Ireland Calling: The Gathering 2013

In the closing days of 2012 we read that our young people are leaving this country at the rate of 200 a day, a level of emigration not experienced since the great famine. They head off to Britain, Canada, United States of America, New Zealand, many parts of Europe or as in the case of my family, to far off Australia. Although 46,500 Irish-born  left us  in the year to April 2012, these new emigrants have opportunities to stay in contact with brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends through social media and the irreplaceable Skype.  Long ago – and indeed not so long ago – when our family members departed these shores, it was often a challenge to stay in contact; people did not have telephones, for those who did, phoning was expensive;  people either could not write or were not good at writing letters.

Today New Year’s Day, marks the beginning of The Gathering 2013, a year-long series of events celebrating our heritage, our musical and literary traditions and our sense of fun all arranged to tempt our departed kinsfolk to visit the land of their fathers.  We Irish have a natural instinct to gather, rooted perhaps in the old rural tradition of the ‘meitheal’ where neighbours came together as a team  to help with the harvest or some other major event and where firm friendships were shaped.

Spike Island (Cork County Council)

This afternoon, a 21 gun salute resounded out over the splendid Cork Harbour,from where countless thousands left here by choice or necessity down the ages. The 21 gun salute was heard here for the first time in almost 30 years. Spike Island in the Harbour is the site of  one of only two fixed national saluting stations in Ireland, the second being on the end of the East Pier in Dun Laoghaire, appropriately enough also at the point of departure of tens of thousands of Irish seeking better lives abroad.

The sounding of the 21 gun salute is a tribute to all the people who have left Ireland, and while it  also symbolizes a ‘caoin’ from the heart of those of us who are left behind, it is a mighty symbolic call  to Ireland’s emigrants to come home, a symbolic call that has been sent out across the oceans, across continents to all parts of the world where Irish have settled to remind them of their heritage and to come back and share in some of it .

Mouth of Cork Harbour photographed from Cobh, from where thousands of Irish left to take up new lives.

2013 is set to be a spectacular year-long celebration.

Taragaí linn. Beidh failte roimh gach duine  in the wonderful year that is planned!

References:

Central Statistics Office 

History of the 21 Gun Salute

20 Minutes of Terror:1942 Bombing of Broome Western Australia

With the temperature gauge in the car registering 41.8 degrees C  (107 F) I recently embarked on a mission to find some specific graves in  the biggest cemetery in Western Australia,having the beautiful name of Karrakatta. Needless to say some thought I probably needed to be delivered to a home for the bewildered, venturing out on such a hot day!

Almost a quarter of a million burials and cremations have taken place at this vast graveyard at Karrakatta, so my visit required some forward planning. Having (eventually!) found the ‘target’ plots, I noticed reference to a Commonwealth War Graves section on the cemetery map  and decided to take a look as I had never been in a war graves cemetery outside of the United States of America.

The seemingly endless rows of identical grey headstones,each one representing a unique life lived then lost.

The War Graves cemetery is dominated by a tall central ‘Cross of Sacrifice’. The manicured  lawns and  straight lines of almost 500 grey granite grave-markers are a poignant sight. When visiting any memorial, I like to read as many names as I can. Here are the tombstones of 16 WWI Veterans,  477 WW2 Veterans and 4 Veterans of the Vietnam War. Walking along the rows I became aware of a great blaze of colour off to one side of the main section. I wandered off to investigate and was truly  astonished at what I found.

I entered an enclosed area marked ‘Dutch War Cemetery’ and surmised that perhaps floral tributes had been placed to mark a day of significance to the local Dutch community. There was a number of small neat gravestones – each with a single rose, already fading – and some had been displaced by the wind.  I was puzzled to see children buried here – one headstone for a child aged 1, another for a child  aged 15, the latter with a bunch of fresh flowers wrapped in a sunshine yellow  bouquet.

The Netherlands Annex to the Perth Commonwealth War Cemetery

Fresh wreaths and floral bouquets decorated with the national colours of the Netherlands.

