Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART III CATALOGUE OF CORK-BASED EMIGRANT SHIPS 1815-60

I perchance documented that some of the over-three-hundred vessels in my book carried emigrants to North America and considered providing expanded details on those Cork emigrant ships but was advised that would be too weighty a sidebar and better addressed in a later paper. The further impetus to proceed with this paper, based on my prior reading, was the repetitious hyperbolic commentary by many authors on Ireland’s “Coffin Ships”, with unrestricted comparisons of their transatlantic voyages to the Middle Passage of slaves in a prior century. My research pertaining to 19 th century Cork emigrant sailing ships failed to reveal master mariners overtly derelict in duty to their passengers, or reason to consider them other than decent men. Cork newspapers were not averse to reporting incidents of high mortality on transatlantic voyages and were critical when bad behavior of ship captains was determined whether they were from English or Irish ports. Disease-associated high death rates were occasionally documented on Cork vessels prior to the Great Famine, but I found no condemnations of Cork-based captains or their sailing ships prior to, or during the Great Famine. Transatlantic voyaging in steerage on the adapted standard cargo sailing vessel of the early 1800s was obnoxious, and overcrowding and onboard conditions were problems addressed in part by regulation but lacking the compliance of some captains; but again, I failed to find any egregious accusations made against Cork-based captains during this 1815-60 study. Yet, the worst mortality statistics were associated with Cork - specifically for emigrants voyaging in the year of 1847 from Cork to Quebec. The second worst record was in that same year for those emigrants voyaging from Liverpool to Quebec (a topic addressed extensively in Parts 1 and ll). This research found 183 Cork-registered sailing ships traversing the Atlantic from the Port of Cork with emigrants 1815-60, but the participation of 98 of those vessels was minimal. Still, it was surprising to find so many ‘emigrant’ vessels, since the Cork fleet reached only 386 sailing vessels with a total tonnage of 45,000 in 1850, which was approximately ten times the tonnage at the start of this study, when the Napoleonic Wars ended (Bielenberg and Anderson). Emigration was heavier from Ulster and Leinster in the 1820s and early 30s, while Munster and Connacht saw increases by the late 1830s, and Catholics clearly exceeded Protestants in the emigrant mix during the Great Famine. Two thirds of Irish emigrants to BNA up until 1845 were Protestants. Considering these factors, I had not anticipated discovery of so many Cork-based vessels carrying emigrants from Cork to America in the early post-Napoleonic period.

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