JOURNAL OF THE COUNTY DONEGAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY the North ·o.t Ireland to America prior to 1775 were made tragic bv starvation. In 1729, 175 people died on two vessels during the crossing. Six of the for;ty-six people who died on tihe· Sea.flower <Belfa~ to Philadelphia, 1741) were consumed by the sixty survivors. Sixity~four deaths took place on board the Sa.Uv (Belfast to Philadeliphia, 17.62), and, of the three hundred emigrants who set out from Derrv to Hampton Roads in t.he General Wolfe in 17'12. eighty died aind the remainder fanded "metre skeletons, so weak they could hardlv walk or stand." Bu1t t.he troubles of the emigrants on board the Sea.flower did not start till t.he vessel' had sprung heT mast and lay becalmed. and the other vova.ges werie spread over t1wentv, twentv~two. :fifteen, and seventeen weeks respecitiYe!y. The first restriction on the number of passengers, aH:orwed to be carried. on emigrant vessels was not imposed till 1803. Before· that date, especially in Y·ears of heavy emigration, ships wexe p-;rossl'Y ov.emrowded. The Belfast News-,:Letter referred, without appa.ren.t surprise and certainly without reproo•f. to an emigrant vessel in which an av·eirage of eleven pooµ11e occupied every seven be:rths, each of which measured five :fie.et ten inches Jong. and eighteen inches of ibroad.4 No vessel that was advertised before 1774 to sail f,rom a north Irisih port claimed a gr·eater height bletJween decks than five feet: the William dairned to be a "roomy" vessel: .as the· height between decks was four feet nine inches.5 Inclement weather sometimes k.ept all emigrants below deck for days ancl weeks. Ther;e they sl1ept and w·ashed and ate; sang and wept; chaffed unde1· and obeyed the pettv tvrants in t,heir midst, and rejoiced for the ne1wly-born or mourned for the dead. It was most unusual for anv means of ventilation to exist in this tower of Ba:bel. Six emtg;rant vessels bl()Jasted of uort-hol·rs in 1774 a.nd 177'5. stressing the;r iliyg.enic value so naivel'Y that it is obvious that port-holes were, at tha.t time, an innovrution in the emigration tra.de. A high mortality rate w:as inevitab:.e on the Transatlantic voyage, but the harrowing scenes on contemporv German Viessels h'ad their countmpa.rts on few vesrels thmt left the North Irish ports. Fever, however. is no re.spector of race, and typhus, the Palatine fever. and otheir drea.d visitants swent through many a No:rtih :Lrish vessel. Smallpox broke out on, at 1east. two of the four vessels that sailed from Lame With emigrants in 1772 s and "a very consi·derable numlber" of t;he Newrv emigrants of 1774 di€·d befo.:-f! 1the vessels :re·ached Ameri·ca. 7 Naturally, children were the easiest prev of disease. Of the fiftv children under four years who sailied on a veSSel from suthe,rlla.nd to America in 1774, only one survived, and of the seven women wiho were delivered during the voyage, six died, together with ;190 all seven children. s It has been asserted t;hat, in German vessels, children under seven years rarely surviv;ed the · Tr:ainsatlantic voya.ge, and that mortal•iJty in childbirth was so high that the bodi.es of mother and child were generally thrown overboard together. 9 Though there is evidence to. suggest th:s.t there was a di.sprroportionatelv high death rate among children on most North Irish vessels, there is none to suggest a death rate on the scale of the Sutherland and German viessels. Storms and shiplW!reck, privateeirS and pirat.-es claimed their tol'l among Irish emig.ra.nts as among all emi~ grarut groups of 1the time. But in the face of these advierslities. too. it would seem that the North Irish emigrants were singularly for.tunate a.nd it was geneirallv on the ea.sit:ern voyage that v.essels coneetrned in tihe emigratton trade met these dangers. Cha.nee plaved its pa.rt in this .comparative exemption from disiaster, through the fact that the eastern voyage was usually made between .DecembeT and February with ft.axse•ed is a part explanation. Many vessels with emigrants on boa:rd met gales, of course. and some suffered damage. The Ea!'l of Donegal. bound friom Belfast to Philadelphia in 17'6'8, was blown off her course to A.ntigu.a, arriving there in .great distress.lo The GlorioW'. Men,iory, i:;.a,Hing from Belfast to Ph1la.de..plna in 1774, was fortunat·e in being able to nut into Plymouth with only four fatal casualties aftrer she [had sprung her mast and the cargo h.ad shifted. 11 But onlv one r.eport of bhe loss of a vessel involviing the loss of l'ife of North Irish Emig•r:ants was printed in Irish newspapers beitlwleen . 17~50 and 1775. The Providence ran mto. a heavy gal.e a f,ortnight after le.avmg Portrush for New York on 27th August, 1768.. The shin Si))Q':ang a leak and sank; and only thirteen of the thirtv-six peop1e on board were saved after spending a fortnigiht i..n the long · bna.t. hav~ng em:plo¥ed the gireater part of that t.ime in prayer. The onl':V a.lternativ·e the passeng1ers and crew of the Providence ha.d to remaining on board the sinking ves.s1el was to take to the vawJ: or th'e long boat which. together. could a0commodate only &eve1nteen people. A ya.wl a.nd a l~ng boat were c:ar-ried by an ocean..gomg v.essiels ~o that no ·extra pn.,ecautions were taken witfil regard to the vesse1's passengers who w.ere. indeed. merely regarded as a type of frei~ht. When the Providence was doomed. iit was the captain .and crew who took to the bOats des:pit,e the ple.as of those who were abandoned, includling a woman and her t!Wo children. 12 More than four hundred voyages were made by vessels carryirn;r: Nortih Irish emigrants between 17:50 ·and 177'5, but in only abornt twelve of these do we know any.thing of what happened betmeen the deprurtu.r.e of the vessels firorn the Irish ports and their arrival in A.merica. The Irish news-
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