Rose Hayward and the Cholera Ship: Part 2
Seventeen Days of Quarantine in New York Harbor
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Release Date: September 23, 2025
The Yellow Jack Rises
“When I was told that we would probably have to stay three days, it seemed to me as though I could never stand it.”
Four days before Rose Hayward and the other passengers aboard the Rugia would cross into the Narrows of New York Harbor on September 3, 1892, another ship of the Hamburg-American Packet Company fleet had arrived, and with it had come proof of Asiatic Cholera. Twenty-two passengers of that ship, the Moravia, had died of the dreaded disease during their crossing, and several more were in the ship’s hospital fighting for their lives.
After a brief inspection, New York health officials had immediately sent the Moravia to an anchorage point some eight miles from shore in the Lower Bay. And as a warning to others, the ship was forced to hoist the Yellow Jack, the international signal flag of quarantine.
The next day, passengers were moved to a secure quarantine station at Hoffman Island to wait out their quarantine – an undetermined period which could be as little as a week or as long as a month.
Of course, Rose and the other passengers aboard the Rugia knew nothing about the Moravia’s trials as they steamed toward New York. And nothing about the cholera epidemic raging in Hamburg and on their own ship, either, having simply been told by ship officials that the six deaths at sea aboard the Rugia were nothing out of the ordinary among steerage passengers, and therefore nothing to worry about, especially for upper deck travelers.
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Just after midnight on September 3, New York City Health Officer William Jenkins and his deputies boarded the tug, State of New York, and went down the bay to wait for the arrival of three immigrant ships, the Normannia, the Rugia and the Stubbenhuk. Jenkins was clear in his instructions: When the ships came up the harbor they would be turned back to the Lower Quarantine Station even before they dropped their anchors.
He was taking no chances, not after the Moravia.
The Stubbenhuk arrived first, just after 1:30 a.m., then the Normannia and finally Rose’s ship, the Rugia. Each ship was boarded and the captain asked one straightforward question: Had there been any sickness onboard? The captains of both the Normannia and Rugia said yes.
Then the rules were laid out. The ships would proceed to an anchorage in the Lower Bay, just off Swinburne Island, some eight miles offshore. They would stay there until further notice, and during that time, no one would be permitted to board or leave the ship. “even if they had to be shot to prevent them from doing so.” 1
When Rose and the other passengers on the Rugia awoke later that morning, their ship was anchored just south of the Moravia and within sight of both the Normannia and Stubbenhuk, and all four ships were at anchor under the yellow flag of contagion.
As the announcement was made by health officers that the Rugia was under quarantine due to the presence of cholera onboard and would remain so until they no longer presented a risk to public health, realization dawned. Passengers were “agitated by the gravest doubts” and “pitiful beyond description”. Women wept and wrung their hands in agony and men were “too downcast to be comforted.” 2
“Then we quickly learned the truth,” Rose would recall later.
The six deaths at sea had been due to an especially deadly form of cholera, a “blue death” which began with severe, rapid-onset diarrhea, vomiting, and dehydration, and led to death in half of those infected.
Still, Rose’s belief that her social position, personal refinement and upper deck accommodations would somehow protect her was strong.
“We did not expect to have to remain long,” she said. “When I was told that we would probably have to stay three days, it seemed to me as though I could never stand it.”
Later that first day as Rose, George and the other cabin passengers were enjoying lunch at their linen-draped tables, health officials came on board to retrieve the bodies of two more steerage passengers for cremation, the law forbidding a sea burial in the harbor. Cholera’s presence was no longer a whispered secret, a quiet splash in the night. Suddenly it was in their faces and unavoidable.
“It was loathsome,” said Rose, “a shocking sight which greatly added to our depression.”
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The next day, Day 2 of quarantine, a 17-year-old boy below deck on the Rugia succumbed. He’d been sick but one day. And two new cases were discovered in young siblings also confined to steerage.
Local papers reported the grim news, and asked the questions on so many minds:
On ships that are anchored under gruesome yellow flags, with little else to occupy their thoughts except their fearful predicament, they cannot but watch the work of removing the sick and the dead from the steamers to the hospitals and the crematory on Swinburne Island. Health Officer Jenkins says the panic among the passengers is no worse than might be expected; but where can the limit of what might be expected under such circumstances be fixed?
When can the passengers hope to get off of the detained ships? That question, which everybody is asking, nobody can answer. Every one of them must stay closely quarantined until the disease has run its course. None can leave, at least until the period of incubation has passed after the last case appears.
