In the late 19th century 1,000 emigrants arrived in Cobh each week to sail for a new life in the US. The Co Cork town still echoes with that history, as well as with the tragedies of the 'Lusitania' and 'Titanic', writes FIONNUALA MULCAHY
LATE AFTERNOON turned dark and the showers suddenly quickened into pounding rain, battering thunderously on the clear, light roof of Cobh Heritage Centre as if all the emigrants of the port’s past were hammering to be let in.
But the wet and bedraggled people who pushed their way through the door, seeking refuge from the Irish summer, were tourists, not ghostly emigres. Some were undoubtedly day trippers from the Silver Cloud, a vast cruise ship, berthed on the quay just outside the centre.
Arrival by ship seems an appropriate way to come to the town that became Ireland’s biggest emigration port. Some two and a half million of the six million adults and children who left Ireland between 1848 and 1950 went from here, boarding sailing ships during the Famine and faster, purpose-built steamships in later years.
From the 1860s on it was mainly by rail that emigrants poured into town before boarding ship, and train is still a good way to come to Cobh. The route from Cork follows the shoreline of Cork Harbour, past some of the city’s industrial flagship companies, amid ducks and seagulls, until you roll in alongside Fota House, Arboretum Gardens, and finally arrive at Cobh station.
In the summer months of the late 19th century the railway would have brought in most of the 1,000 or so emigrants who arrived in town each week. They would be met by touts or runners from the lodging houses, and after storing their bags with the shipping agent they would go back to the lodging house to spend their last night before taking the boat in the morning. Sometimes, hearing music and dancing when they went to bed, they’d be tempted to get up and join in – only to find when they’d try to go back to bed that their unscrupulous landlord would have double-booked their bed and someone else would be asleep in it.
Now when you arrive by train you’ll have no difficulty following in the emigrants’ footsteps. You’ll find the Queenstown Story exhibition in Cobh Heritage Centre, at one end of the station building. If you’re lucky the door from the platform to the heritage centre will be open, and you can go straight through. (Otherwise go on to the street and into the centre through its main entrance.)
Cobh has three names. During the American War of Independence, at a time when the town was known as Cove, British ships loaded up with supplies in Cork Harbour and grouped there, sometimes waiting for fine weather before crossing the Atlantic. Local traders reaped the benefit from the trade that this, and the Napoleonic wars that followed, brought the town.
In the 1830s it started to attract tourists, and 150 years ago this month the port’s name was changed from Cove to Queenstown, to mark Queen Victoria’s setting foot in Ireland there for the first time.
"I stepped on shore amidst the roar of cannon (for the artillery were placed so close as quite to shake the temporary room which we entered); and the enthusiastic shouts of the people," the queen wrote in her journal for August 3rd, 1849. The passage is quoted in Gateway to the World, published by Cork Heritage Trust and written by Dr Alicia St Leger, a Cork-based historian who has been involved with Cobh Heritage Centre from the start.
The town reverted to the name of Cove, but in the Irish form of Cobh, in the 1920s, following independence. But it was as Queenstown that it became synonymous with emigration.
At the entrance to the Queenstown Story multimedia exhibition a voice calls out a list of passengers who are to board an emigrant ship, as you pass figures struggling with luggage. Families are separated, as one name is called out but their nearest and dearest is left behind – and must wait for another ship.
The roar of strong gales at sea sweep around you when you step into the darkened exhibition hall. You peer into life-size models of Irish homesteads and life aboard ship in the 1800s, and you see the dark, cramped conditions that convicts in the 1790s – some of them political activists from the 1798 rebellion – would have had to suffer below deck, where it was said to be so airless that you couldn’t keep a candle burning.
Chattering visitors become subdued when confronted with the history of the Famine. But the retelling of the potato failure of the 1840s, and its impact on the eight-million-strong population that had grown hugely dependent on the crop, sets the scene for much of the emigration that followed.
On sailing ships the voyage to the US took between four and six weeks. At the end of it, hard biscuits, oatmeal and wheat flour were in short supply. Emigrants could cook and wash on board, but there would have been huge demand for the scant cooking and washing facilities. It was a gruelling voyage, often on ships that were never designed to carry passengers.
But as emigration grew, steamships developed, cutting the crossing of the Atlantic to five days by the time the Lusitaniawas sunk by a German submarine in 1915 off Old Head of Kinsale.
