Dunbrody

On the way back to Dublin, we drop by The tall ship Dunbrody. This is a reconstruction of the original Dunbrody, a 458 tonne three-masted barque, originally built in Quebec, Canada for the Graves Family of New Ross in 1845 by Thomas Hamilton Oliver, an Irish emigrant from Co. Derry. Dunbrody carried many emigrants to the New World (US / Canada) from 1845 to 1870. From 1845 to 1851, between April and September, she carried passengers on her outward journeys to Canada and the USA. She usually carried 176 people but on one crossing, at the height of the Famine in 1847, she carried 313.

Many of the passengers were the evicted tenants of Lord Fitzwilliam's Wicklow estates and Viscount de Vesci's Portlaoise estates. She carried two classes of passenger - the cabin passenger who paid between £5 and £8 and the steerage passenger who paid between £3 15s 0p and £4. This fare was at least the equivalent of two months income for a tenant farmer in the 1840's.

The cabin passengers (usually Protestant gentry) had food and services provided but the steerage passengers had to cook and fend for themselves. 1847 was the worst year of the Famine. In the first open months of the Spring 40 ships were waiting to disembark and the quarantine station at Grosse Île in Canada had more than 1,100 patients suffering in terrible conditions. In May 1847, Captain Baldwin finally landed his passengers at Grosse Île after a very long passage. In a letter addressed to William Graves, he reported "the Dunbrody was detained in quarantine for five days because there were too many ships queuing in the St. Lawrence River. Doctor Douglas is nearly singled-handed….everyday, dozens of corpses are thrown overboard from many ships….I have heard that some of them have no fresh water left and the passengers and crew have to drink the water from the river. God help them!"