Coffin Ship

Many books and stories have been written about the Great Famine, but few have illustrated the horrors as well as this, William Henry's latest book,
 
Coffin Ship: The Wreck of the Brig St. John.
 
In the lead-up to the central story of the tragic voyage, William Henry paints a picture of the conditions that prevailed in Ireland at the time, particularly at the emigrant port of Galway. He records the despair and desperation of the landless peasants, their often horrific journeys on foot to the famine ships and the callousness and dishonesty they suffered at the hands of the ship captains. He refers to the awful conditions which the emigrants endured in places such as Liverpool, where they were packed into small areas. William Henry does not write merely in general terms, but gives authenticity to the story by referring to individuals and their place of origin.

This excellent build-up gives way to the main story of one particular famine ship, the brig
 
St. John.
 
William Henry describes the characters of the captain and crew and outlines the difficulties of life on such a ship. He is at his best when outlining the mounting tension on board as desperate efforts are made to save the ship from the furious and unexpected storm.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, the William Henry maintains the reader's interest by relating the personal stories of both the passengers who survived the tragedy and those onshore who helped get them to safety. This is an outstandingly organised and unforgettable story.

James Casserly

President of the Old Galway Society, 2009

The loss of the brig
 
St. John
 
off the coast of Massa-chusetts in October 1849 was one of the most tragic events to occur during the Great Famine of 1845–50.
 
This book traces the last voyage of the brig
 
St. John
, and briefly recounts the story of some of those who sailed on her in an attempt to acquaint the reader with the human beings behind the statistics. It begins with a look at the background of the famine and includes eyewitness accounts from areas such as Skibbereen and Connemara. These accounts describe the horrific living conditions which left so many with little choice but to undertake the frightening and dangerous voyage overseas. It was the nightmarish and appalling conditions throughout the country that forced so many to take the path to a famine ship. The third chapter explores the conditions on board these coffin ships, focusing on several particularly shocking examples to highlight the sufferings of these people. The fourth chapter accompanies these people on their gruelling walk to the port, while the remaining chapters are devoted to the story of the
 
St. John
, its tragic end and aftermath. The book also includes a list of both the survivors and victims amongst the passengers and crew of the
 
St. John
.

The voyage to the New World was long and perilous. About one-fifth of those who sailed from Irish shores during the famine perished en route. Sources indicate that in 1847 alone, some 100,000 people set sail for British North America, with an estimated 20,000 of them either perishing aboard the ‘coffin ships' or dying afterwards as a result of conditions on board. The remains of those who died from disease and hunger during the voyages were consigned to a sea grave. There was nothing to mark their final resting place.

The Irish peasants had worked long, hard hours in an exploitative landlord system. If they were unable to pay the extortionate rents demanded of them, they faced eviction. Bolstered by the police, the landlords' agents evicted many from their homes. The peasants' situation was exacerbated by a government that showed little interest in their plight. In the years before the famine the indifference and contempt of some members of the British government, expressed in their policies towards Ireland, had in a sense sealed the fate of the Irish people. Yet as famine ravaged the country, Ireland was being governed by the British Empire, a world superpower at the height of its glory.

However, not everyone turned a blind eye to the suffering of the Irish peasants. The Choctaw nation of North America, being no stranger to suffering and indifference itself, was moved to compassion by the plight of the Irish during the famine. In the winter of 1831, tens of thousands of Choctaws had been removed from their ancestral homelands in Mississippi and sent to a reservation in Oklahoma. The reason was that settlers and many other white Americans saw the Choctaw as standing in the way of progress and in their eagerness to secure land to raise cotton, they pressurised the federal government into forcibly acquiring the Choctaws' territory. During the forced march to the reservation, which became known as the ‘Trail of Tears', almost half of the Choctaw people perished. The Choctaws raised $710 for the starving Irish, which would be equivalent to more than €100,000 in today's money.

Other groups also tried to help, among them the Society of Friends, or the Quakers as they are more commonly known. The Quakers donated consignments of flour, rice, biscuits and meal to the Irish people. Eventually soup kitchens replaced public works projects in Ireland and by 1847 this support was reaching some three million people on a daily basis.

Many older people still remember their parents being extremely conscientious regarding the wastage of food. I believe that this was a legacy from the famine passed down through successive generations. In a similar vein, for most Irish people it is an absolute priority that they have ownership of the house in which they live; it is embedded in the Irish mindset. This is another possible legacy from a period when evictions were the order of the day for those who could not afford to pay the rent.

