Meanwhile Douglass was pacing his commodious accommodations, in a stormy crossing of sixteen days. It would be at least a week after his arrival in Boston on 20 April that the extent of the furore would have been known in the United States, and not till the 14 May, when the Liberator reprinted the news items forwarded to it by Logan, would it become general knowledge.

When Douglass wrote of the incident in his second autobiography several years later, he described how public outrage at the ‘contemptible conduct’ of the shipping company led Mr Cunard to apologise, ‘promising that the like should never occur again on board his steamers’. It is hard to tell from the small number of documents from this period in the Cunard Archives whether Cunard took steps to ensure his promise was kept. In a private letter to MacIver written less than three weeks after the exchanges in The Times, Cunard makes no mention of the affair, preferring to share his concerns about the threat of competition from ‘American ships’. However, a passing mention of the ‘national prejudices’, which might refer to the inclination of at least some would-be passengers from the United States to prefer their commercial rivals, hints at other prejudices the company considered indulging in order to retain their custom.

In any case, Douglass was convinced: ‘and the like, we believe,’ he continued, ‘has never since occurred on board the steamships of the Cunard Line’. It was a claim he repeated in both editions of his third autobiography, published in 1881 and 1892.

It is true that some African American travellers reported troublefree passages. Henry Highland Garnet, for instance, recorded this voyage from 1861:

But Douglass's faith in Cunard was misplaced, for cases of racial discrimination on his ships were recorded at least until the Civil War.