Trollheart

Coffin Ships, Corpses and Cholera: Death Voyage to the New World

For many, there was only one escape, and that was emigration. It probably should be made clear that at this time in history, certainly in Ireland, emigration had already been in progress from the middle of the eighteenth century; in fact, by 1845 over a quarter of a million Irish had left to seek their fortune and a new life in America. That was, though, by choice, or forced by circumstances, but not as a desperate attempt to avoid death by starvation. For the majority of those who remained, the idea even of people travelling outside their own village or town, much less city or county, was something viewed mostly with fear and suspicion. So the thought of a trip across three thousand miles, taking months and with no guarantee of any sort of future at the end of it - assuming you made it - must have been terrifying. And yet, what choice was there? Stay and waste away, watch your family die in front of your eyes, nobody to appeal to for help, no recourse to any authority, no rest from the screams and cries of your starving children? To over two million people, this seemed to be the only alternative left to a slow, miserable, pitiless and certain death in their native country, while the ones who had assumed control and command of Ireland looked on with cold, merciless, uncaring eyes, for the most part.

Not everyone went that far, though. For some, the escape was closer. England (though they* might inwardly have hated the idea of fleeing to the home of their oppressors, they were likely to have some chance of a better life there), Scotland, Wales, Canada and Australia were also destinations for the hungry flood that poured out of Ireland during the Famine years, some of those years seeing as many emigrate as had done in the fifty preceding the Gorta Mor. In large part, this mass emigration can account for the proliferation of Irish in cities such as Liverpool, Toronto, New York and Boston, and some of these would play a large role in the shaping of the history of those countries including the great-grandfather of a man who would become the 35th President of the United States of America.

While the emigration from Ireland was, later, beneficial to many of the countries they emigrated to - Liverpool still has three-quarters of its people claiming Irish heritage, and has been known as “Ireland’s second capital”, while even as early as 1850 a quarter of the population of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore were made up of Irish - this was due largely to the fact that the emigrants arrived (as immigrants now of course) without any money and so had to stay where the ships docked, trying to put down roots and make a life there.

The other side of that coin is of course that Ireland became vastly depopulated as millions of her citizens left, and it’s estimated that by 1851 the population had decreased by a massive 20%. An estimated million people died (there’s no way to be sure, as records was non-existent, and it’s quite possible more died from disease than actual starvation, and then there are those who must surely also have died of exposure) and a believed up to two million more emigrated over the course of the Famine. Taken together, that’s more than the total deaths which resulted on both sides in the Napoleonic Wars, which raged across Europe for twelve years. The graphic above shows the decline in the population of Ireland over a ten year period, most of which covered the Famine.

Voices of the Famine: Harrowing Accounts from History

All of this, however well written (what?) or researched it is, boils down to facts, figures, data, and somewhere in there, perhaps, we’ve forgotten or overlooked the actual people this data represents. So I’d like now to do my best to give voice to those people, by allowing them to recount their experiences in their own words. You can call it lazy writing, an easy way out, but I don’t feel I have the right to try to paraphrase or rearrange their words. I once went three days without food and I was near to collapse: these people went weeks, months, even years without being able to provide food for their families or themselves. What do I know of such hardship? How can I understand - not hunger, for that’s too small a word, as is starvation - the actual disintegration of the body and soul as life is leeched from it by the lack of food, coupled with disease, exposure and the heartsickness that comes from being completely powerless?

I couldn’t. None of us could. And I don’t intend to. I feel it would be presumptuous of me to try. And so instead, these accounts are being pasted in, without any alteration or editing, and few if any comments. Those who died in the Great Famine deserve to have their say, so listen now to their voices from beyond the grave, from nearly two hundred years in the past.

Rodger Cantwell

When the potato famine swept through Ireland in 1846, I was 30 and my wife, Mary (McDonald), 33. We lived in a small cabin valued at only 5 shillings, where I was one of 30 farm laborers on the estate of George Fawcett, Esq. in Toomyvara, Tipperary. At that time we had five children: Bridget (age eight), Thomas (7), Michael (4), Julia (2), and little Mary (1). Because of a generation-long collapse in our living standards, we came to rely mainly on potato farming for our sustenance. A single acre of potatoes could yield up to 6 tons of food, enough to feed our family for the year.

It had been raining a lot, even more than usual for Ireland. In October 1845, almost overnight, a dense blue fog settled over our puddled potato fields. An odor of decay permeated the air. When the wind and rain died away, there was a terrible stillness. The potato crop was ruined, destroyed (we learned later) by the fungus Phytophthora infestans.

