The Irish “Famine”
by John McGondel

The ‘Great Irish Famine’, or more accurately: ‘The Great Hunger’ and which I shall refer to as the ‘Irish Holocaust’ for the rest of this discussion essay, has most definitely been as a historic turning point in Irish history, and there are two reasons for this.

One would be that the blight of the potato crop, which caused the failure of the potato plants in 1845, 46 and 47-48, directly and indirectly, caused the deaths of appx. one million Irish people, as well as causing at least another million or so to flee to other, foreign lands. The reason that I say indirectly is because it was not the failure of the potato crop that causes the mass starvation and diseases, for there was an abundance of other foodstuffs that were produced in Ireland that did not suffer from blight. But the English government, who could and should have stopped the export from Ireland of these other crops, chose to instead ignore the Hunger problem and to continue to ship the Irish grown crops out of Ireland. One of the excuses used to that ‘otherwise, Englishmen would have to pay a higher price for their corn.’

As a direct result of England’s deliberate refusal to help their starving Irish subjects, the plight and misery of the Irish people became exponentially worse, and at long last, the entire world became aware of the horrible holocaust that was happening in Ireland.

A large proportion of Irishmen and women were shipped off to Canada and the US, and there were many accounts given by first hand witnesses of both countries as to the wretched conditions and abominations that they suffered. There were countless substantiated stories of the ‘coffin ships’ arriving in North America. Many of the less fortunate had not survived the journey, and their emaciated bodies had been unceremoniously thrown from the ships while en route en route from Ireland, “leaving their bones to whiten on the ocean bed.”

And of the ones whom had managed to avoid dying from the famine fever or starvation during the voyage, those fever stricken ones were quarantined in droves, where they died and were buried in mass graves. These ships left the many bays of Ireland for month after sickening month, floating out to sea with their human cargoes at every tide.

At the mouth of the St. John river in Canada, was Partridge Island, stories have come down to us of’ unfed, unclothed and pitiful creatures, dumped off by the shipload, some clad in straw, to be herded to the many trenches where their feeble corpses were to be buried. Alongside the St. Lawrence Seaway, from the port of Sarnia to the shores of Lake Ontario, lies the final resting places of countless of sons and daughters of Ireland, some 20,000 communal graves, with few if any, marking stones.

The Canadian immigration authorities kept exceptional records and counted 90,000 Irish immigrants in 1847 alone. Those were the ones who made it to Canada alive. One sixth of those…perished.

Now the attention of the world was focused upon Ireland, for the truth had gone beyond the borders of English control. ‘Good Queen Vickie’ was seen for that which (witch?) she was. She sought to give relief to the landlords and agents instead of the many hundreds and thousands who were dying.

There are many other deep wounds that the English inflicted upon the Irish people, but their numbers preclude me from listing them here.

So, tens of thousands of starving Irish lay dying in the fields and on the roads, and in the very roads, while shiploads of Irish grown corn crossed to England and back again, over and over, sometimes up to four crossings, so as to further the gamble of the English traders.

Another account tells us of one Mitchel’s observances: cowering wretches, naked in the savage weather, prowling in turnip fields, trying to grub up roots that the hogs had passed, while hiding from the coaches. Groups and families sitting helplessly by the roadsides, with their gazes of despair.

My grandfather’s father was on one of those coffin ships, and the horrible tales have not died away, as they are passed down through the generations.

There are two separate and distinct reasons that the so-called ‘famine’, or great hunger, or as I prefer to refer to it: The Irish Holocaust”, is such a watershed in Irish history. The first and foremost is the fact that the Hunger years marked the point where the Irish finally started to come together as a nation against England. It was the point of no return, both for the English and for the Irish. Ireland would never be the same.

The second reason is that the opinion of the world swung against England as the ‘situation’ in Ireland became known, and that the widespread publicity served to bolster and reinforce the “freedom fighters” of Ireland.