Hardships in the 1800s…
While preparing my recent book, I was impressed – and sometimes amazed – at the hardships people took for granted in the late 1800s. Admittedly, in another 100 years from now, people will likely look back on our lives and consider them the dark ages, as they live in Virtual Reality, with the heady possibility of molecular transport as per Star Trek.
But in 1888, people seem to have thought nothing of embarking on a forty-three day ocean voyage, with unknown destinations ahead. Researching one of my recent lectures revealed trains snowed-in for two days while travelling through the Rockies in 1874, and losing the ship’s rudder in the mid-Atlantic in a January storm in 1879. Both events seemed to be taken as minor aggravations, rather than the disaster some travellers face today when they are confronted with a forty-five minute flight delay.