Author Archives: Joel

by | 22 August 2025 · 1:01 am

Indian Ocean Trade Before 1400

From Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire, by Roger Crowley (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. 51-53:

The Indian Ocean, thirty times the size of the Mediterranean, is shaped like an enormous M, with India as its central V. It is flanked on its western edge by the arid shores of the Arabian Peninsula and the long Swahili coast of East Africa; on its east, the barrier islands of Java and Sumatra and the blunt end of Western Australia separate it from the Pacific; to the south run the cold and violent waters of the Antarctic. The timing and trade routes of everything that moved across its surface in the age of sail were dictated by the metronomic rhythm of the monsoon winds, one of the great meteorological dramas of the planet, by whose seasonal fluctuations and reversals, like the operation of a series of intermeshing cogs, goods could be moved across great stretches of the globe. The traditional ship that plied the waters of the western Indian Ocean was the dhow—that is, any of a large family of long, thin vessels with triangular lateen sails of various sizes and regional designs, ranging from coastal craft of between five and fifteen tons up to oceangoing ships of several hundred tons that could overtop Gama’s carracks. Historically, these were sewn vessels, held together by coir ropes, made from coconut fiber without the use of nails.

Unlike Columbus, the Portuguese had not burst into silent seas. For thousands of years, the Indian Ocean had been the crossroads of the world’s trade, shifting goods across a vast space from Canton to Cairo, Burma to Baghdad, through a complex interlocking of trading systems, maritime styles, cultures and religions, and a series of hubs: Malacca, on the Malay Peninsula, larger than Venice, for goods from China and the farther spice islands; Calicut, on the west coast of India, for pepper; Ormuz, gateway to the Persian Gulf and Baghdad; Aden, at the entrance to the Red Sea and the routes to Cairo, the nerve center of the Islamic world. Scores of other small city-states dotted its shores. It dispatched gold, black slaves, and mangrove poles from Africa, incense and dates from Arabia, bullion from Europe, horses from Persia, opium from Egypt, porcelain from China, war elephants from Ceylon, rice from Bengal, sulfur from Sumatra, nutmeg from the Moluccas, diamonds from the Deccan Plateau, cotton cloth from Gujarat. No one had a monopoly in this terrain—it was too extensive and complex, and the great continental powers of Asia left the sea to the merchants. There was small-scale piracy but there were no protectionist war fleets, and little notion of territorial waters prevailed; the star fleets of the Ming dynasty, the one maritime superpower, had advanced and withdrawn. It constituted a vast and comparatively peaceful free-trade zone: over half the world’s wealth passed through its waters in a commercial commonwealth that was fragmented between many players. “God,” it was said, “had given the sea in common.”

This was the world of Sindbad. Its key merchant groups, distributed thinly around its shores, from the palm-fringed beaches of East Africa to the spice islands of the East Indies, were largely Muslims. Islam had been spread, not at the point of a sword, but by missionaries and merchants from the deck of a dhow. This was a polyethnic world, in which trade depended on social and cultural interaction, long-range migration, and a measure of mutual accommodation among Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, local Christians and Jews; it was richer, more deeply layered and complex than the Portuguese could initially grasp. Their mindset was defined by the assumption of monopoly trading rights, as developed on the west coasts of Africa and by holy war in Morocco. The existence of Hinduism appears to have been occluded, and their default position when checked was aggression: hostage taking and the lighted taper ever ready at the touchhole of a bombard. They broke into this sea with their fast-firing, ship-mounted cannons, a player from outside the rules. The vessels they would encounter in the Indian Ocean lacked any comparable defenses.

It became immediately apparent as Gama’s ships approached the town of Mozambique that this was different from the Africa of their previous experience. The houses, thatched with straw, were well built; they could glimpse minarets and wooden mosques. The people, evidently Muslim merchants richly dressed in caftans fringed with silk and embroidered with gold, were urban Arabic speakers with whom their translators could communicate. The welcome was unusually friendly. “They came immediately on board with as much confidence as if they were long acquainted and entered into familiar conversation.” For the first time the Portuguese heard news of the world they had come to find. Through the interpreters they learned of the trade of the “white Muslims”—merchants from the Arabian Peninsula; there were four of their vessels in the harbor, bringing “gold, silver, cloves, pepper, ginger and silver rings…pearls, jewels and rubies.” “Further on, where we were going,” the anonymous writer added with a justifiable note of incredulity, “they abounded, and…precious stones, pearls and spices were so plentiful that there was no need to purchase them as they could be collected in baskets.” This heady vision of wealth was encouraging enough; but they also learned of a large presence of Christians along the coast and that “Prester John resided not far from this place; that he held many cities along the coast, and that the inhabitants of those cities were great merchants and owned big ships.” Whatever might have been lost in translation, “we cried with joy and prayed God to grant us health, so that we might behold what we so much desired.”

Leave a comment

Filed under Africa, economics, language, migration, Portugal, religion, South Asia, Southeast Asia

by | 21 August 2025 · 1:42 am

First Chinese Voyages to Africa

From Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire, by Roger Crowley (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. xix-xxi:

ON SEPTEMBER 20, 1414, the first giraffe ever seen in China was approaching the imperial palace in Beijing. A crowd of eager spectators craned their heads to catch a glimpse of this curiosity “with the body of a deer and the tail of an ox, and a fleshy boneless horn, with luminous spots like a red cloud or a purple mist,” according to the enraptured court calligrapher and poet Shen Du. The animal was apparently harmless: “its hoofs do not tread on living creatures…its eyes rove incessantly. All are delighted with it.” The giraffe was being led on a halter by its keeper, a Bengali; it was a present from the faraway sultan of Malindi, on the coast of East Africa.

