JUNE 7th, 1847: In a great mass movement the people make their way, by tens of thousands, out of Ireland, across the ocean to America or across the sea to Britain.
The voyage to Canada in "coffin ships" becomes a path of horror. The holds provide a congenial breeding ground for liceborne fever bacilli, and "ship fever" ravages the famine weakened emigrants during and after the voyage.
The philanthropist Stephen de Vere, of Curragh Chase, Co Limerick, has travelled to Canada as a steerage passenger so "that he might speak as a witness respecting the sufferings of emigrants".
His report reads (in part): "Before the emigrant is a week at sea, he is an altered man. How can it be otherwise? Hundreds of poor people, men, women and children, of all ages from the drivelling idiot of 90 to the babe just born; huddled together, without light, without air, wallowing in filth, and breathing a fetid atmosphere, sick in body, dispirited in heart; the fevered patients lying between the sound, in sleeping places so narrow as almost to deny them the power of indulging, by a change of position, the natural restlessness of the diseased; by their agonised ravings disturbing those around them and predisposing them, through the effects of the imagination, to imbibe the contagion; living without food or medicine except as administered by the hand of casual charity; dying without the voice of spiritual consolation, and buried in the deep without the rites of the Church."
The food is generally unsuitable and seldom sufficiently cooked. Passengers are compelled frequently to throw their salted provisions and rice overboard because they are not given enough water for cooking and drinking, never mind for washing.
The captain sells liquor indiscriminately to the passengers once or twice a week, "producing scenes of unchecked blackguardism beyond description". On arrival in Quebec, de Vere succeeds in having him fined for using false water measures. Forty vessels with more than 13,000 refugees are detained for quarantine at Grosse Ile extending in a line two miles down the St Lawrence. About 1,200 fever cases lie in sheds, tents and the little church on the island; an equal number are on board the ships, waiting to be taken off.
The Looshtauk reaches Quebec after a voyage of seven weeks. Besides typhus, scarlet fever has raged on board, killing all the small children.
Dr George Mellis Douglas, Grosse Ile's medical superintendent, is overwhelmed by the influx of sick and dying: "I never contemplated the possibility of every vessel arriving with fever as they do now."
According to a correspondent in the Freeman's Journal, "the scene in New York is truly lamentable. The Irish are there, walking and begging in the streets, in as numerous groups as you will find them in Liverpool."