Coffin Ships

This week I will be exploring another aspect of the Potato famine; the great emigration. The term 'coffin ship' was created because so many people died while traveling from Ireland to their destination.

A coffin ship memorial at Galway, Ireland

 It was very common for Irish landlords to evict people from their homes or have them sent to jail. For this reason, many Irish decided to flee to another country. Sometime the landlords would even pay for the Irish to leave, just so they would not have to be burdened by them. Oftentimes, poor, starving people were put on severely overcrowded ships for countries like Canada, America, and England. The ships created the perfect conditions for outbreaks of disease like dysentery and typhoid fever. Many people died on the ships; their bodies simply thrown over board. 

Upon arrival of their destination, the Irish immigrants were often extremely sick with disease contracted while on the ship. Many people died shortly after leaving the ship while walking along to road. A popular destination was Canada, specifically Grosse Isle. It is estimated that 100,000 Irish sailed to Canada, where 1 in 5 died, including 5,000 at Grosse Isle alone. Many people who arrived to Canada tried to travel to the United States, but the large increase of Irish in America led congress to pass laws making it more difficult and expensive to enter the country. 

Depiction of life on a coffin ship

Other Irish tried to travel to England for the guaranteed food and short ship ride. However, England had many of the same problems as other countries. The huge increase in population of poor, sick people lead to the massive spread of disease. Also, native people became infuriated with the job competition as a result of so many Irish willing to work for any form of money. Soon, England began to forcibly export Irish immigrants back to Ireland, even if they were clearly sick. 

 
The Irish tried to travel to other countries, but they were always met with the same dislike. It had become custom of other people to believe that all Irish carried disease and were poor, demanding money and food for free. 


References:
coffin ship memorial: http://images.travelpod.com/users/scottmclean/1.1249677397.the-coffin-ship.jpg
depiction of coffin ship: http://www.victoriana.com/Irish/IrishPoliticalCartoons.htm
information: http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/coffin.htm

Life During the Famine

Painting a picture of the living conditions during the Potato Famine is not a pretty one. Filled with many brown, blacks, and grays, the famine was a perfect storm of horrible occurrences. As stated before, British involvement in the famine was not positive at all. However, there were more immediate problems the Irish people had to live with.

A starving family in their home

Understanding the Irish way of living is important. The mass population relied on bartering as a means of economy, simple fishing equipment, and growing everything they ate (mostly potatoes). When the famine hit full force, the Irish had no money to buy expensive food, there was not enough government work provided, and people traded everything they owned for food. Quickly, material items ran out and with no money, work, or possessions, whole families were forced to starve. Near the coasts, fisherman were only able to catch a limited amount of fish (which could not be transported to inner Ireland) and even the fishermen were forced to sell their nets and boats to buy food. As people starved in the streets, they watched ships of food leave Ireland for the British ports. This sparked many food riots and the Irish tried, and failed, to confiscate the boats. The people tried to survive off of anything they could find, even eat green grass. Finally, in the winter of 1846-47, the worst weather Ireland has ever seen was reported. In a land that rarely sees snow, a multitude of blizzards occurred, barring houses and people alike.

Memorial in Dublin about the famine

In addition to the debilitating hunger, many people died from diseases spread across the land. One of the main killers was "Black Fever" or typhus. It was spread from person to person by body lice often carried by the homeless. As kind people tried to help the sick, they got infected themselves and continued to spread the disease.

References:

Information: http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/hunger.htm

Staving family: http://www.myguideireland.com/images/stories/Ireland/about-ireland-2/history/famine/starving-family.jpg

Memorial: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Famine_memorial_dublin.jpg/275px-Famine_memorial_dublin.jpg

 

 

The British Involvement in the Famine

One of the major factors in the Irish Potato Famine is the involvement of the the British government. Many people believe that the British (who had control of Ireland at the time) did not help the Irish people survive the famine or help prevent the loss of so many lives.

Although many feel the British had no involvement during the famine, they did take some actions. The Prime Minister (Peel) at the time did not believe conditions in Ireland were severe enough to warrant British actions, he was forced to do something by 1845. Here he decided to spend £100,000 on American corn to import into Ireland as another food source. Although this plan was good in theory, a major problem with this was that the mass majority of the starving Irish were poor and could not afford the expensive new commodity. Another unexpected issue was that corn was not previously popular in Ireland and many of the Irish did not know how to prepare it, use it in their recipes, or even like the taste of it. To help with the price of the corn, Peel removed the Corn Laws in 1846, which had previously enacted a high duty on imported corn. However, this action did not help the Irish living in poverty.

Peel also tried to help the poor by providing jobs in Ireland such as building roads, filling valleys, and leveling hills. Under this system, men would work and at the end of the week be paid their wages. However, oftentimes men would die of starvation before they were able to collect the weeks wages.

In the spring of 1846, Peel was replaced in office by Lord John Russell. When left with no other options, in 1847 he tried to slow the effects of the famine by providing work houses, loans, and soup kitchens in the major cities and towns. This lead to wide spread migration of people from the country to the cities which became inundated with citizens. Here, food quickly ran out and the work houses had more people than they could handle. With the rapid increase in population, typhoid fever, cholera, and dysentery reached epidemic proportions and killed more than starvation.

In the fall of 1847, Lord Russell demanded that the money the British spent on Ireland be repaid. He accomplished this by increasing taxes and imparting fees on various items on the Irish people. This lead to increased death and violence in Ireland.

Source: http://www.victorianweb.org/history/famine.html

The Famine: Background

Before diving into the details of the Great Potato Famine, lets learn a little more about its background. Today I will discuss the fungus that caused the potato famine. 

Sporangia on a sporangiophore of Phytophthora infestans

Phytophthora infestans is the species of fungus that affected the Irish and European potatoes in the 1840s. This fungus causes the potato disease know as "late blight" or "potato blight". Because this is a fungus, it spreads by spores called sporangia. It is theorized that the fungus came from the Mexico area and then traveled to the East coast of the United States. From here, wind carried the spores across the U.S. where potatoes were shipped to Europe. 

 

Potato with Phytophthora infestans blight

The symptoms of the disease include infected leaves and rots of the tuber. The leaves may develop holes and brown areas. The potatoes develop shrunken areas, though color is not usually noticeably different. However, the plant is weakened, causing secondary infections to set in. This causes the entire potato to rot and become blackened in appearance. 

Sources:

http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/before.htm

http://www.extento.hawaii.edu/kbase/crop/type/p_infest.htm