But there was a problem. Violence and unrest were continuing throughout Ireland, particularly in the north, where nine landlords had been murdered since the queen’s visit three years earlier. Clearly her visit and statements of loyalty and peace had not worked.
The monarch was as displeased as she was concerned. On February 3, as she opened a new Parliament with her traditional annual speech, she minced few words in her concern for Ireland’s continued troubles, leaving both Houses little choice but to dedicate the lion’s share of their first efforts to addressing the problem of Ireland. For many members of Parliament grown tired of failed Whig policies, it was also an opportunity to address the problem of their colonial secretary. In the House of Commons, accusations of Whig neglect and mismanagement abounded. One member accused the party of systematically driving the entire middle class from Ireland.1 Another insisted that the Whigs had left the island in a more disturbed state than they found it.2 But the greatest vitriol was reserved for Henry Grey himself.
To confront the continued upheaval in Ireland, Prime Minister Russell had charged Grey with the formation of a Special Commission. Their investigation, however, had been halting at best, and an official report on their findings had yet to arrive. Russell urged his fellow parliamentarians to be patient, but they were in no mood for indulgence. Amid accusations that Grey’s committee had been deliberately “abortive” and the first truly “failed” commission appointed by Parliament, members demanded that something be done.3
The earl had never been popular, but British politesse had at least been willing to keep up appearances. No longer. Across the British Empire, Grey’s reputation appeared to be in free fall. The British military was suffering mightily in the Cape of Good Hope, where it had found itself again at war with the Xhosa people. Colonists in New Zealand were clamoring for their autonomy. Grey seemed helpless to confront the problem of his colonies.
At a gala dinner hosted by the mayor of Newcastle, one of the guests, Sir John Fife, described by the London Times as one of Grey’s most loyal “lacqueys,” proposed an admittedly tepid toast to the health of the earl. His tribute was met with silence, followed by a growing din of hissing, “the expression of contempt and reprobation being the more signal and significant as emanating from such a source, and on such an occasion.” That descriptions of the incident were reprinted in newspapers throughout England and Ireland only intensified the sting.4
Worst of all was the lack of confidence engendered in Grey’s fellow parliamentarians. A committee of inquiry formed to investigate Grey’s handling of Ireland returned with a damning report that concluded it was public neglect that had resulted in so much suffering there. It was the closest thing to an admission of responsibility Ireland would receive from the British government until Tony Blair made a public apology in 1997.
That statement would come far too late for many in Ireland, particularly in County Kerry, where Richard Blennerhassett was once again biding his time between voyages. From his family’s estate, he saw firsthand the monstrous impact of too many years with too little food for the residents of western Ireland. Young men and women had been rendered blind, their bodies contorted and behaving as if animated by a malevolent external force. Children stumbled bowlegged and hunchbacked, their mouths permanently toothless and bleeding. Others, stricken by marasmus, a severe protein deficiency, looked ancient, their skin wrinkled and gray.
Even those people with all the corn they could eat were wasting away. Henry Blennerhassett’s peers in Dublin had diagnosed the condition as pellagra, a vitamin deficiency responsible for the black tongues, painful skin lesions, and debilitating cramps that caused people to drop to the ground, even in the middle of the road. Those symptoms were upsetting enough; even worse was the fact that the entire region seemed to be suffering from a collective and inexplicable madness: otherwise peaceful individuals were, unprovoked, perpetrating inexplicable acts of violence against one another. Others were suffering from wild hallucinations and full dementia, totally unaware of who or where they were.5 Nightmares haunted many famine survivors each night: terrifying collages of the horrors so many had witnessed. Blennerhassett’s patients and friends alike awoke in a cold sweat or lay awake each night, so filled with anxiety that sleep eluded them.
So severe was this fallout from the famine that, for the first time, it became a prominent subject of study for doctors throughout England. One such physician, Daniel Donovan (of no apparent relation to the Jeanie Johnston’s owner), conducted an extensive survey of those still going hungry in Ireland. In his subsequent report, he documented the experience of a famine victim, beginning with an acute pain that was soon replaced by weakness, insatiable thirst, and an inability to get warm.
