Westward Cork Migration by Sail 1815-1860 by John Sutton

PART II EMIGRANT PERSPECTIVE

The third option of North America still necessitated a voyage of typically several weeks by sailing ship, unpleasant conditions, significant expense, virtual banishment from Ireland, and abandonment of most family members and friends forever. Nonetheless, North America for the Irish, as for many other European migrants, was the preferred destination option. So where did those Irish emigrants go in post-Napoleonic War America? Destination ports were determined by accessibility and options. Raymond Cohn has summed up emigration as a function of the economic situation in each country, the cost of emigrating, family considerations, and information flows. Mercantile shipping fleets were depleted and disorganized when peace came at the end of the wars in 1815, and focus turned to reestablishment of trade and shipping routes. Transatlantic passenger ticket prices were inhibitive. However, fleet replenishment and the robust importation of timber from British North America to Britain and Ireland soon found vessels with space to fill on return trips to Quebec and St John with ticket prices in the 2–3- pound range, whereas tickets from Liverpool to New York cost 5-7 pounds. Subsequently shipments of cotton from New York to Liverpool for Lancashire’s vast textile industry expanded by the late 1820s, providing space for Irish emigrants for westbound routes on those ships at more competitive prices. Established trade routes and ticket prices were major considerations in transatlantic passenger choices. Incentives also played a part, and in the early 1800s Britain encouraged, assisted, and on occasions subsidized British settlement in BNA to secure sparsely populated countryside from US expansionism, expand the labor force in vital sectors and (in all honesty) dilute French influence, while resolving the problems of overcrowding and unemployment at home in Great Britain (and Ireland). Emigrants preferred familiar migration patterns, and in the early 1800s Londonderry migrants adhered to their well-established linen trade and emigration route between Londonderry and Philadelphia. And when on less familiar turf, they migrated in large groups. Thus, “Saint John New Brunswick and Quebec in Canada, and New York and Philadelphia in the US were also common destination ports of emigrants departing from Derry in the first half of the 19 th century. Of 38 emigrant ships advertised to sail from Derry in 1836: 12 were destined for Saint John (New Brunswick), 12 for Philadelphia, 7 for Quebec and 6 for New York. Although Protestant migration as a proportion of Irish migration declined relative to Catholic migration after 1815, the numbers of Irish Protestants emigrating to North America in the first half of the 19 th century was still greater than numbers that departed in the 18 th century. Throughout the 18 th and 19 th centuries many small farmers, agricultural labourers, and rural tradesmen in Ireland, whether Catholic or Protestant, saw emigration as the only solution to their declining economic prospects ” (Mitchel, 2019). Wars, that had heightened risk for migratory fishermen, hastened the development of resident fisheries and wintertime economic opportunities in Newfoundland, such that men from the southeast of Ireland, who had made seasonal transatlantic voyages to work in the fish trade, chose to settle there in large numbers in the first half of the century; though for most other emigrants Quebec was the primary port of opportunity in BNA. Cork, as the reader may have noted, was particularly drawn to St John New Brunswick. Chain migration created patterns of migration as the century progressed, with prepaid tickets to join relatives in America. Some destitute Irish accepted free or subsidized tickets to North American ports supplied by kindly (or calculating) Irish landlords and agencies, out of kindness, or charity, or a desire to be rid of them. In 1847, the extent of financial assistance may have been exaggerated, and