The Canada Times… inspiring students to discover history

JEANIE JOHNSTON EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATIONHospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem

An Unquiet Ghost: The Carricks

April 2016

On March 12, 1847, a tiny weather-worn two-masted sailing packet Carricks, under the command of Captain Robert Thompson left Sligo with 173 Irish immigrants and crew of 24 aboard and began the long transatlantic voyage bound

for Grosse Île, Quebec.

Launched at Workington in 1812, the aging Potts & Company brig had spent much of its sailing career transporting immigrants to British North America and gained notoriety in 1832 when it lost a third of its 145 passengers to cholera during one transatlantic voyage and was blamed for bringing the epidemic to Quebec City that year.

In 1847 Lord Palmerston, the Irish-born British foreign secretary, chartered the old ship as part of a fleet to transport about 2,000 of his starving tenants crippled by famine directly from his ancestral Ballymote estate in Sligo to Lower Canada. The trip against the prevailing North Atlantic winds, took six weeks. Food aboard was often contaminated, water was in short supply, and in the words of one eyewitness passengers on such ships were “huddled together without light, without air, wallowing in filth and breathing a fetid atmosphere, sick in body, dispirited in heart, living without food or medicine, dying without the voice of consolation and buried in the deep with the rites of the church.” At least nine of the Carricks’ passengers died during the crossing, a reminder of a well-known lament.

Before we were ten days at sea, the fever seized our crew,And falling like the autumn leaves, bid life and friends adieuThe raging waves swept o’er their graves amidst the ocean foam.Their friends may mourn they ne’er return to Erin’s lovely home.

At least nine died and were buried at sea during the voyage.

An Unquiet Ghost: The Carricks

… 2 …

Photo: Jim C

aputo

Alan Hustak

On April 28, 1847, after six weeks at sea, and within sight of the Gaspe coast, the ship ran into a gale near Cap-des-Rosiers. Unable to trim her sails, Carricks hit a shoal and split apart on the rocks. Accounts vary, but at least 120 passengers drowned in the wreck. Captain Robert Thompson and all of his crew, except for the cabin boy, survived. In mid-May, weeks after the disaster, The Quebec Mercury carried the news of “a most distressing shipwreck in the River St. Lawrence, to an English ship.... The vessel is called the Carricks, a brig between 200 and 300 tons burden, Captain Thompson, master, belonging to Sunderland. She left Sligo for Quebec in the latter part of thatmonth, with a living freight of nearly 200 emigrants. Previously she was properly surveyed by the government emigration agent, in accordance with the Passengers’ Act, and proved to be perfectly seaworthy for the expedition. The voyage, up to the time of the ship’s arrival in the river St. Lawrence, appeared to have been as desirable as could be wished at that period of the season,excepting the sad condition of the emigrants, most of them suffering greatly from fever. .... she encountered a heavy gale of wind, which, at about 2 o’clock on the following morning, drove her ashore on a dangerous shoal, situate about sixty miles eastwards of Cape Rosaries, where, in the course of two hours, she went to pieces. The scene is one described to have been one truly appalling. Out of the 200 poor creatures, emigrants, on board, not more than 22 were saved. All .... succeeded in saving themselves by clinging to the spars and boats. They were on the road to Quebec when the information was sent to England. The vessel is stated to be fully insured.”

Monument located near the Lighthouse in Cap-des-Rosiers

… 3 …

Ironically, the ship went down near Douglastown, a small community of “Catholic Irishmen,” who had settled across Florillon Bay in the 1820s near Gaspe. The parish priest, Michael Dowling, consoled the living and buried the dead in a common grave. One of the survivors, who was a child of 12 at the time and the only one of seven children in her family to make it to shore, told author Margaret Grant MacWhirter in 1919 that “Truly, the beach presented a gruesome spectacle the following day, strewn for a mile and a half with dead bodies. For a whole day two oxcarts carried the dead to deep trenches near the scene of the disaster.” In her book, Treasure Trove in the Gaspe and the Basie des Chaleurs, MacWhirter writes, “In the fall, the heavy storms sweep within sound of the spot. Thus peacefully, with the requiem of the waves and winds they rest.”

