For nearly four long months aboard the crammed “Whitby” the two little girls precariously hung on to life, as grown men groaned, suffered and died in the low, dark deck of the sailing ship. With anxious mothers caring for them, the children somehow managed to survive the steady onslaught of sea-sickness, dysentery and “bowel complaints” during the barque’s hazardous journey up the Hooghly River and the unexpected delay at India’s Sagar Island. They lasted through the wild waves and weather of the Cape of Storms, the testing transoceanic crossing, and the passengers’ pervading fear of the unknown “kala pani” or “black waters.”
The records show that the pair finally arrived in British Guiana on May 5, 1838. Among the very first families travelling to the colony, the brave women and baffled youngsters had accompanied the batch of men many of whom must have been apprehensive fathers recruited to work on the sugar estates of the colonies. While the documents do not indicate which of the passengers were parents of Nunneedy, eight, and Fuah, four, only two women are listed immediately above their names as tiny Sudney, 30 who stood just four feet six inches, and Luckeah, 22, taller at five feet.
Described as all “copper-coloured” and “Hindoo” they remained on the boat and must have watched as others left for Plantations Highbury and Waterloo, in East Berbice. Having been pre-assigned to the notorious Bellevue Estate on the West Bank of Demerara owned by the wealthy sugar broker and absentee plantation owner, the Scotsman, Andrew (Wedderburn) Colville, they arrived in that county on May 14.
