We won’t forget the tears

We won’t forget the tears

When the bones of three children were washed up on the shore of eastern Canada in 2011 there was of course an investigation into who they were and where they had come from. Local people in the mostly French speaking area of Cap de Rosier at the gulf of St Lawrence were quick to tell investigators of the local legend of a ship called the ‘Carricks of Whitehaven’ which had been wrecked off the coast in a storm in April 1847. When it became clear that the bones were indeed over 150 years old, the local archaeology team took over from the Police and began to piece together a remarkable and sadly typical story of that era.

The bones were tested under laboratory conditions and it was concluded they were of children who had lived on a diet compatible with rural Ireland of the mid nineteenth century. They also showed signs of malnutrition and diseases linked to hunger, such as rickets. These children were part of the huge wave of immigrants forced out of Ireland by the more ruthless Landlords at the height of the Great Hunger. (An Gorta Mor) In 2016 18 more sets of remains were found in a mass grave on the beach and again they proved to be the remains of Irish migrants seeking a better life in Canada. They had crossed the stormy Atlantic, a journey of over 3500 miles, only to perish a few miles from shore.

The Carricks was a sailing ship of a kind often used to ferry people, animals and goods across the Atlantic. In 1847 over 400 such ships docked in the Port of Quebec and brought with them tens of thousands of Irish migrants, weak from hunger, disease and the stress of a three week passage across the Atlantic crammed into what became known as ‘coffin ships.’ The destitute Irish were forced to stop in a quarantine station of Grosse-Île, an island in the St Lawrence River. Thousands were to be buried there as they had arrived too ill or malnourished to survive.

The passengers on the Carricks hailed mostly from County Sligo in Ireland. They had been evicted by Lord Palmerston, an absentee Landlord who saw more profit in sheep and cattle than in people. Records show that one family, the Kaveney’s were from Cross, a Gaelic speaking clachan near Ballymote. Patrick and Sarah Kaveney and their six children were crammed below decks with 165 other souls for the perilous journey to Canada. The family and 117 of their neighbours had to walk 20 miles to the port of Sligo to board the Carricks for the journey. In just six months of the year known as the ‘Black 47,’ Sligo’s bustling harbour saw 13,000 migrants leave for the Americas on 65 ships. Some would never see the new world, as sailing vessels then were far from safe and those used to transport the poor out of Ireland were usually the worst ships available. Contemporary reports record that 9 people died on the crossing before the fateful night when the ship met with disaster. Of 173 people on board the ship just 48 survived the wreck. Captain Thompson of the Carricks survived and wrote afterwords…

"After a rough and uncomfortable passage of 23 days, the captain missed his reckoning in a blinding snowstorm, and in the darkness of the night, struck the cruel cape. One stroke of the angry wave swept her clean. Comparatively, few were saved, after hours of cold, hunger and fear such as may be imagined. The inhabitants came to the rescue and treated the pitiable survivors with kindness. 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 ox carts carried the dead to deep trenches near the scene of the disaster.’

Of the Kaveney family just Patrick, his wife Sarah and son Martin (12) survived; all 5 daughters perished. The local French speaking population treated the survivors with great kindness and the Kaveney’s settled in the area. Their offspring spoke French and became part of the local community where some of them still live today.

The story of the wreck of the Carricks and the discovery of the remains of some of those who perished is a poignant one and sadly such events were not uncommon in the days of An Gorta Mor. Ireland’s population peaked at 8.2 million in 1841 and fell by 20% in a decade as death and emigration took a toll on the land that it has yet to recover from. The population of the whole island of Ireland is around 6.6 million today.

The Kaveney family’s story is made more poignant for those of us who follow the fortunes of Celtic FC because they lived close to Ballymote in County Sligo. They would have been contemporaries of the Kerins family; tenant farmers who were also greatly affected by An Gorta Mor.  Their youngest son, Andrew, was born in 1840 into a world of huge inequality and would have grown up in a county which suffered greatly from the effects of the great hunger. One contemporary account of the so called ‘famine’ in the west of Ireland speaks of people dead by the roadside; their lips green from eating nettles and grass.  The folk memory of those times would have stayed with him as he moved to Scotland and became a Marist Brother, taking the name Walfrid. He would have seen that the suffering of his people wasn’t over in the burgeoning industrial city of Glasgow and that poverty and hunger still affected many. It was to alleviate this that he founded Celtic on November 6^th 1887 with the memorable words…

‘A football club shall be established for the maintenance of dinner tables for the children and unemployed.’

Perhaps if Andrew Kerins had opted for Canada instead of Glasgow there would be no Celtic today but we remain thankful that he travelled east to Scotland and not west across the broad Atlantic. It is fitting that the modern Irish Famine memorial will stand in the grounds of St Mary’s church where Brother Walfrid founded his club. Donegal artist, John McCarron’s sculpture ‘The Tower of Silence’ should be installed in the near future and the picture below is a photo-shop of what it will look like when finished.

Postscript

As I write my articles, I often have YouTube playing songs in the background. This morning as if by fate, an old and lesser Celtic song played automatically. ‘The Field of Dreams’ talks about the reasons for the foundation of Celtic and part of the lyric reads…

‘We’re carving out a monument

for the thousands forced to flee

From Famine and old Erin gra mo chroi

so down through all the years

you won’t forget the tears

of the hungry children forced across the sea.’

It’s right we remember the victims of the calamity which afflicted Ireland in the mid nineteenth century but it’s also right we remember the founding principles of Celtic FC and continue to support those less fortunate than ourselves today. That’s why Celtic came into being and it should always be part of our DNA.