Return of the Coffin Ships

Author: Bernard Edwards
Publisher: ibooks
ISBN: 1883283191
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
“...this book deserves a very wide readership among those interested in safety at sea.” —Cdr. Brian Wainwright FNI, Seaways, September 2000 “Wonderful! Really terrific. A first-rate piece of research.” —Stan Bernard, NBC News “Shameful tale of bulker tragedies.” —Telegraph, July 1999 In September 1980, the British ship Derbyshire sailed into the eye of Typhoon Orchid and on into oblivion, taking all on board with her. The destructive power of a typhoon is awesome, but the Derbyshire was no small and ageing tramp, running red rust with a crew of deadbeats culled from the backwaters of the world. She was just four years old, manned entirely by competent British seamen and maintained to the highest standards. She matched the best afloat in her day. How then could this great ship have disappeared so quickly and completely, with not even a faint cry for help, and leaving only a thin film of oil on the sea to mark her passing? The only good thing to come out of whatever appalling calamity over-whelmed the Derbyshire was that it turned the spotlight on a hitherto unrecognised phenomenon -- the disappearing bulk carriers. In this powerful book, Bernard Edwards, master mariner turned writer, reports on his investigations into the loss of a number of these giant bulk carriers and offers a new and controversial solution to the Derbyshire mystery, at the same time taking the lid off the on-going scandal of the disappearing bulk carriers.

Coffin Ship

Author: William Henry
Publisher: Mercier Press Ltd
ISBN: 1856358461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 181

Book Description
The tragic tale of the sinking of the famine ship, the St. John in Massachusetts Bay in 1849. The Great Irish Famine drove huge numbers of Irish men and women to leave the island and pursue their survival in foreign lands. In 1847, some 200,000 people sailed for Boston alone. Of this massive group, 2,000 never made it to their destination, killed by disease and hunger during the voyages, their remains consigned to a watery grave. The sinking of the brig St. John off the coast of Massachusetts in October 1849, was only one of many tragic events to occur during this mass exodus. The ship had sailed from Galway, loaded with passengers so desperate to escape the effects of famine that some had walked from as far afield as Clare to reach the ship. The passengers on the St. John made it to within sight of the New World before their ship went down and they were abandoned by their captain, who denied that there had been any survivors when he and some of his crew made it ashore. For those who died in the seas off Massachusetts, there was nothing to mark their last resting place; no name, no memory of them ever having existed, just another statistic in a terrible tragedy.

The Coffin Ship

Author: Cian T. McMahon
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479820539
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Book Description
Honorable Mention, Theodore Saloutos Book Award, given by the Immigration and Ethnic History Society A vivid, new portrait of Irish migration through the letters and diaries of those who fled their homeland during the Great Famine The standard story of the exodus during Ireland’s Great Famine is one of tired clichés, half-truths, and dry statistics. In The Coffin Ship, a groundbreaking work of transnational history, Cian T. McMahon offers a vibrant, fresh perspective on an oft-ignored but vital component of the migration experience: the journey itself. Between 1845 and 1855, over two million people fled Ireland to escape the Great Famine and begin new lives abroad. The so-called “coffin ships” they embarked on have since become infamous icons of nineteenth-century migration. The crews were brutal, the captains were heartless, and the weather was ferocious. Yet the personal experiences of the emigrants aboard these vessels offer us a much more complex understanding of this pivotal moment in modern history. Based on archival research on three continents and written in clear, crisp prose, The Coffin Ship analyzes the emigrants’ own letters and diaries to unpack the dynamic social networks that the Irish built while voyaging overseas. At every stage of the journey—including the treacherous weeks at sea—these migrants created new threads in the worldwide web of the Irish diaspora. Colored by the long-lost voices of the emigrants themselves, this is an original portrait of a process that left a lasting mark on Irish life at home and abroad. An indispensable read, The Coffin Ship makes an ambitious argument for placing the sailing ship alongside the tenement and the factory floor as a central, dynamic element of migration history.

Robert Whyte's 1847 Famine Ship Diary

Author: Robert Whyte
Publisher: Mercier Press Ltd
ISBN: 1856350916
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 129

Book Description
A truly amazing story of courage born of desperation, starvation, poverty and the will to survive.

The Great Famine

Author: Ciarán Ó Murchadha
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 144113977X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 138

Book Description
Over one million people died in the Great Famine, and more than one million more emigrated on the coffin ships to America and beyond. Drawing on contemporary eyewitness accounts and diaries, the book charts the arrival of the potato blight in 1845 and the total destruction of the harvests in 1846 which brought a sense of numbing shock to the populace. Far from meeting the relief needs of the poor, the Liberal public works programme was a first example of how relief policies would themselves lead to mortality. Workhouses were swamped with thousands who had subsisted on public works and soup kitchens earlier, and who now gathered in ragged crowds. Unable to cope, workhouse staff were forced to witness hundreds die where they lay, outside the walls. The next phase of degradation was the clearances, or exterminations in popular parlance which took place on a colossal scale. From late 1847 an exodus had begun. The Famine slowly came to an end from late 1849 but the longer term consequences were to reverberate through future decades.

