Edward Washington gives us a fascinating insight into life on an emigration ship – the John Knox – taking a group of orphan girls to Sydney, through a letter written after the voyage by the man charged with improving their education during the sea voyage.

After his arrival in Sydney in April 1850, Thomas Frederick Fitzsimmons Jones, a Dublin-born music master from London, wrote a seven-page letter to the New South Wales Commissioners of Emigration. In it, he candidly describes the cheek, trouble and challenges he’d faced during the almost five-month voyage from Plymouth as he attempted to teach subjects including English and arithmetic to 279 teenage girls...