Still puzzled, I made my way towards the formal wreaths placed  below a wall plaque..

THIS MEMORIAL IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF DUTCH REFUGEES AND CREW MEMBERS WHO PERISHED ON 3RD MARCH 1942 WHEN SEAPLANES OF THE ROYAL NETHERLANDS NAVY WERE ATTACKED AND SUNK IN BROOME HARBOUR BY JAPANESE FIGHTER AIRCRAFT.THE VICTIMS WHOSE BODIES WERE NOT RECOVERED ARE LISTED BELOW…..

I had not been aware until recently that Australia had suffered any enemy bombing during the Second World War. I was informed otherwise in a recent post in an excellent blog that I follow, entitled Family History Across the Seas. Read here. A  post in February was on the commemoration of the bombing of Darwin  in 1942 in which  about 250 people died and several hundreds were injured. Just 12 days after the bombing of  Darwin, the town of  Broome  in the northern part of the vast state of Western Australia was targeted.

Broome was then a small pearling town that had become a staging post for hundreds of  refugees fleeing the advancing Japanese in Indonesia. Indonesia as we now know it, was then a Dutch Colony known as the Dutch East Indies. Singapore had fallen on 15 February and as the Japanese advanced on Java, the evacuation was hasty with little time for recording names of refugees. It is estimated that up to 8,000 arrived at Broome from Java in the two weeks before March 3rd 1942,  having been brought there by planes of  the Dutch, American and Australian military as well as civil aircraft. On one day no fewer than 57 aircraft arrived in Broome.

Many of the evacuees would have breathed a sigh of relief to have reached the safety of Broome as it was considered to be beyond the range of Japanese aircraft. Packed into flying boats, they remained on board  while awaiting refuelling before flying south. They remained on board as there was insufficient accommodation in the tiny town to facilitate the large numbers of people passing through.On the morning of March 3 1942, there were 15 flying boats in Broome for refuelling, each one ‘packed to the brim’ with Dutch people. Just after 9 am, 9 Japanese planes attacked and within 20 minutes had destroyed every aircraft in Broome harbour as well as those on the airstrip.

The burning waters of Roebuck Bay were filled with screaming men women and  children. Many who survived the strafing drowned in the fast flowing currents, were incinerated or taken by sharks as they tried to make it to shore.  It is not known precisely how many died on that day or who they were, as there were inadequate passenger lists. Also killed were  passengers and crew of an American aircraft  shot down shortly after taking off. The number of victims varies between 80 and 100   – the number and the identity of some of them will  never be known.

Twenty-three-year-old Pilot Officer Frank Russell was aboard one of the flying boats; soon afterwards he described, “a scene of ghastly devastation! Our flying boats all over the place were sending up huge clouds of black smoke. Burning petrol in sinister patches floated all over the sea … All around us there fell a ceaseless stream of tracer bullets. Several of the Dutch Dorniers had been full of women and kids, waiting to take off to … safety.”

The Japanese flew 97 air-raids over northern Australia during World War II. The bombing of Broome was ‘hushed up’ for some time as the authorities did not wish to cause alarm to the residents of Australia.

In Broome at very low tide, the wreckage  of the destroyed aircraft can be seen – a poignant reminder and  memorial of that terrible day.

The Dutch bodies recovered were first buried in the Broome War Cemetery but were removed and reburied in a special area in the Karrakatta cemetery in Perth in 1950. I have been unable to discover the reason for this other than Perth possibly being  more accessible for relatives who may wish to visit the graves.

