Irish Diaspora The Dunbrody and the Spirit of Ireland excerpted from an article by Aude Bates and Anthony McLoughlin The Dunbrody sailedfrom M ilford on March 16, 1848 and had a favorable run out ofthe Channel. On the eleventh day ofthe passage, we had M adeira in sight, thirteenth Palma [one of the Canaries}, on the twentieth St Antonio. On the 25th day, we had attained the Parallel of 7°50, on the Meridian of 19 °30. {We} expect to cross the Equatora tomorrow. .. . Now Cap Ho rn which I hope to double in another month or so; you may allow three and a halfmonthsfor ourpassage, I think, as the ship is too deep to sailfast eight knots. Everything goes comfortable and agreeable so far and I hope it will continue. North Atlantic, 12 April 1848 -CAPT. WILLIAM WILLIAMS
aboard the D unbrody
A
replica of the three-mas ted bark D unbrody began to take shape in the summer of 1996 under rhe skilled hands of fi ve shipwrights, with a forty-stron g ream of carpenters, general worke rs, trainees and a blacksmith, in an unused drydock o n the west bank of the Barrow River ar New Ross, County Wexford, in Ireland. W hen the members of a local civic group , the John F. Kennedy Trust, first conceived the idea to place a sailing ship on rhe quayside, rhey envi-
sioned a static display that wo uld remain at . . . . . its pier, arrracnng tounsts, serv111g as an exhibit space and housing a genealogy database. But as research into local maritime histo ry focused on the D unbrody, it sparked the already high enthusiasm, and the planners were inspired to build a ship rhar would sail the Atlantic carrying a cargo of history-for this one ship held myriad threads oflocal , Irish and, indeed, human history that reach deeply into Irish and North America n culture today. Built in 1845 in Quebec at the Jon es Yard on the Sr. Charles River, the Dunbrody was co n structed by T homas Hamilton Oliver, a renowned Irish shipbuilder. A shortage of wood in Brirain led build ers to turn to Canada for materi als. Th e timb er trade thus became a considerable stimulus to immigration in Canada, as merchant vessels offered ch ea p west b o und transArl a n ti c p as -
sages rather than sail in ballas t after depositing a cargo in Ireland or England, and colonial shipyards required a constant stream of laborers to build the new ships that augmented Europe's commercial fl eets. T homas H amilton Oliver was 11 years old when he and his family arrived ar Quebec in 1821. In 1825 , he was apprenticed to a master shipbuilder, and only five years after completi ng his apprenticeship , h e rented a shipyard on rhe Sr. C harles River in Sr. Rochs. He converted rhe large sawmill on the property into a mould loft, built a blacksmith shop and a steam house, and began to build ships. H e was to become the leading Quebec shipbuilder of his century. Under his supervision , 123 ships came out of the shipyard, with a capacity of 90,000 tons. The three-masted bark Dunbrody was
The Dunbrody awaits passengers at New Ross quay in 1849, prior to departing for New York, in this p ainting by Brian D enington (Courtesy JFK Trust}. And, below, on the far right, she awaits a cargo of timber in Quebec, 1859. (Photograph by William England, courtesy the Bridgeman Art Library, London)
SEA HISTORY 88 , AUTUMN 1999
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