I have been asked time and time again why I switched, midstream, from writing a series of children's books to writing about a tragedy such as the loss of the brig
 
St. John
. The original impetus for this book came from a dream. One night, while asleep in my bed, I found myself transported onto a nineteenth-century sailing ship. It was a beautiful sun-drenched day. I looked up at the sails as they fluttered gently in the warm breeze. I could feel the slow and gentle side-to-side motion of the ship as it floated on the waves. Moments later I became aware of movements ahead of me at the entrance to the hold of the ship. It was open and a sailor was slowly emerging from it, dragging a large object concealed by a white sheet along behind him. A second sailor stood to the rear of the first, and he was holding on to the other end of the sheet. The two sailors proceeded towards the gunwale of the ship where they emptied the contents of the sheet onto the deck.

I was shocked by what I saw – it was the lifeless, emaciated body of a man. It suddenly dawned on me that I was aboard a coffin ship. I had no idea how I had arrived there but for some reason I didn't question the strangeness of my surroundings. The sailors returned to the hold and repeated this same exercise several times over until a small heap of bodies lay on the deck. The sailors seemed oblivious to my presence as they lifted one of the bodies. One sailor grabbed the legs, while the other took the arms, and between them they raised the corpse onto the gunwale. They then dropped the body into the sea as though they were discarding nothing more than an old and worn pair of boots.

As they grabbed the next body, my emotions got the better of me and I shouted at them to have some respect, to say a prayer at least for these poor, wretched human beings. They didn't seem to hear me as they lifted a second body and consigned it to the sea. Advancing towards them I shouted, ‘At least bless yourselves', but once again my cries fell on deaf ears. I looked down at one of the corpses still lying on the deck. Suddenly his head rolled around to face me. His eyes flew open and he looked directly at me in shock. I knew that he was aware of my presence. The sailors then grabbed him and threw his body over the side of the ship.

I ran and grabbed the gunwale and stared down at the sea. I was stunned. His body was floating about six inches below the surface of the water and his gaze was still fixed on me. It was then that I noticed he was not alone. As my eyes scanned the ocean I saw that there were literally thousands of other bodies floating alongside him. I was overcome by a mixture of sadness and fear. I heard him whisper the words ‘Remember us, remember us', as he and all the other bodies slowly sank to the bottom of the ocean. On the second utterance of those haunting words I was sure I heard a chorus of other voices join in.

Suddenly I awoke and realised that it had all been a dream. I was drenched in sweat, but delighted to be safely back in my bed. My mind was a flurry of activity so, knowing there was little chance of returning to sleep, I began to process the dream. Such was the effect it had on me that the following morning I contacted a very gifted friend and spiritual Canadian woman called Naomi Jane Zettl to seek help in clarifying its meaning. Naomi is a woman of great wisdom and a short time later she informed me that one of the main messages of my dream was that something needed to be done to commemorate these people.

At the time I was not sure what to do but Naomi assured me that I would receive guidance and eventually her words made perfect sense. A few months later a woman, Kathleen Berry contacted me to write a book on the brig
 
St. John
, but at the time I was too busy. Later a man by the name of John Bhaba Jaick Ó Congaola, from Lettermullen, contacted me and also asked me to write a book on the brig
 
St. John
, as he believed I would be interested in the material. At the time I was still too busy to take on the project. Besides, I knew nothing about the
 
St. John,
 
let alone that it was a famine ship.

Over the following two years John Bhaba Jaick Ó Congaola contacted me a number of times to write this book, but each time I declined. Then in July of 2008, being very persistent, he made a final attempt. He had other historical material that he believed would be of interest to me and he offered to give it to me along with the
 
St. John
 
material. Realising this book was not going to go away, I finally agreed to examine the material. I was taken aback by the content: one document stated that if a timber headstone had been placed on the ocean for every man, woman and child consigned to a watery grave during the famine, the tombstones would have extended from Cobh in Cork to Boston Harbour. I was stunned; a shiver ran up along my spine and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. The dream from two years earlier came hurtling back to me.

Some might say that my dream and this material being delivered to me are nothing more than co-incidence, and who could blame them. But all I can say is that you would have to have been there and felt what I felt and saw what I saw to realise that this was more than just a coincidence. I can honestly say that I did not intentionally set out to write this book. It sought me out on five occasions, and thank God that this book, in a sense, chose me.