What I'm Reading - July 2024

In spite of its lurid title, 'The Coffin Ship' is a carefully written account of Irish emigration between 1845 and 1855. McMahon goes beyond the 'tired cliches', to explain how the system worked based on the accounts of the emigrants themselves.

It briefly deals with convict voyages, but the real value lies in the insights these accounts provide into the experience of steerage passengers packed together on the lower decks of a wooden sailing ship. See my discussion below.

Cian T. McMahon, The Coffin Ship, New York: New York University Press, 2021.

I stumbled across The Coffin Ship in Waterstone’s on a recent visit to London, and on a quick glance at the title, I expected another of those lurid accounts of Irish emigration to the Americas in the midst of the Great Famine. But on closer examination, it was evident that McMahon was much more curious about life than death, about the journey and not just the voyage. I had misread the title – this author was concerned not with ‘the coffin ships’ but ‘the coffin ship’ as an institution.

This is a highly readable but thoroughly researched and carefully written account of the emigrant experience – to Australia as well as the Americas – covering how these men and women planned and financed their voyages, the logistics involved in making their way to the port of embarkation and getting on board, the quotidian detail of daily life on board the ships (as well as the death), their arrival in the new world and their dispersal.

From the opening pages, McMahon makes it clear that he does not accept the traditional narrative of the ‘coffin ships’, a term that (he notes) was rarely used throughout the Famine itself, and was popularized by Irish Nationalists in the 1880s as they waged a propaganda war against the British government.

He rejects the trope of Irish emigrants trapped on coffin ships because it creates a false impression about the experience of the vast majority. In only two years, 1849 and 1853, did the mortality rates of ships leaving Liverpool and the Irish ports exceed 3 percent, and that was due to cholera. In most years in the period 1845 to 1855, the average was under 0.75 percent. Moreover, there is ‘a lack of correlation between mortality and nationality’: emigrants from Britain and the Continent suffered as much as the Irish. (p. 152)

Mortality among assisted emigrants to Australia was somewhat worse, unsurprising given the length of the voyage, but once again the Irish did not fare particularly badly compared to the English or the Scots. And ‘contrary to popular belief, Irish convicts generally enjoyed much safer rides than assisted emigrants en route to Australia.’ (p. 153)

The term ‘coffin ships’ has never acquired currency in the convict transportation literature, although a very small number of horrific voyages, such as that of the Second Fleet, have skewed perceptions of the system as a whole. Serious research is yet to be done on the management of disease on the Botany Bay ships, and how the voyage of the Neptune (1790), which had the highest mortality rate in the history of transportation, differs from that of (say) the Ticonderoga (1852), an emigrant ship with a comparable experience.

McMahon’s principal objection to this mythology is that it robs the emigrants of their ‘liveliness, creativity, and agency’. (p. 2) This is one of his core themes. "These people were not mere flotsam and jetsam upon the flowing tide of emigration. Many were intelligent, eloquent operators doing the best they could in a time of need." (p. 81)

He is particularly interested in the family and community networks through which these voyages were organized and financed, in one section drawing on the work of Sydney historian, Perry McIntyre. Of those who secured government assistance to join their convict relatives in Australia, he writes:

"That so many were successful is a testament to the courage, initiative, and cooperation of various kinds of people from the fringes to the core of imperial power. The initial Australian recommendations often relied upon the words of the local farmers, artisans, and businesspeople for whom individual convicts had been working." (p. 49)

These insights are highly relevant to Australian convict studies. Of course, the men and women transported to Australia did not need to find money to finance their passage. But while they were physically constrained, they were not 'mere flotsam and jetsam', as so many historians have viewed them. Many took personal savings with them, and obtained assistance, in cash and in kind, from family and friends before they departed. Some brought references so they could establish their social standing in the new colony, and they wrote home to secure the support and patronage of former employers. They maintained ongoing connections with the old country, and a significant proportion went back once they had completed their time. And as McMahon acknowledges, some arranged for their families to join them in the new country.

The Coffin Ship is also useful because of what it says about life (and death) on the lower decks of a wooden sailing ship. Sailors’ memoirs rarely record the quotidian aspects of an ocean voyage, which is one of the reasons why Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast is an invaluable resource. Emigrant journals tend to be more informative because the experiences were all new to them: it is from passengers and not seamen that we learn about the cacophony of farmyard sounds that would be heard on an ocean-going ship of this period.

Convict journals are rare, and they do not generally explain the social dynamics inside the ship’s prison. Some of the best sources in this regard are journals and memoirs kept by surgeons and surgeon superintendents, but they are also limited.

McMahon draws heavily on the correspondence and journals of emigrants, another reason why it is a useful addition to the library. Bustle and confusion on boarding. Seasickness and constipation on first sailing. Messing arrangements. Sea stores. Spirits as currency. Passengers working on deck throughout the voyage. Self-organization by the emigrants. Homesickness. Boredom. Fear. Depression.

We learn that the small boxes of personal belongings kept by the passengers on the between-deck were used as seats and tables. Well, of course they were! It’s obvious once it has been pointed out to you, but I am not aware of a single source from the convict transportation literature which mentions this.

Emigrants were advised, if at all possible, to secure a berth in the middle of the ship because the motion was less obvious. Once again, I know of no account of convict transportation which mentions this aspect of an ocean voyage. There are descriptions of what it was like to be berthed close to the toilet tubs, and the benefits of being located near the hatchways, but nothing about the ship's motion.

McMahon tells us that after one of the crew was lost overboard on an emigrant ship, the surgeon spent ‘a long time in the evening among the single women, trying to divert their attention from the melancholy accident’. When a sailor on another ship fell from the rigging, ‘All spoke for some time almost in a whisper’. (pp. 162 & 165) It is rare to be given this kind of insight into the reactions of convicts to the suffering and death of their shipmates.

He describes the collapse of order on a fever ship in language reminiscent of the Ticonderoga and the Neptune. Descriptions of the accommodations made on shore for the arrival of the coffin ships are comparable to accounts of what happened when the Second Fleet came to anchor in Sydney Cove.

McMahon says that he was heavily influenced by Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship (p. 239). Unlike Rediker, he has been able to use accounts provided by significant numbers of emigrants to unpack just how the system worked. Having adopted a similar approach in my research of the Botany Bay system, I have some idea just how much effort was involved.