Cobh, Migration, and the Titanic
The power of migration stories came alive during our visit to Cobh, where we visited the Titanic Museum. For millions of Irish, Cobh (then known as Queenstown) was the point of departure for a better life and the Titanic’s final port of call on April 11, 1912. Between 1848 and 1950, over six million people emigrated from Ireland, and more than 2.5 million departed from Queenstown (Cobh), making it Ireland’s principal port of emigration.
The Titanic’s first stop after leaving Southampton was Cherbourg, France, where it picked up additional passengers before sailing to Queenstown to embark its final 123 passengers bound for New York.
At the beginning of the museum visit, each visitor was assigned the identity of a real passenger so that we could experience what life might have been like for that person. My son was assigned a first-class passenger, while the rest of us were in second or third class. We witnessed the luxury experienced by first-class passengers, who stayed in beautifully furnished cabins, while third-class passengers shared bunk beds and communal bathrooms. Even so, we were told that these accommodations were still considered luxurious by many third-class passengers of the time.
Many Irish emigrants had saved their entire lives for this one journey in search of a better future. It was heartbreaking to learn that only 44 of the 123 passengers who boarded in Cobh survived.
One story that stayed with me was that of 39-year-old Margaret Rice and her five young sons, who all perished. After her husband died, Margaret sought a fresh start in America, but tragically, neither she nor her children survived the voyage.
There were also remarkable stories of survival, such as that of Charles Joughin, the Titanic’s chief baker from Liverpool, England. After helping load the lifeboats and believing he had little chance of surviving, he drank liquor and threw deck chairs overboard before the ship plunged into the freezing Atlantic. He later testified that he swam and treaded water for more than three hours before climbing into a lifeboat after daybreak. While most victims succumbed to hypothermia, it has been suggested that the large amount of alcohol he consumed may have helped slow the effects of the icy water.
Standing on the balcony where passengers had stood more than a century earlier, feeling the harsh Atlantic winds against our cheeks, I thought about the stories they carried with them, especially the third-class passengers who were leaving everything they knew in hopes of creating a better life for future generations. It was haunting to imagine the dreams and aspirations they carried with them as they embarked on their journey, after already enduring so many hardships, only to experience the unimaginable tragedy that awaited them.
Irish History, Prison, and Colonialism
Along the River Lee stood pubs, churches, castles, and reminders of Ireland’s darker past, including Cork City Gaol. The nineteenth-century prison offered one of the clearest windows into the inequities of colonial rule and poverty. The Great Famine of the 1840s left many men, women, and children so desperate that they committed petty crimes simply to survive, only to receive harsh punishments and imprisonment. In some tragic cases, prison at least meant food and clothing.
I was particularly struck by the stories of women imprisoned there after it became a women’s prison under the 1878 General Prisons (Ireland) Act. Some participants in the Irish struggle for independence, including Countess Markievicz, were incarcerated there. Markievicz, a British-born nationalist revolutionary, received a comparatively lenient sentence in part because of her social status, while poorer and lesser-known women often endured much harsher treatment.Ç
Again and again, the exhibits told heartbreaking stories of women and children who stole bread or committed other minor offenses out of desperation, only to face severe sentences. It was one of the most enlightening museums we visited. Even our seven- and nine-year-old children were engaged through interactive exhibits, scavenger hunts, and conversations with staff members that helped bring the history to life.
Irish history has a remarkable way of carrying its past into the present. The twelfth century brought the Normans under Strongbow and King Henry II, who enacted laws to seize Irish land and maintain separation from the native Irish population. Over time, however, many Norman families became increasingly integrated into Irish society.
Subsequent English and Scottish plantations sought to assert control once again by settling families on confiscated Irish lands. Colonizing authorities repeatedly attempted to suppress Irish identity by restricting language, religion, land ownership, and education. Yet despite centuries of policies ranging from forced assimilation to what some historians characterize as near-genocidal campaigns, Irish identity endured.
Even the word “boycott” has its origins in Irish resistance. During the Land War, Irish communities collectively refused to work for or provide services to Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott after tenant farmers were evicted. The strategy of social and economic ostracism proved so effective that his surname entered the English language as a verb.
Galway and the Atlantic
Galway was one of my favorite cities, and one of the few places where I could genuinely imagine my husband and I living one day. I appreciated its diversity, thriving industries, proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, and the many sculptures and memorials dedicated to remembering tragedies such as the Great Famine.
Galway possessed a wonderful texture and complexity that made it distinctive. Known as the “City of Tribes,” this bohemian city began as a fishing village before the Normans occupied the region. By the fifteenth century, merchants from Portugal, Spain, and France regularly visited, helping shape the international character that still defines the Latin Quarter today.
Standing along the Atlantic, with the cold wind blowing against us, I couldn’t fathom what it must have felt like to leave this land, board a ship with no certainty of surviving the journey, and know there was little chance of ever returning home. For millions of Irish emigrants, this coastline represented both an ending and a beginning.
Coming Full Circle
Throughout our trip, I found myself returning to the same questions that first drew us to Ireland. When I read about one of the earliest ancestors on my husband’s paternal side, a yeoman farmer who was sponsored by a wealthy Englishman to travel to Virginia in the seventeenth century to clear the land, I found myself pondering his thoughts and reflections at the time. Why do people leave? What happens to the people they leave behind — their parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, grandparents, and clan members? Are they scared and terrified as they board a ship? My grandmother, who never learned to swim, was terrified of traveling by boat. How do places remember those who departed?
For my husband’s ancestors, they kept moving to seek land — from the Scottish lowlands to Ireland to the United States East Coast and then eventually the South and Texas. Yet for many Irish families, home had been the same village for generations. What was the breaking point that finally compelled them to pack up and leave? Was it the death of a family member, famine, eviction, religious persecution, the promise of land or a better opportunity or the desire for their children to have a better future?
Migration takes a tremendous amount of planning, sacrifices, grief, and resources. It means saying goodbye to a place, to one’s extended family, and often to one’s sense of belonging, as new identities, customs, and cultures are forged.
I left Ireland with a deeper appreciation for the millions of ordinary lives that shaped the country’s history and continue to shape the history of the United States. As an anthropologist who lived a peripatetic life for most of my 20s and early 30s, I have spent much of my life reflecting upon migration, identity, displacement, and feelings of belonging and home. I only wish more people would seek their family migration stories so that we would acknowledge and recognize that our stories are quite universal in their motivations and desires. I came back to the US with fresh eyes and a new perspective about what our country truly means and why it is such an innovative country filled with people who departed the Old World for a new vision, culture, and way of being. I was reminded that our lives are shaped by an interplay of the social, pollical, and historical forces and yet, it’s not history that writes our stories.
History is written by the ordinary and extraordinary moments and acts of courage that agentic people take to seek better lives. Families who make hard choices to leave, parents who envision a better future for their children, and clans who send for their relatives. These immigration stories and lives continue to shape all of us.
Sources — Books
We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole (W. W. Norton, 2021)
O Come Ye Back to Ireland by Niall Williams and Christine Breen
Earl S. Elliott Jr. Elliott Family History 1816–2003: Fannie Blaine Elliott. iUniverse.
Museums and Historic Sites Mentioned
St. Canice’s Cathedral
Kilkenny Castle
Cork City Gaol
Titanic Experience Cobh
English Market
Organizations
Twilight Community Group
Historical References
Great Famine (1845–1852)
Irish Land War
Charles Cunningham Boycott
Constance Markievicz
.gif)
0 Comments