The poster includes details of the food that would be supplied to passengers and the days on which it would be served. This bears comparison with that on the ticket issued to Josephine Jones in 1880 some 30 years later. By that period preserved meat and vegetables were included in the diet in addition to the salted and dried provisions of emigrant ships of the late 1840s. when the Brightman sailed. No specification is given for the quantity of luggage only that it is to be clearly labeled 'wanted for the voyage' and 'Not wanted for the voyage'. There is also a glowing report on the prospects of Adelaide and Port Phillip where 'food presses on the people'.

By the late 1840s the British Passenger Acts gave immigrants some protection from unscrupulous captains and ship owners. Certain standards of accommodation and food were stipulated. The ships carried in addition to the passengers their goods and belongings, and although these were limited to 20 cubic feet of free luggage space which went into the ship's hold, the passengers could keep with them in their berths a month's necessities of clothing and their eating utensils.

The Brightman was a ship built in 1825, which had made a previous trip to South Australia in 1840. On that occasion the voyage had lasted 106 days. An accident shortly after leaving London on 23 August 1849 had forced the Brightman into port for an inspection following a grounding near Worthing on the south coast of England west of Brighton. This inspection delayed the voyage for 25 days, and it did not arrive in Adelaide until 5 January 1850. A previous owner of the poster possibly a passenger or a descendant has annotated it with the departure and arrival dates and the length of the voyage. It should also be noted tht the ship sailed 16 days later than the 'warranted to sail' date of 7 August. Thirteen people died during the voyage of 'fever', not specified but posssibly scarlet fever. In 1840 the vessel had been desribed as a 'dry and comfortable ship' an important matter in particular for steerage passengers.

Haines, Robin Life and death in the age of sail: the passage to Australia Sydney, N.S.W.: University of New South Wales Press, 2003

Charlwood, D. E. The long farewell Ringwood, Vic.: Allen Lane, 1981

Hassam, Andrew Sailing to Australia: shipboard diaries by nineteenth-century British emigrants Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1995

Parsons, Ronald Migrant ships for South Australia, 1836-1860 Gumeracha, S.A.: Gould Books, c1988

South Australian Register 7 January 1850 p. 2 col. a

SA Memory: Wooden Walls and Iron Sides: Passenger's contract ticket

History Trust: Migration Museum. Immigration and settlement of South Australia

Atlas of South Australia: the course of settlement