Over especially the next 2 years, life was miserable. We were always hungry and lost weight. England gave us some Indian corn and maize, but it was poorly ground and caused abdominal pain and diarrhea. In an effort to earn some money, I joined a public works labor force, sponsored by the British, building roads and digging ditches that seemed to have little purpose. It did pay 10 pence per day (12 pence equals 1 shilling), almost double my salary as a potato farmer. By August 1846, many of my countrymen had joined me in this endeavor, as the labor force increased fivefold to 560,000.
We tried planting potatoes again in 1846, but stalks and leaves of the potatoes were blackened, accompanied by a sickening stench, and within only 3 to 4 days the whole crop was obliterated. Our family was very fortunate, somehow avoiding the pestilence (typhus, relapsing fever, dysentery, and scurvy) that many of our neighbors succumbed to.

We narrowly avoided having to go to one of the area workhouses. The Irish Poor Land System resulted in building 130 such workhouses, with a total of 100,000 beds, but the British goal was bizarre: they wanted to make poverty so unendurable that we (its victims) would embrace the virtue of the “saved,” namely to be more industrious, self-reliant, and disciplined. Hard to do, I'd say, when one is starving and out of work.
Many of the British took the attitude that the famine was God's punishment toward a sinful people. We Catholics (80% of our population but not in ruling authority like the Protestants) didn't agree with this nonsense. Despite the fact that many of us were starving, our country kept having to export foods to England—oats, bacon, eggs, butter, lard, pork, beef, and fresh salmon. In return, Britain did open up soup kitchens for us, but of 2000 planned, only half were in operation in 1847.

In 1847, I was able to do some work again in the potato fields, as the crop was finally healthy but only one-fourth normal size, as we had to eat the seed potatoes and grain over the past winter to stay alive. That year Britain passed its Extended Poor Law, shifting the cost of feeding the starving masses and the maintenance of poorhouses to the Irish landowner. This, in effect, made eviction of tenant farmers (like I was) an efficient way for the landowner to lower his tax (poor rate). Between 1847 and 1851, the eviction rate rose nearly 1000%.

We held on until June 1849, when George Fawcett, Esq. hired agent Richard Wilson to bring in a crew of men overnight and destroy all of the little cabins his 30 tenants lived in.* He did offer to pay our passage via ship, first to Liverpool and eventually to New York. Big of him. Our family survived, in temporary shelters, until April 19, 1850, when I put Bridget (12), Thomas (10), Patrick (eight), and Mary (7) on the boat Princeton with several relatives. The trip took 2 months. Fortunately, living conditions on board had improved since the crowded trips 3 to 4 years earlier, when 30% or more died en route. I left Liverpool 6 months later on the Waterton.

October 30, 1850. We managed to avoid the “runners” and bullies who preyed upon the new arrivals and settled in Rochester, NY, where our daughter, Jennie, was born in 1856. We came by boat to Milwaukee that same year, where our youngest son, William, was born in 1858 and where I worked as a common laborer until my death from a heart attack at age 55, in 1870.

My widow, Mary, then moved to Shawano, Wisconsin, with daughter Jennie (14) and William (11), where married daughter Mary was living with her husband Cornelius. Wife Mary died at 76 in Shawano. Her physician was her youngest son, William, who had graduated from Rush Medical School in Chicago the year before.

As I reflect back upon my life, and those who have come after me, I believe we are of hardy stock to have survived such difficult times, including the famine, febrile illnesses, and hazardous boat trips. So many of our friends and neighbors weren't as fortunate. Our seven children lived to fairly old ages (80, 79, 79, 77, 74, 60), except for little Mary, who died of an infection at 33, long before antibiotics became available. I am especially proud that even though I came from humble means, every generation since, beginning with youngest son William, has had physicians (six to date, over four generations) and other fine occupations. None became farmers, like I was, although grandson Arthur dabbled in it. (He proved to be a much more successful obstetrician than farmer.) Fortunately, my great-grandson John chose cardiology over farming, since he once poured gas in the radiator of a tractor and almost drove off an incline going into the barn.

The British have had moments of greatness through the years, none more so than their heroic actions at the outset of World War II. However, their leaders like the Whig Charles Trevelyan came up far short during our famine years. As historian John Kelly wrote in 2012:
The relief policies that England employed during the famine—parsimonious, short-sighted, grotesquely twisted by religion and ideology—produced tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of needless deaths (1).

Our population of 8.2 million was reduced by one-third between 1845 and 1855. Over 1 million died of starvation and disease, while another 2 million emigrated to other countries. One of the worst policies was the Extended Poor Law of 1847, which eventually resulted in the destruction of our little home and eviction of our family. However, if not for this, our family might still be living in Ireland instead of America.
The bad feelings toward the British persisted for several generations. My youngest son, William, the first family physician (and the first family member to leave the Catholic Church), once said that if he thought he had even a drop of English blood in his body he'd cut his finger and let the drop drip out. He had to be careful where he expressed this, for his wife Harriet's grandparents had come from Foville (Wiltshire) England, leaving for America in 1830, well before the famine year.

