Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE

Cork for Canada, he stated that 10,205 Irish migrants journeyed to Quebec from Cork that year, incurring 1,904 deaths ( 18.66% mortality), but accounting for only 10.33% of the 98,749 Irish emigrants entering Canada that year (McMahon, 2021, 147-60). The 1847 annual report of Moses Perley, the Emigration Officer at Saint John , revealed a total of 17,074 emigrants embarked for New Brunswick in 99 vessels from Irish ports and seven from Liverpool, but the passengers were “very nearly, without exception, all from Ireland”. Altogether over 2,100 died ( 12.3% ): 823 deaths occurred on the passage and 1,292 died after arrival, the majority in Saint John where 14,892 emigrants landed. The mortality at the quarantine station on Partridge Island was 601 and another 595 died at the Emigrant Hospital. Few died elsewhere in the province of New Brunswick except at Middle Island in the Miramichi River where 96 deaths were recorded (Whalen, 1980, 94). Perley suspected that deaths had been underreported. All in all, there might have been some exaggeration in reportage, yet it’s possible that deaths were missed as emigrants dispersed into the hinterlands - perhaps not 20%, but still horrific. British emigration to BNA declined in the decade after the Great Famine and the Irish proportion of the total decreased as Irish migrants increasingly favored the US, as demonstrated by declining Census levels for Canadians of Irish descent during the second half of the century. The Canadian Census of 1871 documented 24.3% of the population to be of Irish origin, with the percentage reaching 35% in Ontario and New Brunswick, while 60% of the Irish in Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick were Protestant, and mainly rural settlers – reflecting the largely Protestant Irish emigration to BNA prior to 1846, and the impermanence of Catholic Irish Famine-era emigrants (Mitchel, 2021). Irish ‘two-boaters’ were not necessarily all Catholics from St John, since east coast US port arrival records from 1820 onward document many vessels, commonly schooners, carrying Irish migrants from other ports in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland (author). A useful table for the reader is the 1861 British Emigration Commissioners Report on UK emigration to the North American Colonies, the United States, and Australia 1815-60, which can also be found in the Introduction to the 1860 US Census. And Cal McCarthy’s Cork Harbour offers a summary of emigration for 1843-56 from the Port of Cork to the US and Canada. CHAPTER 3B IRISH EMIGRANTS ARRIVING AT US PORTS 1815-60 As previously stated, the main US transatlantic emigration entry ports during this period were Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans. Irish transatlantic emigration increased progressively up until mid-century, favoring BNA in earlier years, and the USA in later years. Typically, Irish emigrant health, wealth and skill- levels were limited by the Famine years, and the Irish became increasingly Catholic entering Protestant countries. Those factors and the economic landscape fostered migrant congregation at their points of entry. The arriving Irish in the mid-1800s were in no shape, physically, mentally or financially to immediately travel beyond their ports of destination, though travel they did. Perhaps not as

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