 1864. 

Finally, while Mormon immigration was clearly at “ebb tide” by 1890, Sonne’s brief explanation could have been amplified. The demise of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund was hardly a factor; other avenues of financial aid to immigrants had long since predominated. The Manifesto notwithstanding, the year 1890 hardly seems pivotal to Mormon immigration; and the Panic of 1893 might have made a better ending point, in view of the role played by economic conditions. 

Sonne deserves much credit for what he has achieved. It is now hard to imagine anyone pursuing an interest in Mormon immigration without consulting Saints on the Seas. Hopefully, Sonne’s Encyclopedia of Mormon Maritime Migration, which promises to be an equally significant contribution, will be published soon. 

Saints on the Seas: A Maritime History of Mormon Migration 1830-1890 by Conway B. Sonne (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983), xviii, 212 pp., $20.