Some authorities place the limit of the period of incubation at six days, but others place it as high as fifteen days. It is certain, however, that everybody must stay quarantined until the expiration of what the health authorities consider a safe period after the cholera has wholly disappeared. 3
Our unfortunate fellow passengers in steerage
Within days, a committee of male cabin passengers onboard the Rugia was formed to protest their indefinite confinement and demand immediate action by Health Officer Jenkins.
“We, 100 men, women and children, all of whom are, and have been since the day of sailing from Hamburg, free from cholera, have been for nearly six days subject to the possibility of the contagion of the deadly disease on board the Rugia, and have borne our fate with a degree of forbearance altogether out of proportion with the danger we are in and the neglect we have been subjected to.”
The “injustice of their inexcusable neglect”, they said, was proven by the fact that authorities had not yet removed steerage passengers – even those who were already showing signs of cholera – from the Rugia, “thus preventing the spread of the disease among the cabin passengers.”
The Normannia, they pointed out had been “relieved of the steerage passengers and their baggage on the second day”.
The men of the Rugia closed their letter with a warning, a thinly-veiled reminder of their social status and political capital:
“If this inactivity on the part of the Health board and its representatives is permitted to continue, and the disease on board the Rugia to spread as a consequence [of not removing steerage passengers from the ship], we cannot but believe that the enlightened public sentiment will place the blame where it belongs and hold you and your subordinates responsible for a calamity which in the present stage seems inevitable.” 4
Female cabin passengers, including Rose, however, took a different tact – they appealed to the all-male Health Board’s Victorian and supposedly well-bred sensibilities:
“Six of us have families of little children aboard with us. Others have children on shore eagerly awaiting the return of mothers. We see, with painful apprehension, the little ones in the steerage suddenly stricken down. Must our little ones and ourselves be kept imprisoned face-to-face with the plague until the deadly virus shall invade every portion of the ship? We ask in the name of humanity, why should this perilous exposure be continued for a single day?”
Their demand was simple: “Isolate us and our children from this needleless contact with our unfortunate fellow passengers in steerage.”
And, instead of closing with a harsh warning, the women of the Rugia closed their note to the men they assumed to be just like them with a heart-rending plea.
“We ask for just that measure of help that any considerate father and husband would provide for his own imperiled family.” 5
Whether due to the letters sent or just the eventual movement of bureaucratic wheels, all of the Rugia’s steerage passengers were transported off ship a few days later, September 9 and 10. Those known to have been exposed to, or experiencing symptoms of cholera were remanded to the hospital on Swinburne Island, and the rest to the Hoffman Island quarantine station where they joined steerage passengers from the Moravia and Normannia in quickly-erected tents cities.
Rose and the other cabin passengers on the Rugia finally had something to celebrate.
Yet, as their period of quarantine onboard the “pest ship” Rugia dragged on, the mood turned morose, and as Rose would later remember of those days, “scarcely a soul smiled at any time.”
Copyright 2025 Lori Olson White
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End Notes
Much of the content for this pieces originates from “Kept in Quarantine: Mrs. Hayward, Nee Case, Tells of a Terrible Experience. Seventeen Days on Board a Cholera-Infested Vessel. Burial at Sea – a Yellow Flag – Dr. Jenkins – Liberty – Fireworks,” which appeared in the Iowa County Democrat, Mineral Point, WI, on October 14, 1892, P. 7.
1 “Two More Cholera Ships: Sickness and Death on the Normannia and Rugia”, New York Times, New York, NY, September 4, 1892, P.2.
2 “The Pest Aboard; More Plague-Laden Ships Arrive from Hamburg. Five Die from Cholera on the Normannia and Four on the Rugia – Another Victim on the Morovia. New York Again Scared,” Green Bay Press-Gazette, Green Bay, WI, September 5, 1892, P. 1.
3 “More Victims of Cholera: Four Deaths Yesterday on the Quarantined Ships. The Normannia Loses Two Passengers, The Rugia One, and the Morovia One – Bodies Creamated on Swinburne Island – New Cases of the Pest on the Rugia”, New York Times, New York, NY, September 5, 1892, P. 1.
4 “Appeal from the Rugia: Her Cabin Passengers Pray to be Taken from the Ship”, New York Times, New York, NY, September 13, 1892, P. 5.
5 “Appeal from the Rugia: Her Cabin Passengers Pray to be Taken from the Ship”, New York Times, New York, NY, September 13, 1892, P. 5.
Rethinking that Carnival Cruise.
Cholera doesn’t discriminate. It cares less about social class and more about water.