It’s not like other 19th century forms of transportation were particularly safe. Railroads in particular were horrendously dangerous, even into the early 20th century, but people still used trains routinely. There was probably a similar psychology to the modern “you’re more likely to get killed in the car to the airport” saying in that we get used to the routine modes of transport that are much more likely to kill us in the long run, but fear occasional trips on modes that are less risky but which have higher profile disasters when they do happen.
(And yes, I know the “you’re more likely to get killed on the way to the airport” bit isn’t literally true)
A minor ocean, as it were, is called a sea. E.g. from Kenya to Yemen is a nice little hop, but it doesn’t involve crossing the main Indian Ocean. Just the subset of it on the edge, named the Arabian Sea. Likewise with say Suriname to Mexico; technically it’s the Atlantic Ocean, but in practice it’s the Caribbean Sea. Or from England to Denmark (the North Sea). But yeah, from Africa right across to Australia puts you in the middle of the big wide ocean.
I guess a geometric analogue would be a chord versus a diameter.
If you look at old newspapers you can find a lot of immigrants came over as “indentured” so to speak. They would agree to work for the steerage company.The company paid their passage and they would pay back a $1 a week for their passage and after a year or two, it’d be paid off.
So going by that, it’d cost the immigrant nothing initially but from $52 - $104 dollars to be paid off
You find the expected range of prices, made more complicated by their being denominated in various currencies.
Generally speaking, a “good” boat cost around $40, and average ships were $25-30, but trips were available at $10-15, all for the lowest class of service, which was called various things.
I assume that’s the page you found your information on was this one. If not, that covers 1856 to 1901. What’s remarkable is that the price of a ticket can be found to stay steady at around the 6 guinea point you gave, ever though other prices and wages would have increased over that half-century. The Allen line shown at the bottom, at £5.10, was a less expensive line of ships compared to more famous ones like the Cunard Line. You could go down much farther in quality if you had to.
A lot of the major sinkings of the past 20 years or so have had a significant element of negligence (the Costa Concordia, the Herald of Free Enterprise, the Express Samina.) About the only recent sinking I can think of offhand that wasn’t largely due to negligence would be the Estonia, which sank when the locks on the doors to its car deck failed in a storm.
