In the lead up to our trip, I did some research into my family lineage. I have been told that my ancestry was made up of English and Irish heritage, but I was interested to know specifics before coming to Ireland. So I signed up to Ancestory.com.au and did some hunting around.
If you haven’t ever used ancestory.com.au before, I’d highly recommend it. It was so intriguing to be able to trace all the generations back until around the end of the 1700’s. Ancestory.com.au draws on data from Australian Births Deaths and Marriages, as well as immigration data and gravestone registries. It’s also able to tap into English and Irish census and baptism data. All you need to provide to get started is the full names and rough years of birth of your grandparents, and then Ancestory.com.au will start to populate all your great grandparents through out the previous generations. (I’m also just trusting the accuracy of ancestry.com.au at this point, I haven’t gone any deeper and crosschecked any other data at this point.)
I had to go back sometimes 5 or 6 generations until I found a grandparent that emigrated from Ireland to Australia. I even discovered at lest three great (x4 ) grandfathers who were convicts! (I’m not sure if that’s really something to be proud of and I’m sure most Australians can make this claim) But many of my Irish ancestors left in the mid 1800’s around the time of the Great Hunger, which brings me to the topic of this blog post, our visit to the Dunbrody Famine Ship in New Ross.
The Dunbrody that sits in the harbour of New Ross is a 1:1 replica of the actual Dunbrody, a merchant ship that was converted into a passenger ship and transported Irish emigrants to North America during the 19th Century. Many Irish people chose to, or were perhaps given no choice but to, emigrate to ‘the new world’ at this time because they faced such hardship and injustice.
Irish history is incredibly complex and marred with much conflict and turmoil. While I’ve been here in Ireland, I’ve been able to learn about Irish history from the Irish perspective, rather than the British perspective that many Australian would have been taught, so I will try my best to honour the experience of the Irish while retelling it.
During the 19th Century, Ireland was under the oppression of British who had sort to incorporate Ireland into the British Empire. The Irish fought against this from 1919 - 1921 during the Irish War of Independence but afterward the English still took over vast quantities of land and forced the native Irish to pay rent for small farming plots.
The Irish farmers relied heavily on potatoes as their main source of food, however, year after year from 1845 - 1849, a blight infected all the potato crops, leading to poverty, evictions and starvation for the poor class of Irish farmers. However during this time, Ireland was still exporting a surplus of food (meats, grains etc ) to Britain. So it does pose the question as to weather it this period of history can be referred to as a famine or something more deliberate or sinister like a genocide. Or perhaps the British just saw it as an opportunity to discriminate against and weaken the native Irish population. Th result was that over a 1 million people died of starvation or disease and another million emigrated to the USA, Canada or Australia. Nowadays, the term The Great Hunger seems like a more appropriate way to describe this period of history.
I was able to trace my ancestors to areas of County Carlow (like the towns of Borris and Tullow, not far from where we were staying ) and County Wexford. (The town of New Ross were the Dunbrody is locations in on the boarder of County Wexford and County Carlow.) as well as County Wicklow, Tipperary, Cork and Galway, Antrim and Armagh. Whilst The Dunbrody focuses on the journey to the America’s, not Australia, it does provide a bit of insight into what the conditions of anyone emigrated from Ireland around that time would have had to endure. The journey to Australia was much longer, with probably more treacherous seas.
The Dunbrody experiences take you on a journey of what it would have been like for passengers embarking on a passage to Savannah, Georgia in the USA. It starts with a video detailing the conditions Irish people were facing and what lead them to take their chances on ships like the Dunbrody, which were often referred to as ‘coffin ships’.
After the video, we were lead onto the ship and given a tour above and below deck. The guide spoke as if we are actually ‘steerage’ the lower class passengers, showing us our sleeping quarters and informing us about our rations and allocated time above deck each day (which was only 30 minutes). Two other guides acted in character of some of the other ‘passengers’ who were onboard. One girl played the part of a mother who had 5 children onboard and who’s husband tragically didn’t make it off the ship alive.
The conditions passenger had to endure for the 6 - 9 week journey over to North America was so heart wrenching and disgusting! I can not even begin to imagine what it would the been like to live below deck on biscuit rations, surrounded by other people, no showers, no toilets other than a communal pot. In the photos above you can see the bunks below deck, there would have been 4 adults per square ‘cubicle’
It was a very eye opening experience. I can only assume that my Irish ancestors were on a similar ship in order to come to Australia. It’s very confronting to think about.
After the tour on the ship finished, were are able to explore it on our own before leaving through the final exhibition that details some of the more famous Americans that have Irish ancestry, most notably, the Kennedy family. The Kennedy family actually have a historic homestead / museum not from New Ross and were a part of the project to create the Dunbrody Famine Ship Experience. I was tempted to go to the Kennedy Homestead but I knew it would of been zero interest to the kids. The cafe in New Ross that we had breakfast in had all sorts of historic photos of JFK and the Kennedy Family.
Overall, the girls and Braino really enjoyed visiting The Dunbrody. Hallie especially has enjoyed drawing pictures and creating her own stories about the Dunbrody. She asked to find a book about the Dunbrody at the library but all I could find was one about a family’s experience during the Great Hunge; having to go to a workhouse after getting evicted, which was equally as interesting. Braino and I have enjoyed piecing together our knowledge of Irish history and politics through museums and experience like The Dunbrody, and I think it was a great way for the girls to gain a bit of an understanding into Australia’s history and our own family history.