Jeanie Johnston reaches Madeira

The Jeanie Johnston, a nostalgic replica of a 19th century “famine ship” making its way slowly from Ireland to America, docked today at the Portuguese island of Madeira, her wave-battered sailors reported.

The ship’s 40-strong crew reported having an unexpectedly rough time after leaving their base in south-west Ireland on February 16.

They said the ship, which has a back-up engine and a steel frame inside her oak-and-pine skin, braved force-11 winds during the worst of the 12-day journey.

The ship is scheduled to continue to Spain’s Canary Islands on Monday, then - after taking aboard a replacement crew of Catholic and Protestant trainees – is due to cross the Atlantic bound for West Palm Beach, Florida, on April 16.

Its planned tour of 20 ports in the eastern United States and Canada is scheduled to last until October.

An estimated one million people died from disease and starvation and another two million emigrated between 1845 and 1854 when a blight struck the potato, then the staple crop of Ireland’s rural peasantry.

Mid-19th century households had grown reliant on the summertime harvest of potatoes, which were normally safe to store throughout the year. The mysterious blight turned several harvests to rotting mush.

Unlike most so-called “coffin ships” that ferried famine victims to North America, the original Quebec-built Jeanie Johnston had decent sanitation, food and medical staff. Records of its 14 Atlantic crossings from 1848 to 1854 indicate she carried about 2,500 passengers without any fatalities.