In a short time the face and limbs become frightfully emaciated; the eyes acquire a most peculiar stare; the skin exhaled a peculiar and offensive foetor, and was covered with a brownish, filthy-looking coating, almost as indelible as varnish. This I was at first inclined to regard as incrusted filth, but further experience has convinced me that it is a secretion poured out from the exhalants on the surface of the body. . . . Want of food produced a very different effect on the young and infant population: the same cause that paralysed the faculties of the adult served to sharpen the instinct of the child: babies scarcely able to speak became expert beggars. . . . Another symptom of starvation and one that accounts for the horrible scenes that famine usually exhibits is the total insensibility of the suffered to every other feeling except that of supplying their own wants. I have seen mothers snatch food from the hands of their starving children; known a son to engage in a fatal struggle with a father for a potato; and have seen parents look on the putrid bodies of their offspring without evincing a symptom of sorrow.6
It would take much longer for some of the other effects to become known. In the meantime, people seemed to be giving up. Not only had Tralee town leaders ceased to take action, but now the famine sufferers themselves seemed to be doing whatever they could to accelerate the process. On more than a few cabins still standing, hand-painted signs advertised hard cider and “strong water”—a euphemism for pure grain alcohol, though distilled from what Blennerhassett could not imagine, given this ravaged landscape. He could see the effects of the drink as it destroyed what little stamina still remained in these people.
The same could not be said for the new landlords who oversaw this suffering multitude. And no small amount of that criticism was reserved for Nicholas Donovan. As far as he was concerned, his new land was still encumbered—not by taxes but by the hundreds of people who, despite their enfeebled condition, continued to try to make a life as a cottier there. Sir Edward Denny had successfully financed the emigration of similar people on famine ships. Why couldn’t he?
His was a controversial plan: It bucked the town’s official policy concerning the handling of immigrants and risked the appearance of impropriety. Evicting or even persuading his new tenants to leave would cast him in the same unpopular light as people like Lansdowne. And there was no clear explanation as to how Donovan would finance any such voyage, a problem that undoubtedly raised further questions. Nevertheless, Donovan approached Denny with his plan and found the baronet surprisingly receptive. Together they would ensure the exodus of some of Kerry’s remaining peasant farmers. News of their project soon spread, and few in town doubted that Denny and Donovan were looking for anything other than their own personal gain. Even fewer in town responded with nothing short of disapproval or spite. Shortly after making the announcement concerning this new assisted-immigration project, Denny awoke one morning to find protestors had lopped off the manes and tails not only of all of his horses and cattle but of those of his more established tenants as well.7 Donovan meanwhile was facing censure of a more codified variety as newspaper editorials began to wonder aloud what was afoot.
This criticism came to a head at the second monthly meeting of the Board of Guardians. Its membership had convened that afternoon for what was supposed to be a
routine discussion of the state of paupers in the Union. It soon proved anything but routine, when one member suggested that Donovan had been using the guardians’ offer to subsidize emigrant passage to his own advantage. A representative of the board was dispatched at once to retrieve Donovan, who was surprised to find the man at his Denny Street office. He quickly donned his coat and arrived at the board meeting out of breath and no doubt on the defensive. But if Donovan had learned anything during his twenty years in business, it was the importance of placating anyone who appeared ruffled. So he stood silently as several of his peers observed aloud that the parties being sent from his Turbid property to North America were not in fact paupers, but rather, small tenant farmers who had agreed to surrender their land to Donovan in exchange for free passage. That accusation alone would have been enough to raise an eyebrow among those who remembered Lord Lansdowne’s treatment of his tenants. Even worse was the suspicion that Donovan had sought to exploit the troubled Board of Guardians. Donovan, it seemed, had arranged entry into the already overcrowded and underfunded workhouse for twenty-five of his tenants, knowing perfectly well that the Board of Guardians subsidized emigration from there. What made this action particularly egregious was the suggestion that these individuals were far from destitute—that Donovan had simply made them appear penniless and desperate so that they would be given fare on the Jeanie Johnston.
