by Charles Egan
The Works suspensions continued on different railways. But still their luck held. There were suspensions on other Brassey sites, but not on the North Staffordshire. There were suspensions on the Manchester South Junction line, but, even here, construction went on at Little Ireland without interruption.
Chapter 13
The Quebec Gazette, September 1847:
The emigrants arrived at this place during the past week have been very numerous. The tales they tell of sorrow, suffering and death are heart-rending and in many cases, less than half the number of individuals constituting a family when they left Ireland, have lived to complete the migration thus far. It is computed – and we fear there are too many good grounds for believing the computation a close approach to truth – that of the immense numbers that left Ireland for Canada during the current season, not one-fourth will be alive at the beginning of the New Year. What a dreadful sacrifice of human life! And for what? Why, that the Irish landlords may escape the payment of Poor Rates!
Daniel Ryan’s cousin?
Yes, Luke had admitted it. He looked closely into Conaire’s eyes, searching for a reaction. It had already struck him that Conaire was a more complex person than he had thought. Did he despise him for being a cousin to such a bitterly ruthless man as Danny? Or did he admire what that kind of ruthlessness could bring?
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m Danny’s cousin, and there’s damned little I can do about that. Neither of us could choose our parents, could we? But it’s not as easy as that. Six years, I worked with Danny on the railways when we were both simple navvies. Even then he was tough, but the other fellows got on with him, and I liked him well enough. No, it was more than that. He was friend as well as family. But then I had to go home to Mayo, and Danny set up as a contractor. As you say, he became a ruthless bastard, hiring men to make money for himself. He’s despised for that, and I can see why. I hate him for that myself. But, as his own brother once said to me, Danny feeds people. Pays them too. Damned little, but a hell of a lot more than they’d get in Mayo, that’s for sure. Would you prefer to have him or not to have him? If he wasn’t hiring men, they’d only be dying in Mayo instead. At least Danny’s men had money to send back to Mayo. Not enough, for sure, but it made a difference to those with nothing at all. But still I hate him for all he’s done.’
Conaire observed the sea for some time. Then he said:
‘There was a time I’d agree with you. I’d hate a bastard like that, hate him with all my heart and soul. But not now. Do you know, I’ve come to the understanding that the only damned thing we Irish are any good at is whining? We bring it on ourselves, wallowing like pigs in a sty, waiting to die. What we need is men with the spirit to go out in the world and make the chances for themselves, and the work for others. Isn’t that it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Luke said. ‘You’re being very hard on people. There was nothing they could do about the Hunger, nothing at all.’
‘And that’s where you’re wrong,’ Conaire said.
Luke said nothing more. Again, he leant on the rail, thinking. Why was he so surprised by Conaire? He had thought of Conaire as a victim, but now he was seeing the exact opposite. A man who no longer cared about Mayo. A man who might go far in life. Who knew?
But what did he think himself? His mother? His father? And most of all, Winnie? Could he see them as nothing but whiners?
And the death pit in Knockanure? Were the dead guilty of their own deaths? He could never think that way. Could he?
Conaire had scorned him when he found out that Luke himself had been a ganger on the Relief Works in the mountains. Should he feel guilty or proud of what he had done there? A hard question. Still it did not mean that he would have to despise his own people for their own weaknesses.
So was Conaire a friend? Luke knew they were committed to being together, for the next months at any rate. Best try to get on with him in that time. Could he persuade him he was wrong though?
Or was he right?
He rose early. It had been impossible to sleep because of the groaning of an old man, all through the night. He made his way to the stern. It was still dark, with a hint of light in the east as it came to dawn. He could just see a group of rocks, at the end of which there was a revolving light. As the sun slowly rose, he could see a chain of hills to the south. By the time it was fully light, they were passing a village of white houses around a small church. A saw-mill stood next to a pier, where ships were being loaded with lumber.
