Irish Famine Destinations

From The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America, by Edward Laxton (St. Martins, 2024), Kindle pp. 30-36:

The Irish arriving on America’s eastern seaboard usually settled in lodgings close to the port, especially in New York where a staggering average of 300 were disembarking daily, every day for six years: on some days more than 1,000 would arrive on a single tide. As we know, this was the favoured destination of the Irish exodus, which immediately raised its status to that of the busiest port in the world. Whether their original intention had been to move on to other cities or out on to the plains and lush farmlands, to head for the frontier or to join the Gold Rush, the majority of the Irish emigrants stayed right there, in New York.

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The exodus to Canada was different: the vast majority moved on. Though many thousands sailed to the colony known as British North America, their true destination was the United States. Canada was cold, sparsely inhabited, and many of its people spoke only French. Job prospects were poor, and worse still, to remain there meant a continued existence under the hated British flag. Boston had only a tenth of New York’s direct traffic but its Irish population was swollen by the masses coming from Canada.

Many had sworn an oath to settle north of the border, in return for a cheaper Atlantic passage to Halifax or Saint John, and, if they were sailing into Quebec, a free place on a barge to carry them up the St Lawrence River to Montreal. English politicians and civil servants were anxious to populate the country and subsidized fares as low as £2 (US $11), were made available. Many thousands of families were not given a say in the matter. Canada was the destination for destitute tenants on the huge estates in Ireland, cleared by their landlords, who paid the fares and chartered the ships, and the passage to Canada was far more economical than to the United States.

Once they landed, however, a great many emigrants went south. If they had a little money they took the lake steamers, small coasters and schooners, or whatever means of transport was available. If not, they walked across the border. For six months of the year the larger Canadian ports and the St Lawrence seaway were ice-bound and closed but even in the warmer half of the year, the great majority of Ireland’s Famine emigrants an – estimated 200,000 – merely used those ports as staging posts.