Copyright © 2025 John Sutton. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means: electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the author.
Westward Cork Migration by Sail Presented here is a twofold history: the pattern and development of emigrant sailing ship traffic to North America from Cork Harbour in the period from the end of the Napoleonic Wars through the years of the Great Famine; and, from the standpoint of the emigrants carried by these ships, the face of the rapidly changing North America they came to engage with. The ports of British North America (the future Canada), above all Quebec and St John in New Brunswick, were the major destinations for ships from Cork up until the Famine, when major eastern US ports of arrival, particularly New York City and Boston assumed the greater importance. Wherever they first arrived on the eastern seaboard, large numbers of those departing from Cork and elsewhere in Ireland participated in the continent’s opening westwards, travelling by flatboat down the Ohio for the Mississippi River Valley to settle new states and territories in earlier years, joining migration further west by wagon on the Oregon Trail in later years, or making the more immediate contribution of vital labour for nation-building, such as the construction of major canals that would link the Atlantic, via the Hudson River and the St Lawrence Seaway, to the Great Lakes. Crossing the Atlantic was but a prelude to further adventure stretching sometimes as far as the Pacific. This work follows the same author’s 19th Century Cork Sutton Mariners, Sailing Ships and Crews (2022). It contains in tabular form extensive ship-by- ship details for the period covered, as well as images, maps and diagrams which provide the reader with a sense of the transformative experience encountered by those who sailed forever from Cork.
Copyright John Sutton 2025 All Rights Reserved
Powered by FlippingBook