Coffin Ship Read Online Free Page B

tools’ such was their weakened state.
    Upon arriving in Clifden they were confronted with further harrowing sights close to where they were staying. A woman who had crawled into an outhouse on the previous night had died. By the time her body was found, part of her remains had been devoured by dogs. That same evening they observed another corpse being pushed through the streets in a wheelbarrow by a man desperately seeking assistance in burying the body. The following morning Foster and his son left for Galway. Along the way they encountered emaciated women and children, who were almost naked despite the brutal winter conditions.

    Funeral at Shepperton Lakes, County Cork.
(The Illustrated London News, 13-2-1847)
    As they journeyed throughout Connemara, the question on their minds was not how these people died but rather how they lived. They had anticipated that the situation in Connacht would be bad but nothing could have prepared them for the absolute desolation that greeted them, a desolation that ‘defied all exaggeration’. [5]
    One can see from these reports why the coffin ships might have seemed an attractive option, even a salvation, despite the terrible stories that surrounded the voyages. There had been emigration before the famine, but not on the scale witnessed during the famine years and the decades that followed. In contrast to previous emigration, when it was largely young men and women who left the country, children and elderly people constituted a large percentage of those who fled during the famine. Many of them had been weakened by fever and starvation long before the voyage.
    Passenger companies took advantage of the des-perate situation. They encouraged mass emigration through newspaper advertisements that promised an escape from the horrors sweeping across the land. Many emigrants were packed into the lower decks like ‘slaves in a slave ship’ and confined without light or fresh air during bad weather, making these ships fertile ground for the spread of disease. In the initial stages of the famine, America responded well with aid, but the sudden influx of starving and impoverished emigrants, many of whom were too weak to work, appalled the American authorities. They enforced Passenger Acts which resulted in some ships being turned away from American ports; for these people all hope was lost. [6]
    The following poem appeared in the Illustrated London News on 13 February 1847:
    Uncoffin’d, unshrouded, his bleak corpse they bore,
    From the spot where he died on the Cabin’s wet floor,
    To a hole which they dug in the garden close by;
    Thus a brother hath died – thus a Christian must lie!
    â€™Twas a horrible end to a harrowing tale,
    To chill the strong heart – to strike revelry pale.
    No disease o’er this Victim could mastery claim,
    â€™Twas Famine alone marked his skeleton frame!
    The bones of his Grandsire and Father too, rest
    In the old Abbey-yard, by the holy rites blest;
    Their last hours were sooth’d by affections’ fond cares,
    Their last sighs were breath’d midst their Friends’ tearful prayers!
    Unshriven, untended, this man pass’d away,
    Ere Time streak’d one hair of his dark locks with gray,
    His requiem the wild wind, and Ilen’s hoarse roar,
    As its swollen waves dash on the rock-girded shore.

Notes
    [ 1 ] The Illustrated London News : ‘Famine and Starvation in the County of Cork’ (16-1-1847); ‘Mortality in Skibbereen’ (30-1-1846); Mr James Mahony, ‘Sketches in the West of Ireland’ (13/20-2-1847); ‘The Late Food Riots in Ireland’ (7-11-1846); ‘The Potato Disease’ (18-10-1845).
    [ 2 ] The Illustrated London News : ‘Famine and Starvation in the County of Cork’ (16-1-1847); ‘Mortality in Skibbereen’ (30-1-1846); Mr James Mahony, ‘Sketches in the West of Ireland’ (13/20-2-1847).
    [ 3 ] The Illustrated London News : ‘Famine and