For this, said the board, Donovan had no right whatsoever. Clearly he had overstepped his bounds. There was a process in place to select paupers from the workhouse for emigration, yet Donovan was preempting this process and for his own benefit. Donovan tried to explain, emphasizing that he and Lord Denny were working together to assist Kerry’s suffering poor. His explanation halted further scrutiny, but the damage had already been done. His perfect record was tarnished. So too was his short-lived alliance with Denny, who immediately distanced himself from Donovan, objecting publicly to what he called Donovan’s “high hand” and “very free use” of his name.8
If asked, Donovan would no doubt have responded that he had little choice. In the aftermath of the famine, the face of emigration was changing. So too was the business of exporting emigrants. And it was very much a business: the increased ship traffic had been good for town revenues and had prompted expansions at every level, including a new lighthouse, the illumination of which would hopefully attract even more ships. The Board of Guardians desperately needed that to be so. Another year of heavy expenses was sure to break them if they could not reduce the number of inmates for which they had to provide care. Guardians in surrounding towns had also begun seeking bids from ship owners to convey paupers from their workhouses to North America.
Donovan’s bids were repeatedly undercut by the Kennellys, a rival importing firm that had chartered newer, larger, and faster ships to carry the famine sufferers. Their Toronto, bragged the local papers, made an “unprecedented quick passage of 17 days” from Quebec to New York, landing all of her passengers well and in record time. Their flagship vessel, the Lady Russell, was capable of carrying five hundred passengers, well over double the legal limit of the Jeanie Johnston. The Jeanie, it seemed, was poised to lose her status as Tralee’s most beloved ship.
By February 1852, the Jeanie Johnston had made eight successful voyages to North America, seven of them with passengers. Nearly a thousand passengers had safely ridden below her deck, and the sterling survival rate—her reputation for keeping every soul alive—continued to be the greatest in all of Britain. But that didn’t seem to matter quite as much anymore. Newer, faster ships offered greater convenience and comfort. Who would want to spend twice as long at sea—and in a leaking wooden hull that was beginning to show its age—if a more dependable alternative existed? Ticket sales for the upcoming voyage had been sparse, and as the departure date neared, Donovan was clearly dismayed by the number of bunks still available for purchase.
The Jeanie and her crew, meanwhile, were on their way back from Cardiff, where the barque had spent the winter. James Attridge, who had enjoyed a much-needed respite in Cork, was back at the helm, joined again by Thomas Campion. But Campion was the last of Attridge’s original men. Gabriel Seldon, the captain’s longtime steward, decided he had had enough of the drama inherent in emigrant transport and stepped off the vessel in favor of shorter cargo runs. The captain would be hard-pressed to find anyone to replace him. He had other concerns as well. By the time she was unloaded, there would be less than a full month to prepare the Jeanie for emigrant transport, including the careful insertion of additional ballast that would keep the vessel level in the water. The crew, especially Campion, would have to work hard to meet the deadline.