It wasn’t until 1907, thanks to the efforts of Father Quinlivan, the pastor of St. Patrick’s Church in Montreal, that a monument to the dead was dedicated and unveiled. “Father Quinlivan’s name it cut in the granite, but it it not less permanently imprinted upon the breasts of a grateful people,” one Gaspe resident said at the time. Many of those who survived, like Patrick Kavanagh and Sarah McDonald, who lost five of their eight children in the wreck, remained in the area. In 2014, the bones of three malnourished children who were between the ages of 7 and 12, were unearthed from the beach.

Georges Kavanagh, a unilingual French-speaking Douglastown resident told the Globe and Mail in 2009 that he visits the monument regularly and considers the graveyard “something of a sacred site.” “To think that so many perished in a shipwreck just a few steps from their promised land. I have great admiration for what they tried to do, leaving everything behind for the hope of better living conditions. These people won’t live again, but

Extract from ship’s manifest listing some of the passengers

“It’s not true that the Irish are cynical. It’s rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everyone. “

Brendan Behan.

their story can be told. And this story is huge. It’s very touching and tragic. It would be nice to at least honour them this way, so their obscure lives are not so obscure, and their lives matter. These people mattered then,” he said, “and they have a story to tell now.”

www.jeaniejohnstoneducation.com – our NEW website

www.hospitaller.ca – focusing on the history and aims of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

********************************************************

OUR SPONSORS

St. Patrick’s Society • LEARN Quebec • Global Access Technology Web Services • Synaxiom Media

… 4 …

CONTACT US

JEANIE JOHNSTON FOUNDATION155,du Buisson, Pierrefonds, QC. H8Y 2Z5Email: jeaniejohnstonfdn@videotron.caTel.: 514-341-7777

Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem43, Georges Vanier, Roxboro, Qc. H8Y 2S2Web: www.hospitaller.caTel.: 514-685-2091

Saving the Famine Irish: The Grey Nuns and the Great Hunger

For one week earlier this month, the Centaur Theatre in Old Montreal was the home of a wonderful exhibtion that pays tribute to the selfless dedication of the Grey Nuns of Montreal as they endangered their lives with their efforts to save

the thousands of Irish immigrants who were fleeing the Famine in 1847.

On display in Connecticut for a year, this exhibit of explanatory texts, artifacts and sculptures was put together by former Montrealer, Jason King, and Christine Kinealy, director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. Fergus Keyes, the director of the Irish Monument Park Foundation, which is working to establish a memorial park to honour the 6,000 Irish who would die in Montreal, was a staunch promoter of the exhibit which he hoped would show attendees the amazing help offered to those suffering from typhus by citizens. These included John Mills, the mayor of Montreal at the time, who wasn’t Irish, wasn’t Catholic, but who set up the sheds and went and nursed the Irish; this generous action cost him his life.

The ill and the dying were quarantined in the 22 fever sheds built near where the Victoria Bridge now stands. Today, the Black Rock is the only memorial to the dead which was placed over a burial spot on Bridge Street near the span to protect it from desecration in 1959. The ill and the dying were quarantined in the 22 fever sheds built near where the Victoria Bridge now stands.

In 1847, the Grey Nuns, or Sisters of Charity as they are also known, was the first religious order that went to the help of the Irish. Most of these caring women would either become infected with typhus themselves – in fact, seven of them died – and after recovering, would continue to nurse the distressed Irish and find homes for the survivors with Irish families or with the French Canadians.

Others who offered their support and often lost their lives as a result were Catholic and Anglican priests as well as British soldiers on security detail who gave up their rations to feed the starving.

If you were unable to see this exhibit at the Centaur, there will be many opportunities to view it during the coming year. In mid May, it will be on display at the Quebec Family History building, 173 Cartier Avenue in Pointe Claire – (514) 695-1502. Other venues will be announced shortly.

Anne Forrest

The Black Rock, commemorating thousands of Irish “ship fever” victims