In a damning report filed in 1835, A.C. Buchanan, Agent General for Emigration in Quebec notes an increasing number of shipwrecks with serious loss of life. 731 lives were lost in 1834 due to shipwrecks of vessels enroute to Quebec. He states that the use of alcohol should be banned, and that it's use was carried to an alarming extent in the North American Trade.

In May 1835, J.D. Pinnock wrote to the Poor Law Commissioners in London of:

"..complaints which have been received from Lower Canada of the great distress and sickness which has occured in that province, in a great measure owing to the immense inundation of Emigrants who arrive every year at Quebec and Montreal in the short space of a few months, and who are in most cases landed from crowded ships without means of subsistence."

Author Catherine Parr Trail writes of Cholera that was ravaging Quebec and Montreal when she arrived in 1832. This was due in part to poor sanitary conditions on ships, some of them arriving full of deathly ill emigrants. This problem was to reach a peak in the 1840s when thousands died in quarantine at Grosse Isle, Quebec.

However, the King William seemed to have been exempt from these maladies. Her 30 year old captain, George Thomas, and his crew of 20 delivered the passengers to Quebec, arriving the week of May 28th, 1836.