Many large liners, such as the Titanic, moored out close to the entrance of Cork Harbour. On April 12th, 1912, two tenders brought 123 passengers, along with 1,200 sacks of mail, out from Cobh to where the Titanic was anchored for two hours. Local traders went out in small boats to sell linen, souvenirs and lace to those on board. Colonel John Jacob Astor paid more than $800 for a lace shawl for his wife, Dr St Leger relates. As the anchor was raised Eugene Daly, an emigrant from Athlone, played Erin's Lament and A Nation Once Again. Three days later the Titanichit the iceberg, losing 1,500 lives. Forty of those who had boarded at Cobh were among the 705 survivors. The story is told in film footage and old news reports, and visitors pore over a grim list of all those who had boarded at Cobh, which reveals who died and who survived.
Emigration, as well as tourism, which had been growing, ceased with the outbreak of the second World War, but in the 1950s, fuelled by the demise of the linen industry in Belfast, emigrants again flooded into Cobh in order to leave the country. By the 1960s, however, airlines were replacing emigrant ships, and although massive liners still draw in alongside the heritage centre, these days they’re dropping cruise passengers on day trips.
Back in the late 19th century the sadness of those leaving, and those left behind, was well recorded in song and verse. But for those leaving, Dr St Leger points out, there was also excitement at the prospect of what awaited them. Many would have been between 15 and 30 years old and single, leaving home for the first time. Once the ships left port there would have been singing and dancing on board, and a feeling of hope.
That spirit is captured in the statue by Jeanne Rynhart of Annie Moore and her two brothers, Anthony and Phillip, outside the centre. Annie was the first emigrant to be processed in Ellis Island, and a second statue of her and her brothers, at the New York end, epitomises so many people’s story of passage across the Atlantic, of departing the old world and entering the new.
Around the town you don’t need to scratch deeply for Cobh’s history. The nearby Cobh Museum offers insights into the US naval presence at the port during the first World War, as well as aspects of trade and customs and the life of a Victorian lady in the town. There is also a small area in the museum where you can browse through folders of emigrant passenger lists.
Memorials mark those lost on the Lusitaniaand the Titanic, and like a crowning glory over the town is St Colman's Cathedral. The music of the bells lures you up and up (and up!) a hill to it. The music comes from 49 carillon bells, played by Adrian Patrick Gebruers. He regularly sits in the bell tower, playing them from a sort of keyboard of wooden batons. They're mechanical bells – no electronics involved – and you'll find it's a live performance.
If you’re a doubting Thomas, you’ll want to poke your nose into a room off the cathedral entrance to watch the live video link to his perch in the bell tower, seeing the camera shake (as presumably the floor does) when he pounds those batons.
The cathedral, with an exterior of Dalkey granite and Mallow limestone, took 47 years to build (from 1868 to 1915), with substantial sums for it raised in the US and Australia, where many of those who emigrated through the town had gone.
If you take the ferry from Ringaskiddy to France for your holidays, you’ll be familiar with St Colman’s towering spire, overshadowing the row of paintbox houses along Cobh’s quays. Standing on deck, facing into a light breeze, you can briefly share in the journey out through Cork Harbour that millions of emigrants took, in search of better times.
** Fionnuala Mulcahy was a guest of discoverireland.ie. For more about Cobh and the surrounding area see www.discover ireland.ie/southwest. Cobh Heritage Centre is at 021-4813591 and www.cobh heritage.com. Cork Tourist Information Centre is at the Old Yacht Club, Cobh, 021-4813301, www.visitcobh.ie
Where to stay and eat
Where to stay
Radisson Blu Hotel Spa. Little Island, Cork, 021- 4297000, www.radisson blu.ie/hotel-cork. A good base for touring to Cobh or Fota House, Arboretum Gardens and for getting to Cork. Has a restaurant as well as a good choice of bar food. The music and laughter from the spa could soon tempt you to relax.
Commodore Hotel. Cobh, 021-4811277, www.commodorehotel.ie. This is one of Cobh’s longest-established hotels (originally Queen’s Hotel), and it still carries an old- world charm. Its location, on the quays, brings great views, but at the front you may be woken by the maritime traffic across the road. (If you’re used to M50 traffic, this carries a certain novelty.)
Sheraton Fota Island Hotel Spa. Fota Island, Cork, 021-4673000, www.sheratonfotaisland.com. A place for serious pampering.
Where to eat
The Queenstown Restaurant. Cobh Heritage Centre, 021-4813591, www.cobhheritage.com. A great place to relax, in the heart of the heritage centre. If you don’t fancy a hot meal or a salad, its cakes are a feast in themselves.
Banks Bar. Radisson Blu Hotel Spa, Little Island, 021-4297000, www. radissonblu.ie/hotel-cork. You could feel quite spoilt tucking into duck confit in a comfy armchair here.
WatersEdge Hotel. Yacht Club Quay, Cobh, 021- 4815566, www.watersedge hotel.ie. The Jacob’s Ladder restaurant boasts a Michelin Guide recommendation and an AA rosette.