The Centaurus passed through the channel between the light-buoys and the rocks. There was an island on the north, a chain of hills visible to the south. Then small islets. Then they saw vessels lying at anchor. At last, they anchored alongside another ship. Luke squinted against the sun to see the name and port painted on the stern.
The Robert Peel. Liverpool.
Behind it he could see a larger island.
Grosse Île.
As they passed the Robert Peel, Luke saw three boats being rowed away from it. Two of them were crushed tight with people sitting and standing. The third was piled with corpses.
‘And there’s a real coffin ship,’ Tyler said. ‘The poor fellows alive are going to the hospital, or to quarantine, God knows how many will get out of either. And the other boat – it’s going straight to the graveyard. There’ll be more left inside the ship too.’
The first two boats had reached the island. Luke could see sailors carrying the patients over the rocks, as others scrambled to follow them.
The boat with the corpses went to the far end of the island where it joined a queue of boats waiting to offload. At the head of the queue, there were men manhandling the corpses into horse drawn wagons.
Where the corpses were being brought ashore, fir trees grew in profusion. The grey of the rock, the green of the trees and the blue of the sky formed a picture of tender beauty. Luke thought of Mayo on another sun-drenched day – the day of the Lucan evictions. Misery then, misery now.
He heard the rattle of chains as the anchor dropped. Within moments, the sailors were swarming over the rigging, rolling the sails under the yards, from the masts out to the yardarms.
He went below. All was activity. Water was being sluiced over the floor between the bunks, even as some passengers still lay on their beds in fever.
Tyler spotted him.
‘Luke, in the name of God, where have you been? I can’t look after everything. Will you take over here? Make sure they clean it well, we’ve a medical inspection coming. I’ll be upside if you want me, we’ve got to swab down the decks.’
Now the people looked to Luke for direction. The mess, mixed in with straw put him in mind of the Workhouses and quarantine sheds back in Mayo. No time to think of that.
Conaire came over.
‘Ever the ganger, eh?’
Luke was angry. ‘What the hell else do you expect me to do? There’s medical fellows coming, and this place has to be clean. Otherwise we’ll never get into Quebec, let alone the rest of Canada.’
‘Fine so,’ Conaire said, with derision in his voice. ‘What should I do?’
‘It would be useful if you could find more buckets. Shovels too. When they’ve swept this into piles, we need to start taking the mess up, and throwing it overboard.’
When the buckets and shovels arrived, he himself started shovelling. He felt better working. How many years had he shovelled like this back on the railways? Yes, earning money then, not risking his health and life on a fever ridden ship.
He followed some of the passengers up the ladder, carrying stinking buckets of muck. He tipped it over the edge of the ship which was already streaked with the trail of the many bucket loads which had already been thrown over.
When the muck and shit had been cleared, the decks, inside and out, were swabbed down with lye.
Many of the sails had been rolled. The lower parts of the rigging were already draped with bed linen and clothes hanging out to dry.
A small boat came out from
the island, four oarsmen working it. At the back, a man in a leather coat steered the boat. Within a few minutes it was alongside. The man boarded. Then all the passengers were told to return to the lower decks. They waited in the semi-darkness.
At length a sailor came down, carrying a whale oil hurricane lamp. He was followed by the man from the boat.
‘God, how this place stinks.’
He walked around the passenger decks, examining each of the patients closely. He stopped at one bunk, and opened a man’s eyelid.
‘This one is dead. Take him out.’
Then the passengers were instructed to go up the ladder. When Luke and Conaire came back into the open air, they joined a growing crowd of passengers, and stood waiting on the deck.
‘Must be a doctor, that fellow,’ Conaire commented.
‘I’m sure you’ve the right of it.’
After some time, the doctor came up, and the passengers were asked to form a line. Now he examined each passenger more closely. He looked closely at Luke, and then waved him past. He stopped Conaire, asked him to hold out his tongue, looked at it closely and then waved him past too.
