THE ALFRED AND THE OPEN SEA: PERIODICAL CULTURE AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY SETTLER EMIGRATION AT SEA

This article focuses on two examples of manuscript shipboard periodicals that nineteenth-century emigrants to Australia produced during the voyage: The Alfred (1839) and The Open Sea (1868). It argues that although shipboard periodicals are an ephemeral genre, nonetheless, they deserve to be studied because they throw new and important light on the ways in which emigrants articulated the precarious condition of being between old and new homes. It examines the ways in which these handwritten periodicals drew on and subverted aspects of print periodicals in order to offer a counter-narrative of migrancy to those circulating in print periodicals.