Irish Famine remains found on Canadian beach

[Still Waters]

Remains washed up on a Canadian beach belonged to shipwreck victims lost at sea while fleeing the Irish Famine, the Canadian government has confirmed.

The bones of three children washed up on a beach at Cap-des-Rosiers following a storm in 2011.

The remains of 18 others, mostly women and children, were uncovered by archaeologists on the beach in 2016.

Experts have now said the remains were from the 1847 Carricks ship from County Sligo.

Scientists said that that the location of the remains, combined with laboratory analysis, confirmed the theory that they were from the Carricks shipwreck.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48575903

[Duke Wellington]

5 minutes ago, Still Waters said:

Remains washed up on a Canadian beach belonged to shipwreck victims lost at sea while fleeing the Irish Famine, the Canadian government has confirmed.

The bones of three children washed up on a beach at Cap-des-Rosiers following a storm in 2011.

The remains of 18 others, mostly women and children, were uncovered by archaeologists on the beach in 2016.

Experts have now said the remains were from the 1847 Carricks ship from County Sligo.

Scientists said that that the location of the remains, combined with laboratory analysis, confirmed the theory that they were from the Carricks shipwreck.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48575903

But 1847 is from before the potato famine.

[+OverSword]

8 minutes ago, RabidMongoose said:

But 1847 is from before the potato famine.

The Great Famine, or the Great Hunger, was a period in Ireland between 1845 and 1849 of mass starvation, disease, and emigration. Wikipedia

[Eldorado]

There's some documentary here... (five minutes)

 

 

[Ozymandias]

1 hour ago, RabidMongoose said:

But 1847 is from before the potato famine.

Not true. There was famine in Ireland before 1847. The Great Famine began in 1845. It is so-called in order to distinguish it from lesser and smaller local famines that were common in Ireland for decades before 1847.

[Duke Wellington]

2 hours ago, OverSword said:

The Great Famine, or the Great Hunger, was a period in Ireland between 1845 and 1849 of mass starvation, disease, and emigration. Wikipedia

Thats creepy, I just had a reality jump.

[Ozymandias]

An interesting story that can be replicated hundreds of times. Most people are aware that the Great Famine of Ireland killed a million and forced another million to emigrate. The consequences for them are well known to many observers. But spare a thought for those in Ireland who actually managed to survive the cataclysm and cling on to life. I am descended from such people.

Although I have an 'English' name my ancestors are Irish as far back as I can go - that is into the 1700s - and they were also Catholic. However, in Ireland, the original English immigrants with my surname were Protestant and arrived here in the 17th century. At some point in the following 100 years collateral Catholic offshoots sprung from these Protestant immigrants (you might make an intelligent guess as to how that happened). Those Protestant families who hold my surname in Ireland are 'upper class' whereas my Catholic ancestors were all of peasant stock – landless labourers for the most part.

Having traced my family tree I know the impact of the Famine on my own ancestors. It does not make pleasant reading. Even if a family escaped starvation during the famine they did not escape the social and economic consequences. But more import still were the familial ravages that the famine wrought on the survivors, and it was these effects that have been the most enduring in Irish society. Historians have analyzed the social and economic outcomes but none have investigated the personal, familial damage that was done to survivors and family networks. In what way did the experience of the Famine change the people who survived it and how did those changes influence the formation of the character of subsequent individuals reared in that family, and inform the attitudes passed down to following generations.   

Many people saw their neighbours die of disease and starvation and could do little about it. The churches and the charities were helpless also. More traumatic was to see and powerlessly experience your own relations, including your own children, die of hunger or famine related disease. That happened in my own family. Many of my collateral ancestors died in the famine and I am obviously descended from survivors. In fact, from a cottier family that was evicted from their home and land near Newport, Co. Tipperary, and had the house pulled down behind them as they took to the roads walking to Limerick city. My great great grandfather experienced this eviction but also the destruction of his traditional way of life and his wider family network and his communal support. The physical and psychological impact of that event and what followed immediately in its wake has come down to me in a very recognizable manner.

My evicted ancestral family could not afford to emigrate when they reached Limerick and were submerged in the struggling slum-dwellers (Angela’s Ashes) of that city. To survive in the city they needed English and so rejected their Irish language. Their ambition was to get out of Ireland. We know that my great great grandfather lost three children to hunger and disease. His other children, except for one, simply disappeared without trace. Whether they reached maturity and emigrated we know not. 

The rest (including my great great grandfather) I have been able to trace down through the generations. What astonishes me is that the collateral branches that descend from that Newport family do not know each other at all. A complete fragmentation developed and the dynamic that led my surviving ancestors to play out their self-reliant lives in circumstantially imposed isolation from each other is still evident today in the family. Those that stayed and survived in Ireland became revolutionaries to a man. None took the establishment side but resented authority and British rule here and fought – frequently in arms – against it. Is it really surprising that Ireland achieved independence from Britain within two generations of the famine?

Edited June 11, 2019 by Ozymandias