Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART I CALENDAR OF CORK EMIGRANT SHIP SAILINGS 1815-60

● 15 children were born at sea. ● 54 born in Canada. ● A handful jumped ship in Vancouver, Montreal or elsewhere.

This 1825 group did not do as well on arrival: it is thought that their general ill-health was never overcome and one third of the party were dead within three years (McCarthy 2019, 197). * Shipping News The massive Canadian Ship Columbus broke apart in 1825 and large fragments came ashore at Baltimore and Kinsale. The similarly constructed Baron of Renfrew experienced a similar fate. These 5,000-ton disposable ships were built to be broken down on arrival in Great Britain and their timbers sold, thus avoiding the tax on imported timber since the sale of ships was not subject to tax. * Quebec Ship Construction From the shipyard of J S Campbell, the ships Tottenham and Trio, both upward of 300 tons burthen. Both these ships would later join the Cork fleet and carry passengers (Part lll). * Lachine Canal Construction Completed The Lachine Canal on the St Lawrence in Canada opened in 1825, allowing vessels to bypass the Lachine Rapids above Montreal and avoid delays caused by lengthy portage ( The Ships List ). * Erie Canal Construction Completed The 363-mile Erie Canal in the US, connecting New York to Lake Erie 570 feet above sea level, was completed in 1825. The Erie Canal, between Albany and Buffalo, opened to shipping 26 Oct 1825, allowing a voyage on the Seneca Chief from New York to Buffalo in just ten days, converting New York into a commercial capital. The Canal course passed from Albany to Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo at Lake Erie. The so-called DeWitt Ditch, named after New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, was forty foot wide, had thirty-six locks and was an amazing engineering achievement, accomplished by creative amateur engineers in the days before dynamite and, from 1820 onward, employed many thousands of Irish labourers, who toiled in subhuman conditions on the canal with wheelbarrows and shovels, and died like flies (Buck 2015, 70). * Welland Canal Construction Status Report ‘ We have often seen descriptions in the newspapers, of the United States, of the rapid growth of villages, in that country. It appears to us that we have a case in point, in this District equal to anything they can produce in that extensive country— on the summit level of the Welland Canal. We believe there was not twelve months ago one House. On that beautiful plane there are now upwards of one hundred dwelling Houses, inhabited by upwards of 500 people; besides labourers on the Canal, there are black-smiths, tailors, shoemakers, &c. there is a good market— with a constant supply of the necessities of life, a number of merchant shops, alias stores, with assortments equal to any in the country. The Editor has an opportunity of viewing the progress made on this stupendous undertaking, and was much gratified to find the soil so well adopted to facilitate the work— it is as far as has been dug a solid clay, without any spring or veins of sand or stone ;— the method adopted on the summit level, is to plough up, and carry off in wagons the clay, this, has been repeated to the depth of ten or twelve feet, and no obstruction has yet appeared to hinder this method, being pursued. From the level of Chippawa, on the head waters of the Twelve-Mile Creek for about a mile, the Canal is nearly completed, the greatest depth of which is seventeen feet, all sold clay. The plan adapted by the