Many are commemorated in Karrakatta. Those known to be buried here are :

Name	Age
Sergeant Albert van Tour	35	RNN
Catharina van Tour	8	Civilian
Sergeant Johannes Gerardus van Aggelan	32	RNN
Johanna van Aggelan	32	Civilian
Luitenant ter zee Pieter Johannes Hendrikse	51	RNN
Loes Heidsieck	25	Civilian
Henri Rudolf de Sera	21	RNN
Hendrik de Bruyn	4	Civilian
Alida Brandenburg-Trumpie	30	Civilian
Jenny Hendrikse van der Putte	28	Civilian
Johannes van Tuyn	1	Civilian
Maria van Tuyn van Gelooven	28	Civilian
Elizabeth Kuin	5	Civilian
Anna Maria Dorothea Kuin Sturk	29	Civilian
Cornelius Piers	14	Civilian
Frans Piers	7	Civilian
C.G.E. Piers Morien	42	Civilian
Johanna Borsch Baas	36	Civilian
Adri Kramer	17	Civilian
Abdul Hamed bin Juden	36	Civilian (killed in raid March 20 1942 )

Another three graves are marked “Unknown Dutch lady”, and two are marked “Unknown Dutch child”.

This story struck a chord with me as it is about emigration, one of the key themes of my blog. I concentrate on the Irish diaspora and in so doing I am even more aware of  other great movements of people – migrations –  across the globe. Many went on to better lives and many also endured terrible suffering, and many more gave their lives because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I salute the Dutch men and women who lost their lives or who lost family members in this great tragedy.I was happy to have made this serendipitous discovery and to walk among their graves in Karrakatta  cemetery, to remember them and their families who still honour them and leave  floral tributes at their graves.

References

Information on burials taken from Mervyn W. Prime, WA’s Pearl Harbour: the Japanese raid on Broome (1985).

http://www.awm.gov.au/exhibitions/alliesinadversity

http://library.thinkquest.org/10236/

http://www.abc.net.au

Family history across the seas Blog

White Star Line’s ‘First Titanic’: RMS Tayleur

The Tayleur. Sank on her maiden voyage January 1854

In the 1850s the Australian Gold Rush was in full swing with thousands clamouring for passage. From 1852 to 1857, 226,000 left Britain to seek their fortune – 60,000 of whom were Irish. It is estimated that in a single month in 1853, 32,000 people departed Liverpool for Australia’s gold fields. Large, fast ships therefore were urgently needed to meet demand on this route.

On October 4, 1853  thousands cheered as a new iron hulled ship slipped from her dry dock into the water for  the first  time, in Warrington on the River Mersey. The ship was named for the Tayleur family who owned the iron foundry that had previously built paddle steamers. (In the 1820s the Tayleur iron foundry in Warrington, England had produced sections for Telford’s famous Menai Straits Bridge, well known to tens of thousands of Irish emigrants travelling onwards from Holyhead in Anglesey, North Wales.)

The Tayleur, reckoned to be the biggest and fastest ship of her type, was chartered by the White Star line to ply the lucrative Liverpool to Melbourne route.

On January 19, 1854 the Tayleur  departed Liverpool on her maiden voyage with up to 600 passengers plus crew on board. When sailing down the Mersey, the pilot noticed that the compass readings were slightly askew, but she continued on her way. Her route was to take her south along the west coast of Britain, but very shortly after departure she hit rough weather. On January 21 a squall developed and it proved almost impossible for the crew to steer the ship. Instead of travelling south, she had in fact been travelling due west and in the gale that blew up she found herself along the shores of Lambay Island, just 10 miles or so from Dublin, Ireland. Anchors were weighed but the lines snapped and she was dashed against the rocks. Some passengers managed to scramble ashore and climb the steep cliffs to safety but, in a short time, the Tayleur slipped under the waves with a loss of about 40o lives.

The Illustrated London News,  on January 28, 1854 carried the following report:

”The most desperate struggles for life were made by the wretched passengers, great numbers of women jumped overboard, in the vain hope of reaching land; and the ropes were crowded by hundreds who, in their eagerness, terror, and confusion, frustrated each others efforts for self-preservation. Many of the females would get half way, and then become unable to proceed further; and, after clinging to the rope for a short time, would be forced from their hold by those who came after them. Three women only, out of 200, were saved. One of those had got part of the way across when her legs fell, and she hung for some time by her two hands over the foaming waves; her husband then came on the rope, and managed to assist her to the shore. Two men came on shore with children tied to their backs but of the whole who fell into the water not above five were saved. I saw one fine girl, who, after falling from the rope managed to get hold of another one, which was hanging from the side of the ship, and which she held on to for more than a quarter of an hour, the sea every moment dashing her against the side of the ship: but it was impossible for us to lend her any assistance. Someone got a spar out, by which several got on shore; but it soon broke; and now might be seen hundreds hanging on to the bulwarks of the ship, each struggling to get on shore. I saw one young woman hanging on the middle of the rope for some time by her two hands, but those pushing to get on shore soon sent her to her doom”.