John Crosfield

At the Castlerea poor-house a shocking state of things presented itself, the poor inmates lying upon straw and their dormitories being in such a state of dirt that W. F. was unable to venture into them. In this poor-house there are at present 1080 paupers, but the last 434 were admitted in so hurried a manner that there is neither bedding nor clothes for them, the measles being in the house and a few cases of fever already, it is probable that if something be not speedily effected to remedy the evil, there will be a fearful mortality among the inmates.

In the children’s room was collected a miserable crowd of wretched objects, the charm of infancy having entirely disappeared, and in its place were to be seen wan and haggard faces, prematurely old from the effects of hunger and cold, rags, dirt and deformity. In the school room they spend some hours every day in hopeless, listless idleness, though there are both a schoolmaster and mistress there are no books nor slates nor any of the apparatus of a school.

Anonymous

… they were generally crowded around the funnel of the steamer or huddled together in a most disgraceful manner; and as they have not been used to sea passages, they get sick, and perfectly helpless, and covered with the dirt and filth of each other. I have seen the sea washing over the deck of a steamer that I came over in one night, completely drenching the unfortunate people, so much so that several of them got perfectly senseless.

There were 250 deck passengers on board and they were in a most dreadful state; it was an extremely stormy night and the vessel heaved about in a very awful manner; the sea washed over her tremendously, and it was only by great exertions that some of these people were not carried overboard… early in the morning, when it became light, I saw 50 or 60 of these people, including 4 or 5 children, perfectly stiff and cold… There was a fine boy, apparently dead, but by a great deal of exertion and rubbing him in hot water and laying him before a fire, he was revived.

James Mahoney, reporter for The Illustrated London News

...we came to Clonakilty, where the coach stopped for breakfast; and here, for the first time, the horrors of the poverty became visible, in the vast number of famished poor, who flocked around the coach to beg alms: amongst them was a woman carrying in her arms the [cadaver] of a fine child, and making the most distressing appeal to the passengers for aid to enable her to purchase a coffin and bury her dear little baby.

Anonymous farmer

...a queer mist came over the Irish Sea, and the potato stalks turned black as soot. [The fields were] a wide waste of putrefaction giving off an offensive odor that could be smelled for miles.

The Marquis of Waterford

The faces of these people were subdued with hunger; pale, or rather of a ghostly yellow, indicative of the utmost destitution. They are starving. We hurried with horror from these frightful visitations, which are permitted by Providence for his own wise ends, sick at heart

James Mahoney again

We next reached Skibbereen... and there I saw the [ailing], the living, and the [expired], lying indiscriminately upon the same floor, without anything between them and the cold earth, save a few miserable rags upon them. To point to any particular house as a proof of this would be a waste of time, as all were in the same state; and, not a single house out of 500 could boast of being free from [mortality] and fever...

Thomas Maher, farmer

When I wrote you last I gave you an account of the probable loss that would attend the failure of the potato crop. I was very far from knowing the real loss, but now, alas, I know it at my own expense. You must have seen through the press the number of [fatalities] from starvation and its concomitant diseases [of] fever and dysentery. And do not imagine there is any exaggeration in the reports.

Hannah Curtis, whose brother escaped to Philadelphia

...don’t attempt to leave me here to fall a victim to the miseries that await the country... there is not room in the church yards for to bury the [slain] as they are [perishing] so fast the coffins I may say are on the surface of the earth and has no more room for them...

Mahoney again

In the street, however, we had the best opportunity of judging of the condition of the people; for here, from three to five hundred women, with money in their hands, were seeking to buy food; whilst a few of the Government officers doled out Indian meal to them in their turn. One of the women told me she had been standing there since daybreak, seeking to get food for her family at home. This food, it appeared, was being doled out in miserable quantities, at 'famine prices..

Gerald Keegan, Schoolteacher, Co. Sligo

“We have come to the end of our rope. The twin specters, famine and pestilence, hold sway over the land. As a result of the loss that I have suffered, the prospect of death on this field of battle is not at all frightening. Some have been found dead with grass in their mouth. Dogs and donkeys have become common items of diet. Scores of bodies lie along the roadside. The children have lost their normal youthful appearance. They look like old people. They do not laugh and play anymore.

I think I have acquired a deeper understanding of the Israelites’ long and painful march from their captivity in Egypt to a Promised Land. I have seen a never-ending stream of gaunt, dejected, ghost-like figures. viewing the landscape in respectful silence, getting a last look at what is for all of us the dearest place on Earth. [Survivors of the coffin ships] looked for all the world like specters coming out of tombs with their ghastly complexions and gaunt, emaciated bodies. I am alone now and I feel I have nothing to live for. Eileen is dead. I only wish I were her.”

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018