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“Emigants Leaving Queenstown for New York” In the five years following the 1845 potato blight, more than a million people in Ireland perished, and another half million emigrated to America. In 1847, the year the Carolans boarded the Patrick Henry for New York, some 85,000 people left Ireland by ship. This image was printed in the 26 September 1874 issue of Harper’s Weekly. “of money, spirits, tea, coffee, and sugar,” broke into lockers and went unpunished, then prowled “about the ship to find some simple females who will hearken to them.” That passenger’s experience was not an exception to life aboard such vessels during the surge in immigration trade. In arguably the worst year of an Gorta Mór, the Great Hunger, the Patrick Henry transported two loads of relief supplies from American charitable societies. From citizens
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and warlike in the water.” The helmsman “is completely sheltered from the weather, and has, at the same time, a sufficient view of the sails and the effect of the rudder on the movements of the ship. Two neat staircases, one on each side, lead to the grand cabin or saloon.” The reviewer catalogued the saloon, or shared common space into which first-class rooms opened, as “richly gilded” and “beautifully empaneled in the finest choice wood of ‘every clime’” and wrote about the “satin wood” and “oval Venetian blind,” of “convex pilasters—fourteen on each side—of rosewood thrown out on a broad convex ground or back-work of zebra-wood,” and how there were “inlays of ebony” and “dark veined marble.” Her primary commander was Captain Joseph Clement Delano (1796–1886) of New Bedford, Massachusetts, a member of a family known for its many mariners, merchants, whalers, and shipbuilders. Captain Delano was first cousin to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s maternal grandfather, Warren Delano Jr., the merchant who made a fortune smuggling opium into China. Like most packet ship captains, Captain Delano was regarded as a member of the aristocracy of the seas—hosting, on his voyages, the likes of John James Audubon and Mormon leader Brigham Young. One of the ship’s more notable crewmembers was Peter Ogden. He travelled frequently with Captain Delano as the ship’s steward, taking care of passengers travelling firstclass. A British-born black man, Ogden established the first black Odd Fellows in New York in 1843, beginning what would become the largest national black fraternal organization in America. Captain Joseph Delano’s younger brother, John, served as the ship’s first mate, and then commanded the ship on a transAtlantic crossing in 1846. Overcrowded with 383 emigrants aboard, one passenger wrote of the voyage, “Of all the ships I have ever seen, this beat them all for disorder. There was neither rule, order, nor any kind of cleanliness observed.” The writer suggested government inspectors shirked their duty because of “patronage” in the “chain of the aristocracy.” Two passengers died underway, including a five-year-old, reportedly due to the crew’s neglect. According to the account, the crew robbed passengers
of Brooklyn, Albany, and Rochester, New York; Burlington, Vermont; and the states of New Jersey and Ohio; goods collected and sent included clothing, Indian corn, cornmeal, rye, wheat, peas, beans, flour, meal, barley, buckwheat, bread, and pork— what today would be worth more than $150,000. That was also the year when Captain Delano was consulted by the merchant captain Robert Bennett Forbes, who was about to embark on a humanitarian voyage to carry food to Ireland aboard the US Navy’s sloop-of-war USS Jamestown. “[Delano] said that on the last days of March we would sail on the very worst day of the year for England,” Forbes wrote. “If we got to Cork in thirty days, we ought to be well satisfied.” The voyage took just sixteen days. This was the same year that the Patrick Henry arrived in New York on 27 July 1847, with my young great-greatgrandfather Michael (1844–1906), his father Thomas (1806–1870), mother Elizabeth Smith (1826–1875), and sisters Lizzie (1834–), Catherine (1842–1908) and Portrait of Capt. Joseph Clement Delano (1796–1886) of New Bedford, Massachusetts, master of the Grinnell, Minturn & Co. packet ship Patrick Henry.
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