Some 100 were buried on the island,others were buried where they were washed up on the mainland, but for many the sea was the last resting place.Of the 200  women on board, 100 were believed to be Irish. The style of dress that prevailed at that time  - large billowing skirts –  was considered to have been a contributory factor in the loss of so many females, together with the ferocity of the undercurrents and the high seas that bashed the ship off the rocks on Lambay.

A Board of Trade enquiry into the disaster found that several factors contributed to the disaster:

The iron hull had caused the compasses to read incorrectly and there were issues with the rigging and the sails that made it difficult to handle the ship in the high wind. The rudder was of a new design that had not been tested and there had been no sea trials carried out on this new type of ship – she had gone from being fitted out straight  into service.

The Tayleur Medal. Awarded for bravery in sea rescue.

Donations flooded in for the survivors. The residue of the fund was set  aside to be ’available at once for such shipwrecked strangers as may become future claimants on the generosity of the citizens of Dublin’ and so the Tayleur Fund Medal was inaugurated. The medal bears an engraving of the Tayleur and the inscription ‘TAYLEUR FUND FOR THE SUCCOUR OF SHIPWRECKED STRANGERS’. It was awarded to 44 people before the fund was wound up in 1913  and the residue donated to the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) in exchange for a motorized lifeboat for the Dun Laoghaire Lifeboat Station.

Artefacts found at the wreck site of the Tayleur

The Tayleur was largely forgotten until the late 1950s when a sub aqua team went in search of the wreck. Local fishermen had reported that lobster hauled from a particular location had red undersides as though they had lived on a rusting wreck.  The lead was followed and the wreck was located. In 1963 her bell was discovered and raised to the surface and is now in the Maritime Museum  in Dun Laoghaire.

Many artefacts such as these patterned jugs and dishes have been recovered. One of her two anchors is displayed in Rush Co Dublin, where regular commemorations take place.

The White Star Line which had chartered the Tayleur would later get into financial difficulties. In 1868 Ismay bought the trade name and the logo at a liquidation sale.Almost 60 years  after the launch of the Tayleur – the biggest fastest ship of her time –  registered in Liverpool and proudly flying The White Star  flag on her maiden voyage –  another ship, also registered in Liverpool,   big, fast and unsinkable, would leave port flying The White Star flag on her maiden voyage and, like the Tayleur, just days later, would end up on the sea floor with heavy loss of life.

Incredible coincidence.

A list of passengers of the Tayleur can be seen here

References

http://tayleurarms.co.uk/history.html

http://www.mii.connect.ie/history/Tayleur/Tayleur.html

http://www.rnli.org.uk

Maritime Institute of Ireland

http://www.coastguardsofyesteryear.org/articles.php?article_id=12

List of recipients of Tayleur Fund Medals here

National Maritime Museum of Ireland

From the Fields of Athenry to Bondi Beach

In researching the Derryveagh Evictions for an earlier post, I happened on an exhibition entitled ‘Not Just Ned: A true story of the Irish in Australia‘, hosted by  the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. Australia has been a destination for the Irish diaspora for centuries. While the circumstances of the migrations have changed down the ages, Australia continues to absorb thousands of Irish emigrants.

A sign on a bridge in Dorset threatening transportation for life. Picture from Wiki Media Commons

Ned Kelly of the exhibition title, is regarded either as an outlaw or as a folk hero who defied the ruling class in colonial Australia. He perished at the end of a rope in 1880 at the age of 25. He was the son of an Irish convict father, John Kelly from Tipperary, who was sentenced to 7 years deportation either for stealing 2 pigs or for being a patriot, depending on which source appeals most, as his trial records have not survived from that time.