They were both directed to a group of passengers close to the mainmast. Others were being sent to a smaller group towards the stern. Some in the second group might have been feverish, though Luke could not be certain. He could see all in their own group were healthy, even if many of them were thin.
They were standing close to the six corpses, which smelt strongly of gangrene and corruption.
A man in the other group collapsed. The doctor returned, and opened his eyelids. ‘Take him back down,’ he said. Two sailors went to lift him. The woman beside him threw her arms around him.
‘No, no, no. Wake up, Eoin. In the name of God, wake up, wake up.’
The sailors separated them, and held the woman back, still screaming, as the man’s limp body was taken below.
The doctor filled in two forms, and signed each. Tyler took the forms and handed them separately to two sailors, who were instructed to lead each group.
Then, the procedure was finished. The doctor returned to the boat, and the oarsmen started to pull away.
Luke saw that three other boats had come alongside. Cautiously, the group at the stern were sent down into the boats, which pulled away in the direction of the island. Still, the woman screamed.
After landing on the island, the boats came back to the ship again, and the process was repeated. When they came back a third time, they began to load the group at the mainmast, but Tyler held Luke back.
‘I’ll still need you,’ he said. ‘And you too,’ to Conaire.
For the next hour, Luke watched as the boats passed between the ship and the island. At length, the group was gone, but still Tyler held Luke and Conaire back.
‘And I know why you and I are being held,’ Conaire said, nodding to the rick of corpses.
‘Right again,’ Luke said.
Now only one boat returned from the shore, two men rowing. An officer and a passenger sat at the front. When it arrived alongside, only the passenger boarded the ship. A priest.
‘Luke,’ Tyler said. ‘Will you take this gentleman below?’
‘Good luck,’ Conaire said.
The priest shook Luke’s hand. ‘Bernard McGauran.’
‘Luke Ryan, Father.’
‘Well, come on, Luke. We’d best get this job done.’
Luke descended the ladder, the priest following. Luke was horrified to see there were still many men, women and children lying on the bunks, some clearly in fever.
As they reached the bottom, the priest gagged.
‘I’m sorry, Luke,’ he said. ‘No matter how often I do this, I can never get used to it.’
‘I’m well used to it, Father, after all this time aboard.’
The priest took his bag and pulled out his vestments. Luke helped him to dress.
Beside them, an old woman was mumbling incoherently. Fr. McGauran handed Luke a small jar.
‘Here, hold this.’
He made the sign of the cross over her. Then he dabbed the chrism on her forehead.
He absolved her.
‘Per istam sanctam Unctionem…’
Through this Holy Unction, may the Lord free you from sin, and raise you up on the Last Day.
At the next bunk was a young woman. She was conscious but desperately thin.
‘Father…’ she said.
‘My child.’
‘To come all this way…’
‘I know. I know.’
Luke recognised her accent.
‘County Mayo?’ he asked.
‘Kilmeena,’ she said. ‘Just beside Westport. And wasn’t I the right eejit, not to travel from Westport?’
The priest and Luke made their way on around the bunks. Many of the patients were unconscious. Where they were fully conscious, Luke and the priest spent a few minutes with each, talking gently, sometimes in English, most often in Irish. For some, the priest heard their confession.
Luke realised he was seeing the outline of the west of Ireland, from Donegal, through Sligo, Mayo, Roscommon, Galway, Clare and on down to Kerry and Cork.
‘And you’d wonder why they didn’t come out through Cork,’ the priest said. ‘Not so far as walking to Dublin and crossing to Liverpool. But the Cork ships had a terrible name as coffin ships.’
‘They could hardly have been worse than Liverpool,’ Luke observed.
They went on.
‘Per istam sanctam Unctionem…’
Repeated again and again and again.
Luke thought of Croghancoe and another priest absolving the dying and the dead. Then he was trembling violently as the terror gripped him.
The priest looked up in alarm.
