Coffin Ship (2 page)

It may prove difficult for those who have not studied nineteenth-century Irish history to understand why so many thousands of people, in fleeing their country, risked dying from starvation or disease on board a coffin ship. This hazardous journey across the Atlantic Ocean was often undertaken on overcrowded and unsafe ships. The Great Famine, which devastated Ireland between the years 1845 and 1850, was one of the most tragic events in Irish history. It left an estimated one million people dead, although the true figure will never be known. At least another one million people fled to other countries in the hope of a better life.

Outbreaks of famine were not uncommon in Ireland at the time. During the previous century, potato crops had failed on a number of occasions. On the last day of the year 1739, Ireland awoke to find itself in the grip of what could be termed a mini Ice Age. This severe winter was followed by a summer of famine and disease during which a large number of peasants perished. Many parts of Ireland suffered. One report stated that ‘the dead have been eaten in the fields by dogs for want of people to bury them'. Food shortages were reported again in 1816 and 1817. In 1822 Galway was already suffering from the effects of poverty and high unemployment, and the failure of the potato crop that year caused a minor famine. Hordes of people flocked to the city in search of food, but the town was already struggling to feed its own population. During the summer, fever was widespread, and grants were made available by the local authorities to combat the epidemic. By November, the scourge seems to have passed. Other food shortages occurred in 1831 and 1842; the latter resulting in food riots in Galway city where potato stores were attacked. However, the catastrophe of the Great Famine that swept across Ireland in 1845 was incomparable to anything the country had ever witnessed before.
[1]

A potato riot in Galway in 1842. (The Illustrated London News)

The devastation of the famine has its origins in the introduction of the Penal Laws of 1695. These unjust laws deprived the Catholic majority of many civil rights in areas such as education, religious freedom and ownership of land, and paved the way for the rise of the Protestant ascendancy class. These landed gentry families exerted an almost limitless power over their tenants. Many were absentee landlords living in England who had little interest in their property except to make as much profit from their tenants as possible. Rents were high and if the tenants could not raise the necessary finance, they faced eviction. The saving grace for the Irish peasant was the potato, as it was cheap to produce, easy to cultivate and yielded large crops. The potato was also a good source of vitamins.

At the time the population of Ireland was about eight million. Tenant housing consisted mainly of small thatched buildings or small one-roomed huts constructed of stone or sometimes turf. While both buildings were very basic, the huts were dreadful places to live. They had no windows or chimney, just a hole in the roof to allow the smoke from the fire to escape. Infant mortality was high because of such impoverished living conditions. Given the rigid land division and landlord policies, the vast majority of the Catholic population were forced to live on the brink of starvation and destitution on an ongoing basis.

Boy and girl foraging for potatoes on the road to Cahera, County Cork.
(The Illustrated London News, 20-2-1847)

Once the potato crop was planted, the tenants were then free to ‘work off' their rent on the landlord's estate. The situation was such that in 1843 the Devon Commission, having examined the Irish economic system, reported that the landlords and their policies were the main cause of the widespread poverty amongst the people. One member stated that the Irish people were the ‘worst fed, worst clothed, but were the most patient people in Europe'.
[2]

In June 1845, frightening reports began arriving from Europe that a new blight called
Phytophthora infestans
had been detected in Belgium. It was not known where the blight had originated but it was suspected to have come from South America two years earlier, perhaps carried to Europe in fertiliser. On 9 September 1845, the
Dublin Evening Post
reported that the curator of the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, David Moore, had stated that specimens of potatoes sent to him from Wexford and Waterford showed ‘convincing proofs of the rapid progress this alarming disease is making. Some of the stems looked fertile, but when dug up the roots were rotten.'

Miss Kennedy distributing clothing in Kilrush, County Clare.
(The Illustrated London News, 22-12-1849)

Reports from Mayo said that an ‘intolerable stench' filled the air during the digging of potato crops. That same year, thousands of people died from starvation in France, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland because of huge crop failures. However, people living in these areas were not as dependent on the potato as the Irish and so the stage was set for disaster.

The rest of Europe was spared further fatalities when a year later a severe drought helped kill off the blight, thus avoiding the catastrophe that befell Ireland. The following statistics indicate the extent of the Irish famine: the blight destroyed one-third of the potato crop in 1845, three-quarters in the years 1846 and 1847, and one-third in 1849.
[3]

The Macedonian sails into Cork with provisions for Ireland.
(The Illustrated London News, 7-8-1847)

Charles Edward Trevelyan, who was the permanent secretary of the British Treasury during the famine, worked hard on introducing relief schemes that generated employment in the area of road construction and repair. However, Trevelyan was against the idea of dispensing free aid and his attitude to the Irish was appalling. He believed that the famine was God's way of punishing an idle, ungrateful and rebellious nation.

Searching for potatoes in a stubble field in County Clare.
(The Illustrated London News, 22-12-1849)

By November 1846, with food prices on the increase, a labourer had to earn twenty-one shillings a week to sustain an average-sized family. Even if one was fortunate enough to secure work on a relief scheme, wages were still only between six and eight shillings a week. Families hadn't enough money to feed themselves and they were becoming increasingly malnourished all the time; this was a recipe for disaster. It was not as though the authorities were not informed of the imminent dangers. In a letter to Trevelyan dated August 1846, Fr Theobald Mathew wrote:

A blast has passed over the land, and the food of a whole nation has perished. On the 27th of last month I passed from Cork to Dublin, and this doomed plant bloomed in all luxuriance of an abundant harvest. Returning on the third instant, I beheld, with sorrow, one wide waste of putrefying vegetation. In many places the wretched people were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitterly the destruction that had left them foodless.
[4]

Bridget O'Donnell and her two children, County Clare.
(The Illustrated London News, 22-12-1849)

When one considers the ongoing exportation of food, the tenant evictions and the poor travelling conditions on offer to those fleeing the country, it is reasonable to say that a serious lack of concern for the Irish people existed. While the government received ample warning of the seriousness of the situation in Ireland, they simply failed to take adequate action. In fact, even as the disaster was unfolding the British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, stated, ‘there is such a tendency to exaggeration and inaccuracy in Irish reports that delay in acting upon them is always desirable'.

The following letter, published in the
Galway Mercury
in July 1847, challenged the ‘absolute rubbish' being ‘peddled' by politicians in relation to the hidden treasures of the Irish peasantry:

Of all the wonderful discoveries in this age of invention there cannot be found one so remarkable as that lately set before the public, by the Prime Minister of England, in relation to this unfortunate country. Two or three years ago Lord Stanley astonished the world by announcing, what he declared to be a well-ascertained fact, that the Irish peasantry were possessed of heaps of hidden treasure – that they had hoarded up wealth, and that money, in all shapes, could be found in their coffers. But what was this to the assertion of the noble member for London, lately made in the high court of parliament, namely, THAT THERE WERE VERY FEW DEATHS FROM STARVATION IN IRELAND?