For the victims of eviction there were only two alternatives – begging or emigration.

Once they made the decision to emigrate to America, the preparation was very complex, and represented for the emigrants a detailed exercise of travel planning. The usual road taken by the emigrants bound to America ended in Dublin. From there the emigrant crossed to Liverpool, and took a ship sailing to New York, Boston or Philadelphia.

‘Men, women and children were scrambling up the sides of the ship. One could see hundreds of people confused, screaming. Luggage and boxes were flung aboard, followed by the passengers. When they or their luggage missed the ship and fell into the water there was usually a man in a rowing boat ready to rescue and get his reward. But sadly there was not always someone there to rescue and consequently a few people drowned. Those who did not manage to get onboard at the dock-gate had no choice but to hire a rowing boat to catch up the ship down the river Mersey. The boatmen would not do it for less than half a sovereign (10 shillings). Getting on board a ship was really rough, even for the cabin passengers’ 

This sad scene of the departure was described in the Illustrated London News in 1850: ‘The most callous and indifferent can scarcely fail, at such a moment, to form cordial wishes for the pleasant voyage and safe arrival of the emigrants, and for their future prosperity in their new home. As the ship is towed out, hats are raised, handkerchiefs are waved, and a loud and long-continued shout of farewell is raised from the shore, and cordially responded to from the ship.

It is then, if at any time, that the eyes of the emigrants begin to moisten’

Occasionally, the ports of Dublin and Cork were used to sail directly to North America when ships were chartered to this purpose. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that after 1840 and until the 1880s the vast majority of emigrants used Liverpool as their port of departure due to the greater availability of shipping lines, frequencies, fares and accommodations. There is also circumstantial evidence that some of them have gone from the port of Southampton, but Liverpool was the preferred port during the nineteenth century.

‘The annals of the modern world offer no such record as that presented in the history of Ireland, since the memorable and deplorable years of the potato famine, and of the pestilence that followed in its track. The splendid emigrant ships that ply between Liverpool and New York, and which have sufficed in previous years to carry to the shores of America an Irish emigration, amounting on the average to 250,000 souls per annum, have, during the present spring, been found insufficient to transport to the States the increasing swarms of Irish who have resolved to try in the New World to gain the independence which has been denied them in the old’.

There are some forty million Irish Americans in the United States of America, descendants of those who, over the past four centuries, crossed the Atlantic in successive waves of emigrations.

Life in America was rarely easy and many of the new immigrants fell by the wayside; but eventually they achieved a standard of living unimaginable in the world they had left behind. Over the generations they rose to the highest positions in politics, the labour movement, the professions, industry, commerce and the arts, and their very numbers made them a powerful political force.

Further Information:

  www.eustice.info/irish-emigration.htm

 http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk