Boom! Bust! Emigration!

The "Jeanie Johnston" and the "Flight of the Earls"

The Flight of the Earls (Irish: Imeacht na nIarlaí) took place on 4 September 1607, when Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone and Red Hugh O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, and about ninety followers left Ulster in Ireland for mainland Europe.

This western part of Ireland has seen many periods of emigration. The County Town of Kerry is Tralee with the old port Blennervile, now connected to Tralee by the Tralee Ship Canal, the place of embarkation for tens of thousands. 

During the period of the Irish famine and of the evictions by landlords many embarkations were made at this small port as people left Ireland in the hundreds of thousands in order to survive. The port served as a gateway from Kerry to North America. The "Famine" ships that sailed the north Atlantic included the Jeanie Johnston, the most famous of these ships that transported emigrants, because throughout its service no passenger ever died.

Unscrupulous landlords used two methods to remove their penniless tenants. The first involved applying for a legal judgment against the male head of a family owing back-rent. After the local barrister pronounced judgment, the man would be thrown in jail and his wife and children dumped out on the streets. A 'notice to appear' was usually enough to cause most pauper families to flee and they were handed out by the hundreds.

The second method was for the landlord to simply pay to send pauper families overseas to British North America. Landlords would first make phony promises of money, food and clothing, then pack the half-naked people in overcrowded British sailing ships, poorly built and often unseaworthy, that became known as coffin ships.

Since 1992 there has been boom and bust. Boom, as exemplified in what was called the Celtic Tiger, then bust after the banks of northern Europe cashed in on the credit worthiness of an Irish populace that was not in debt to anyone, but then sold on to them financial products that combined into a perfect financial storm, with property investments collapsing in the wake of the banking crisis in 2008 and by 2010 leaving the nation bankrupt but the banks quite safe.

Is this a threefold swap? Unscrupulous landlords of the nineteenth century, a great depression in the twentieth century in the wake of the Wall Street Crash, and then unscrupulous bankers taking Europe for a ride in the twenty-first century, especially those countries of the south of Europe and the western edge of Europe where there was little debt owed.

Are comparisons to 1980s emigration now justified?

The Irish Times ran this story in August 2014:

Joe O’Brien

Since 2008 almost a quarter of a million Irish people have left the State. Since the recession began and emigration rates rose we have been slow to rush to comparisons with emigration in the 1980s and the 1950s, as we were aware of significant baseline levels of emigration and return migration during Celtic Tiger years. But following this week’s publication of the CSO’s migration estimates for last year, we can now see that recent levels of emigration are now comparable to 1980s levels.

In the ten years of the 1980s, 206,000 more people left Ireland than arrived. In the last five years, from April 2009 to April 2014, the net figure is 123,800. Our future historians will now not only have to mention the 1950s and the 1980s as extended periods of post-war Irish emigration, but also the “post-2009” period.

Of course, looking only at emigration of Irish citizens in the last five years is only giving part of the picture. There has also been very significant emigration of non-Irish citizens. Taking these figures into account, a total net figure of 143,800 people have emigrated. In this broader context, this wave of emigration is well on course to be worse than the 1980s.

A big part of the story often been overlooked in debates on emigration is the fact that many Irish people return every year. Recently, this can be partly attributed to people returning after their Australian or Canadian working holiday visa expires. However, the recent CSO migration estimates have shown last year to have the lowest rate of return on record at only 11,600 Irish people returning. This is a very worrying figure, especially if it becomes part of a trend.

It could well be that those who have left in recent years are deciding in greater numbers to stay away. So while the recent news that less Irish people left the country last year compared to the year before is encouraging, the problem is they are not returning to the same degree as previously.

There are a few unique characteristics of the “post 2009” wave of emigration that are important to understand in making comparisons to the 1950s and 1980s. This is the first wave of significant emigration in the internet age, and this in itself has transformed the experience. Jobs markets are significantly more interconnected. Interviews can be conducted via video call with an employer on the other side of the world. The internet has facilitated communication between emigrants and their families at home, and between emigrants themselves before departure, while they are away, and after return. It is also the first wave of emigration since air travel became much cheaper.

Close to Kerry's County Town of Tralee is the harbour of Fenit

The port of Fenit is on the north side of Tralee Bay about 10 km west of Tralee town, just south of the Shannon Estuary. The harbour at Fenit is the most westerly commercial port of Ireland, the British Isles and Mainland Europe. 

Commercial shipping started to use Blennerville, at the head of Tralee Bay, as the access point for the town of Tralee. Prior to this cargo for Tralee was transported through Barrow Harbour, a natural sea inlet, just north of Fenit. Barrow Harbour was, historically, the port used to service Ardfert, now a village but, in the monastic era, it was a major ecclesiastical centre with students and monks from many parts of Europe. 

In 1880, Fenit harbour was built and the Harbour Board took on the name "Tralee and Fenit Pier and Harbour Board".

It has traditionally served as the merchants' port for Tralee. Coal, grain timber, etc., were landed during the 20th century with oil and cranes becoming the main cargo until the fuel distribution base was dismantled in the late 1990s.

The Jeanie Johnston 

In the mid-19th century, the sailing ship Jeanie Johnston, already mentioned as famous because unlike other "coffin ships" all her passengers were disembarked safely, traded out of Tralee, transporting emigrants to the USA and Canada. In 2000 a replica was built in Fenit harbour.

The story of the Jeanie Johnston is both inspiring and tragic. An ambitious plan to build a replica of the original Jeanie Johnston was instigated in the late 1980's but only realised after many difficulties when the ship was officially christened by the President of Ireland Mary McAleese on 7th May 2000.

Times have changed. The resources to maintain these aspirations in the recent economic environment means that the ship has a future but an uncertain one. 

The story in the Irish Times pays tribute to the vessel and and the uncertain future of the docklands in Dublin.

It is a pity that the benefits of the Jeanie Johnston project are reduced to a bottom line costing. The experience for those involved in the project must have been life enhancing and enabling, in terms of skill acquisition, confidence and a sense of achievement with the projects outcome and the christening ceremony that completed this part of the story.

Heritage hardware has maintenance costs, and when money becomes a problem, when austerity bites, heritage is often one of the first things to go, unless it can produce a profit!

Liam Reilly - The Flight of the Earls

The YouTube uploader FermanaghMickey writes of this performance by Liam Reilly, who is the author of this song:

The Flight of the Earls is an iconic song telling the story of emigration from Ireland from the 1980s when unemployment soared many of the country's best and brightest left the emerald isle for far flung shores to build a better life, Sadly Ireland of 2012 is a repeat of the 1980s with the brain drain occurring on a daily basis.

The historical event known as the "Flight of the Earls" is used in the song to stress how significantly migration has played out for the Irish over centuries. This is discussed at length in the Ceatharlich Information Wrap article Departures.