It was a deadline that Richard Blennerhassett was none too excited about either. Despite having formed friendships with both Attridge and Campion, the ship’s doctor appeared, for the first time in his career, reluctant to climb aboard. Once again there were reports of a resurgence of cholera cases in the United States, and in Quebec the Georgiana and all three hundred of her passengers had been indefinitely detained after several on board were found to be suffering from typhus. The outbreak had prompted George Douglas to once again increase his staff at Grosse Île, where everyone expected a resurgence in a death toll that had only recently fallen.9
There were other, more personal considerations for Blennerhassett to make as well. Criticism of ship surgeons was on the rise. Blame had to fall somewhere, and the people most directly responsible for passenger health seemed as good a place as any. The toll on the doctors was pronounced. Just recently one of Blennerhassett’s peers, a twenty-nine-year-old surgeon named Nathaniel English, had returned from a stint as doctor on the Wellington, whose captain had been relieved of his post in Australia on charges of drunkenness. When these charges were expanded to include English himself, the young doctor became distraught and was seen moving about London looking for someone to take down a narrative about his sober character. Finding none, he returned to his room, ordered a glass of soda water, and extracted a razor from his bag. The first cut to the throat was deep enough to send him rolling off his hotel bed but did not kill him. The second, which was deep enough to nick his spine, did. He was found the next morning lying in a pool of blood.10
English’s suicide only intensified the scrutiny now awaiting Blenner-hassett and the other doctors who rode aboard coffin ships. Admittedly, many were grossly underqualified and appointed only to satisfy British regulations. But others, like English, were victims of circumstances far beyond their control and responsible for maintaining health in conditions that were still worse than the slave ships that sailed fifty years earlier.
Blennerhassett had never balked at his calling. His family’s motto, “Fortune favors the brave,” had always guided his work. Still, he was beginning to think that his tenure on the Jeanie Johnston had come to an end. His mother was gravely ill; she would die within the year, in fact. His brothers Townsend and Aremberg had left the family estate near Dingle, and his youngest brother, Edward, would soon be departing for medical school. For the first time in a life marked by wanderlust and a sense of public duty, Richard Blennerhassett wanted to stay home. No doubt he felt a great sense of obligation to his mother; perhaps he had reached a breaking point concerning Donovan’s management of the vessel and his growing demands regarding its use. We’ll never know for sure.
But we do know he decided that the upcoming spring run to Quebec would be his last. The Jeanie, with 188 passengers, twenty fewer than she was allowed to carry, sailed from Tralee on April 14, 1852. Her departure was all but completely overshadowed by the departure of the Kennelly vessels, which garnered the bulk of the press that month. Maybe that was a good thing, for the Jeanie’s trip did not begin well.
A few days after departing Tralee, Attridge noticed something was amiss: the vessel, never smooth-sailing or responsive, became even more unmanageable and began to list to one side. The concerned captain dispatched one of his crew below. He returned with confirmation of Attridge’s f
ears: the thousands of pounds of lead ballast that lay above the Jeanie’s keel had shifted. Without ballast, even the most stable hull is likely to tip, but loose ballast can be an even bigger problem, particularly for a ship the size and shape of the Jeanie. The motion created by a single wave could easily send the immense lead careening from one side of the hull to the other. Its force could capsize the vessel in seconds. Even worse, it could break like a cannonball through her wooden hull, sending the vessel and her occupants spiraling to the ocean floor.
Attridge wouldn’t take that chance. He ordered Campion and his men to tack the vessel, turning her around and heading to Queenstown, where proper repairs could be made. It was an unfortunate delay; they arrived in Queenstown on May 1, over two weeks after departing from Tralee, and would remain in the port town for another twenty days before again heading for North America. Not only would the Jeanie Johnston fail to meet the new speed records set by the Kennellys, but she’d be hard-pressed to match even her slowest previous journey.
While anchored in Queenstown, Blennerhassett cared single-handedly for his 188 charges, who were growing restless in the busy harbor. It was a courtesy they would not soon forget. The Jeanie Johnston did not arrive in Quebec until the end of June, but when she did, all of her passengers were healthy.
Blennerhassett and his captain looked forward to the efficiency they had come to expect from George Douglas upon arriving at Grosse Île. The man who boarded their vessel, however, bore little resemblance to the curt doctor who processed patients with a stern professionalism. Douglas was stoop-shouldered and ashen, and Blennerhassett soon understood why. Less than a month earlier, Douglas’s beloved wife, Charlotte, had succumbed to complications from the delivery of her seventh child. Douglas had attended the birth, which had been difficult and prolonged. It weakened Charlotte terribly, and, try as he might, Douglas could not save her. He was stricken with grief and overwhelmed by the prospect of raising seven children, all under the age of twelve, alone.
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