Irish 'famine ship' reaches Madeira

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

The ship’s 40-strong crew, which includes trainee sailors from both Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland, 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 due 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.

The Jeanie Johnston, originally conceived a decade ago to commemorate the Potato Famine, was supposed to have made its journey to North America in 1999, but growing debts and doubts about its seaworthiness looked likely to scuttle the project.

A bailout last year led by the Kerry Group, Ireland’s largest food processors, inspired a bankruptcy deal that finally got the ship sailing after an estimated €17m had been spent, more than three times the original amount planned.

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, 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.