Well, I wasn’t in the Royal Navy, but if their conditions were as bad as for Merchant Navy crew, it must have been rough. On my first trip (1972) I must have been lucky in assuming that all the ship’s company including the skipper were working class. After all, only the shipowners – prosperous as far as I could tell in pin-stripe suits with…
Story by James Hart. Statues on Dublin quayside commemorate the victims of the 1847 Famine. The appalling conditions of coffin ships was documented by one Robert Whyte, a passenger and journalist who, in his book ‘The Journey of an Irish Coffin Ship’ (1847) wrote of the desperation: of emigres denied food, clean water and medical attention – indeed, typhus, dysentery and starvation were part of the sometimes…
Here’s some photographs from the memorial today held at the Pier Head. Photographs Here