‘Are you all right, Luke?’
Luke shook himself.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ he said. The trembling stopped.
At length, the absolutions were finished. The priest disrobed himself, and Luke followed him up the ladder. Tyler came over.
‘How many now, Luke?’
‘A hundred and thirty one.’
Tyler organised two sailors and a stretcher. The sailors swore vociferously in French, but went down with the stretcher, and brought the corpses topside to join those outside. Then all were loaded into the waiting boat.
Tyler handed Luke an envelope. ‘Your wages. Four pounds, six shillings Canadian.’
Luke’s eyes lit up.
‘And you don’t have to worry,’ Tyler said. ‘I’ve worked it out exactly, right to the penny. Made sure to give you the full amount. Not that the captain liked it, but he’d only spend it on rum. Now I’ll give you one word of advice. Get it into a bank as soon as you can. The best one is the Bank of British North America. Anyone in Quebec will direct you to it.’
He shook hands with Luke.
‘And I’ll see the pair you in a week or two.’
‘Are you not going straight to Quebec?’ Luke asked.
‘With this lot!’ Tyler said, nodding towards the hatch. ‘No, we won’t be let out of quarantine that fast.’
Luke, Conaire and the priest scrambled down to the boat.
The boat was heavy now. Luke and Conaire were put to a pair or oars. They pulled away from the Centaurus.
‘County Mayo, is it, Luke?’ the priest asked.
‘You’re quick, Father. Mayo right enough. Close to Kilduff. And Conaire here is a Mayo man too. And yourself?’
‘Cavan, for my sins. At the edge of Corglass Lough.’
‘Been over long?’
‘Twenty years at least. And I’ve never seen anything like this. Not even when the cholera came to Quebec in ‘32.’
They reached the island.
The officer instructed Luke and Conaire to assist in carrying the corpses ashore, where a driver waited with a horse and cart.
‘Light enough too,’ Luke commented, as they lifted a corpse.
‘He’s still got enough fever to pass on and kill a ma
n,’ Conaire said.
‘Or two men,’ Luke added, scathingly.
They carried it to the cart and piled the corpse up, as the priest gave it absolution. Then Luke and Conaire went back to the boat for more of the dead. Again and again.
At last, they finished, and followed the priest and the cart. They went on a rough track, and then through a group of buildings, passing the hospital, still under construction. Beyond the buildings was a graveyard.
‘This is the Western Cemetery,’ the priest told them. ‘They call it the Irish Graveyard. Only the doctors and the clergy get buried beside the churchyards.’
Luke saw the pile of roughly-cut coffins. Beside them was a mass grave, Luke reckoned. He could see the side of coffins already buried, three deep, with no more than a few inches of clay on top. And always, the rats. He was trembling again, but no-one noticed. Soon, it died away.
They loaded the bodies into the coffins and helped lower them into the grave. Luke looked at the trees around him. He recognised them all, from the time his father had pointed them out to him in Carrigard, Fir, birch, beech, and ash. No oak.
Fungi grew on decayed stumps, between carpets of wild flowers.
When all the coffins had been put into the ground, Luke, Conaire and the priest left the others shovelling clay on top.
‘It’s terrible here,’ Luke said.
‘It is,’ the priest replied, ‘but it was worse a few months back. May, June, July, that was the nightmare. See the pile of canvas over there? They were the tents, we’ve taken them down now, there’s no more call for them. The fever sheds are shut too. All the patients were sent into the hospital. That’s nearly complete now. There’s many patients in there. And the healthy ones held in quarantine – like yourselves – you go into the sheds at the eastern end.’
Again, they went past the buildings, but this time continued through the woods up through the island, passing the military barracks, where soldiers marched and wheeled in formation.
Through the woods again. Then there were rows of sheds, a dozen perhaps, Luke reckoned. They were timber built, windows along the front, with smaller gables with louvers projecting in places from the roof.