The transportation of convicts to Australia is something we in Ireland are familiar with – and why wouldn’t we be ?!  Don’t we sing our anthem, ‘The Fields of Athenry’ till our hearts almost burst, at soccer internationals and at rugby matches, to remind ourselves and our foes about poor fictional  ’Michael’ , transported to Botany Bay because he…….” stole Trevelyan’s corn, so the young might see the morn? ”. However, not all convicts were male. Children as young as 12, and women were also sent into exile, and in addition, many young children were transported with their mothers. The receiving authorities in Australia complained that the women and female child convicts were arriving unskilled and they were of no use to the settler population. In response a facility was set up in Dublin whereby females were upskilled in needlework, laundry, cooking and knitting , so enabling them to become valuable servants on arrival in Australia. In all some 30,000 Irish men and 9,000 Irish women were sentenced to transportation  ’across the seas’.

Australia was hungry for people to help it grow as a nation, and Ireland could offer many wretched groups who were in dire circumstances. Between 1848 and 1850 11 shiploads of ‘Famine orphans’ were sent over to Sydney. These girls were mostly teenagers, aged 14 to 19 and most ended up in service. Many were indeed orphans and one wonders what their thoughts were, having lost their parents to hunger, then finding themselves on a voyage across the sea that lasted for some 3 months. As mentioned in an earlier post, the Donegal Relief Fund had been set up in Australia in 1858 for the assistance of people from Donegal who were in dire circumstances and many, including the younger members of the Derryveagh evicted families, left these shores for new opportunities in Australia in the years to 1862.

Drawing of Migrants arriving in Australia about 1885 . From a digitized image by State Library of Queensland.

Voluntary emigration from Ireland increased in the middle of the 19th century when many went to make their fortune in the Australian Gold Rush.  There was an added bonus that it also helped them escape the oppression of  British rule at home. Assisted immigration schemes were then set up by the Australian government which resulted in a huge influx of settlers from all over the world, including Ireland.  By the mid 1940′s it is estimated that a third  of the population of Australia was Irish Australian.

Government assisted passages continued after World War 2 until  the mid 20th Century and were offered as a means of providing a labour force for Australia’s emerging industries as well as increasing the population.  This resulted in one of the largest mass migrations ever from Europe. The so-called  ’ten pound poms’ were British subjects, including Irish  born prior to 1949, who paid a fare of £10 per adult with children travelling free. Employment, housing and a good lifestyle were promised upon arrival.

In the 2006 Australian census, 51,256 stated that they were born in the Republic of Ireland and 1.8 million claimed some Irish ancestry.

Australia continues to be a magnet for great numbers of young Irish – whether as backpackers on a gap year, in search of  the surf on Bondi Beach or regrettably, as economic migrants who are once again forced from these shores in search of a better life. While some are happy to go, many more would prefer to have options other than to have to go ‘across the seas’.

References

National Museum of Australia : Not Just Ned, a history of the Irish in Australia. See more here

The Fields of Athenry Lyrics

The Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition: Edward (Ned) Kelly 1855- 1880. See more here

Sources in the National Archives for research into the transportation of Irish convicts to Australia (1791-1853) by Rena Lohan. National Archives of Ireland 

Irish Famine Memorial website:   Famine Orphan Girl Ships to New South Wales. irishfaminememorial.org

Irish in Australia essay by Richard Reid, Curator National Museum of Australia accessed here

The Ten Pound Poms  article on Wikipedia accessed here

Wikipedia: The Irish Diaspora Census statistics 

Derryveagh Evictions II: Shattered Hearths

On April 9th 1861, the second day of the Derryveagh Evictions, the Deputy Sheriff and his 200 men, armed with battering rams and crowbars made their way through the townlands of Derryveagh. Their purpose was to clear the land of men, women and children to make way for the flocks of sheep that landlord John George Adair had imported from Scotland. Convinced that one of his stewards had been murdered by his tenants, and vexed that the murderers had not been identified by police, he set in train a legal process to evict all of them from his lands.