In the Time of Famine

Author: Michael Grant
Publisher: Michael Grant
ISBN: 1463645082
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427

Book Description
In 1845 a blight of unknown origin destroyed the potato crop in Ireland triggering a series of events that would change forever the course of Ireland's history. The British government called the famine an act of God. The Irish called it genocide. By any name the famine caused the death of over one million men, women, and children by starvation and disease. Another two million were forced to flee the country. With the famine as a backdrop, this is a story about two families as different as coarse wool and fine silk. Michael Ranahan, the son of a tenant farmer, dreams of breaking his bondage to the land and going to America. The passage money has been saved. He's made up his mind to go. And then-the blight strikes and Michael must put his dream on hold. The landlord, Lord Somerville, is a compassionate man who struggles to preserve a way of life without compromising his ideals. To add to his troubles, he has to deal with a recalcitrant daughter who chafes at being forced to live in a country of "bog runners."In The Time Of Famine is a story of survival. It's a story of duplicity. But most of all, it's a story of love and sacrifice.

Iron Coffin

Author: David A. Mindell
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421406055
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
The USS Monitor famously battled the CSS Virginia (the armored and refitted USS Merrimack) at Hampton Roads in March 1862. This updated edition of David A. Mindell's classic account of the ironclad warships and the human dimension of modern warfare commemorates the 150th anniversary of this historic encounter. Mindell explores how mariners—fighting "blindly," below the waterline—lived in and coped with the metal monster they called the "iron coffin." He investigates how the ironclad technology, new to war in the nineteenth century, changed not only the tools but also the experience of combat and anticipated today’s world of mechanized, pushbutton warfare. The writings of William Frederick Keeler, the ship’s paymaster, inform much of this book, as do the experiences of everyman sailor George Geer, who held Keeler in some contempt. Mindell uses their compelling stories, and those of other shipmates, to recreate the thrills and dangers of living and fighting aboard this superweapon. Recently, pieces of the Monitor wreck have been raised from their watery grave, and with them, information about the ship continues to be discovered. A new epilogue describes the recovery of the Monitor turret and its display at the USS Monitor Museum in Newport News, Virginia. This sensitive and enthralling history of the USS Monitor ensures that this fateful ship, and the men who served on it, will be remembered for generations to come.

The Plimsoll Sensation

Author: Nicolette Jones
Publisher: Abacus
ISBN: 140553043X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
The story of a Victorian philanthropist who reformed shipping laws, saved thousands of sailors' lives and became a national hero 'A story of ambition, treachery, libel, political intrigue and cold-blooded murder on a mass scale' Herald 'Nicolette Jones charts Plimsoll's course with skill, insight and elegance' Sunday Telegraph 'Splendid and meticulously researched' Guardian In the second half of the nineteenth century, an astonishing campaign stirred a nation to save the lives of the hundreds of British sailors who were drowning unnecessarily every year. Overladen and ill-repaired ships set sail, their doomed crews sacrificed while mercenary shipowners profited from the insurance. Samuel Plimsoll blew the whistle on these scandalous practices, devoting his life to a campaign for maritime reform. Plimsoll caught the public imagination: under his banner working men and women stood side by side with enlightened aristocrats and industrialists, their clamour almost toppling a prime minister.

All Standing

Author: Kathryn Miles
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451610157
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
The enthralling, true tale of a celebrated “coffin ship” that ran between Ireland and America in the 1840s: “By turns harrowing and heartwarming…All Standing salvages the treasure of a history lost at sea” (J.C. Hallman, author of The Devil Is a Gentleman). More than one million immigrants fled the Irish famine for North America—and more than one hundred thousand of them perished aboard the “coffin ships” that crossed the Atlantic. But one small ship never lost a passenger. All Standing recounts the remarkable tale of the Jeanie Johnston and her ingenious crew, whose eleven voyages are the stuff of legend. Why did these individuals succeed while so many others failed? And what new lives in America were the ship’s passengers seeking? In this deeply researched and powerfully told story, acclaimed author Kathryn Miles re-creates life aboard this amazing vessel, richly depicting the bravery and defiance of its shipwright, captain, and doctor—and one Irish family’s search for the American dream.

Iron Coffins

Author: Herbert A. Werner
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 9780306811609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Book Description
The former German U-boat commander Herbert Werner navigates readers through the waters of World War II, recounting four years of the most significant and savage battles. By war's end, 28,000 out of 39,000 German sailors had disappeared beneath the waves.