Mayor greets Jeanie Johnson famine ship

A grey sky and spitting rain has greeted the replica famine ship Jeanie Johnston at a dock on Charleston Harbour, South Carolina.

“When the Jeanie Johnson first sailed and when other ships brought Irish to America, it wasn’t on sunny days with calm seas,” said Mayor Joseph Riley, whose own ancestors arrived by boat from Ireland, albeit about a decade before the famine.

“The journey wasn’t easy, it was very hard – it was hard leaving, it was hard coming, it wasn’t easy to arrive in a new country,” he said during a welcoming ceremony for the ship and crew yesterday.

“The fact that it’s a bit grey today is most appropriate.”

The potato famine forced 1.5 million people to board boats like the Jeanie Johnston, often known as coffin ships because of bleak conditions on board. The three-masted, 123ft bark, which is calling at ports along the US east coast, arrived yesterday from Savannah, Georgia.

The vessel is a €14.2m replica of the Jeanie Johnston, which made 16 journeys taking 2,500 Irish people to North America between 1848 and 1855.

But it was no coffin ship, said Michael Coleman, the captain of the reproduction which is opens for tours this weekend.

“She was a lucky ship,” said Capt Coleman, who presented Mr Riley with a Waterford vase. “She never lost a man. She never lost a woman. She never lost a child.”

At the time of the famine, he said, the Irish had a simple choice – emigration or starvation.

“The Ireland we represent today is a prosperous Ireland,” he said. “It’s a confident Ireland.”

US District Judge Patrick Michael Duffy raised a toast to the captain, his predecessors and the Irish who went to America.

“They brought with them the drive, the vision and the courage, which has built the city of Charleston and a great part of these United States,” Judge Duffy said.