The townlands of Derryveagh where the evictions took place. Click to enlarge. Compiled from Historic and OSI maps - With many thanks to Sara Nylund.

 

 

According to the official report, 37 Husbands, 35 Wives, 159 Children and 13 ‘Other Inmates’ were evicted – a total of 244 people. Of these, 31 people, representing 4 families, were readmitted into possession as tenants, and a further 28 people, representing 6 families, were readmitted into possession as caretakers. These numbers include children. Eventually however, only 3 of these families were permanently reinstated, the rest were removed in the months after the main evictions. In Derryveagh, on those 3 terrible days, 28 of the 46 houses were either levelled or had the roof removed.

Accounts of the evictions and the effects on the families concerned make for harrowing reading. The first house to be levelled was that of a 60-year-old widow, Hanna Ward (Award), her 6 daughters and one son. Eyewitness accounts tell of the wailing and deep distress as they were forced from their home. When the ‘crowbar brigade’ began to demolish the house, the family ”became frantic with despair, throwing themselves to the ground; their terrifying cries resounding along the mountains for many miles”. It was said that ”those who witnessed their agony will never forget the sight”. This scene was repeated over and over again during the following few days. It was reported that the scenes were so harrowing that the policemen carrying out the evictions were moved to tears. In one house, an elderly man was repeatedly told by the sheriff to leave the house, and “the old man in doing so, kissed the walls of his house and each member of his family did the same”. There was no regard for individual circumstances  - no mercy was shown to Rose Dermott, an orphan, whose house was levelled just the same as those of 3 of her close neighbours, although a brother and sister who were both deaf and dumb had their house spared.

Such unimaginable terror was in itself bad enough, but the evicted families and their children had to find someplace to live. In the townland of Altnadogue for example, three Sweeney families with 18 children between them, were locked out of their homes. They moved to nearby Glendowan, away from Adair lands, and built sod houses for themselves. Hearing of the evictions, people in nearby Cloughaneely provided temporary shelter for some of the families. One family in Staghall, a man his wife and two children,were found to still be living in the ruins of their house some time later. The family had lived there for generations. A further group of five men were discovered huddled around a fire with no shelter as they were unwilling to move away. A month after the evictions, 14 families were still unaccounted for or were wandering through the ruins of their homes.

Six families found shelter with or near to, relatives and friends, but 13 families had to take refuge in the Workhouse in Letterkenny. In the Workhouse it was reported that the Derryveagh people sat in a huddle weeping, and were so distressed that they were unable to eat. The elderly John Doherty of Castletown died only days after being admitted to the Workhouse and Michael Bradley is said to have gone insane.

News of the evictions and the desperate plight of the dispossessed reached Irish people across the world. In Dublin, in France and in Australia  money was collected. The Donegal Relief Committee assisted young people from Derryveagh in making new lives in Australia. On January 18th 1862, emotional and heart-rending scenes once again broke the hearts of the people of Derryveagh as parents and friends bade farewell to 68 young men, 70 young women and a young married couple with their 2 small children, as they left Derryveagh forever on the long journey to Australia, probably never to return.

Over the next few years, many mostly young people emigrated from this locality – they headed to America, to Australia, to New Zealand.

References:

Dolan, Liam. 1980. Land War and Eviction in Derryveagh, 1840- 65. Annaverna Press.

McClintock, May. After the Battering Ram- the trail of the dispossessed from Derryveagh, 1861- 1991. An Taisce Pamphlet

Vaughan, William Edward. 1983. Sin, Sheep and Scotsmen: John George Adair and the Derryveagh evictions 1861. Ulster Historical Foundation. Accessed at TARA: Trinity Access to Research Archive

Official Statistic Report of the Evictions

Donegal Relief Fund- Australia. Accessed at Donegal Genealogy Resources