Unscrupulous emigrant house masters peddled all sorts of lies to would-be travellers. Herman Melville's novel Redburn (1849) deals with his own experience as a crew member of a Liverpool-to-New York ship. One familiar fable concerned the "short space of time in which their ships make the run across the ocean." As emigrants at the time provided their own provisions, many would bring too little food to survive the journey. In the mid-19th century, ships were finally required by law to furnish each passenger with simple weekly uncooked rations. The staple dish became "oatmeal and water, boiled into what is sometimes called mush."
The comic song here, sung by stage comedians, described the "yellow meal" (pronounced male), and Mr. Tapscott, master of the well known emigrant house W. and T. J. Tapscott, Liverpool. When the simple-hearted passenger of this song hears about "one thousand bags of mail", he pictures a speedy mail-carrying packet ship. Mr. Tapscott is in fact describing the abundant but monotonous rations.
The Josh A. Walker here is probably the not-so-speedy New York trader Joseph Walker, which burned at pier on December 26, 1853 as described in the New York Times and the Boston Post. The wreck and salvage efforts disrupted wharfage at Pier 29 for nearly a year. The lengthy court case that followed is preserved by records of the New York Supreme Court.
As I walked out one morning down by the Sligo dock,
I overhead an Irishman conversing with Tapscott;
Good morning, Mr. Tapscott, would you be after telling to me,
Have you ever a ship bound for New York in the State of Amerikee.
Oh, yes, my pretty Irish boy, I have a ship or two,
They're laying at the wharf there, waiting for a crew;
They are New York packets, and on Friday they will sail,
At present she is taking in one thousand bags of meal.
Straightaway then I started, 'twas on the yellow-grog road,
Such roars of mille-murder! oh, the like was never known;
And there I paid my passage down in solid Irish gold,
It's often times that I sat down and wished myself at home.
The very day we started, 'twas on the one of May,
The captain he came upon the deck, these words to us did say;
Cheer up, my hearty Irish blades, don't let your courage fail.
Today I'll serve you pork and beans, tomorrow yellow meal.
One day as we were sailing in the channel of St. James,
A north-west wind came up to us, and drove us back again;
Bad luck to the Josh A. Walker, and the day that she set sail,
For the dirty sailors broke upon my chest, and stole my yellow meal.
But now I'm in America, and working upon the canal,
To cross the ocean in one of those boats, I know I never shall,
But I'll cross it in a great big ship that carries both meat and sail,
Where I'll get lashings of corned meat, and none of your yellow meal.