The dainty animal, captured in a contemporary painting, was the exotic trophy of one of the strangest and most spectacular expeditions in maritime history. For thirty years at the start of the fifteenth century, the emperor of the recently established Ming dynasty, Yongle, dispatched a series of armadas across the western seas as a demonstration of Chinese power.

The fleets were vast. The first, in 1405, consisted of some 250 ships carrying twenty-eight thousand men. At its center were the treasure ships: multi-decked, nine-masted junks 440 feet long with innovative watertight buoyancy compartments and immense rudders 450 feet square. They were accompanied by a retinue of support vessels—horse transports, supply ships, troop carriers, warships, and water tankers—with which they communicated by a system of flags, lanterns, and drums. As well as navigators, sailors, soldiers, and ancillary workers, they took with them translators, to communicate with the barbarian peoples of the West, and chroniclers, to record the voyages. The fleets carried sufficient food for a year—the Chinese did not wish to be beholden to anyone—and navigated straight across the heart of the Indian Ocean from Malaysia to Sri Lanka, with compasses and calibrated astronomical plates carved in ebony. The treasure ships were known as star rafts, powerful enough to voyage even to the Milky Way. “Our sails,” it was recorded, “loftily unfurled like clouds, day and night continued their course, rapid like that of a star, traversing the savage waves.” Their admiral was a Muslim named Zheng He, whose grandfather had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and who gloried in the title of the Three-Jewel Eunuch.

These expeditions—six during the life of Yongle, and a seventh in 1431–33—were epics of navigation. Each lasted between two and three years, and they ranged far and wide across the Indian Ocean from Borneo to Zanzibar. Although they had ample capacity to quell pirates and depose monarchs and also carried goods to trade, they were primarily neither military nor economic ventures but carefully choreographed displays of soft power. The voyages of the star rafts were nonviolent techniques for projecting the magnificence of China to the coastal states of India and East Africa. There was no attempt at military occupation, nor any hindrance to the area’s free-trade system. By a kind of reverse logic, they had come to demonstrate that China wanted nothing, by giving rather than taking: “to go to the [barbarians’] countries,” in the words of a contemporary inscription, “and confer presents on them so as to transform them by displaying our power.” Overawed ambassadors from the peripheral peoples of the Indian Ocean returned with the fleet to pay tribute to Yongle—to acknowledge and admire China as the center of the world. The jewels, pearls, gold, ivory, and exotic animals they laid before the emperor were little more than a symbolic recognition of Chinese superiority. “The countries beyond the horizon and at the end of the earth have all become subjects,” it was recorded. The Chinese were referring to the world of the Indian Ocean, though they had a good idea what lay farther off. While Europe was pondering horizons beyond the Mediterranean, how the oceans were connected, and the possible shape of Africa, the Chinese seemed to know already. In the fourteenth century they had created a map showing the African continent as a sharp triangle, with a great lake at its heart and rivers flowing north.

Leave a comment

Filed under Africa, China, migration, military, nationalism, Portugal, religion, South Asia, Southeast Asia

by | 19 August 2025 · 9:53 am

Preparing Vasco da Gama’s Voyage

From Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire, by Roger Crowley (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. 34-40:

What Münzer witnessed [in 1497] was not just a glimpse of an exotic world beyond the earth’s curve but the industrial infrastructure of shipbuilding, seafaring provision, and arsenal facilities that gave Portugal its maritime punch. He saw

an enormous workshop with many furnaces where they make anchors, colubrinas [cannons] and so on, and everything necessary for the sea. There were so many blackened workers around the furnaces that we thought ourselves to be among the Cyclops in the cave of Vulcan. Afterward we saw in four other buildings innumerable very large and superb colubrinas, and also throwing weapons, javelins, shields, breastplates, mortars, hand guns, bows, lances—all very well made and in great abundance…and what enormous quantities of lead, copper, saltpetre and sulfur!

The ability to produce high-quality bronze cannons and techniques for deploying them effectively at sea had probably been developed by the energetic King João, whose inquisitive mind and wide-ranging interests included practical experiments in shipborne artillery. He had developed the use of large bombards on caravels and carried out test firings to determine their most effective use on the decks of pitching ships. The solution was to fire the guns horizontally at water level; any higher and the likelihood was that the shots would whistle overhead. In some cases, if the guns were positioned sufficiently low down in the bows, the cannonballs could be made to ricochet off the surface of the water, thus increasing their range. The Portuguese also developed berços, lightweight breech-loaded bronze swivel guns, which could be carried by ship’s boats and had the advantage over the conventional muzzle-loaders in their rate of fire—up to twenty shots an hour. The superiority of their artillery, which was augmented by recruitment of German and Flemish cannon founders and gunners, was to prove a telling advantage in the events about to unfold.

The expedition in prospect was modest in scale but carefully prepared. It was based on decades of incremental learning. All the skill and knowledge acquired over many years in ship design, navigation, and provision for Atlantic voyages went into building two stout ships, and [King] Manuel drew on a talented generation of practical experience in their construction. The caravel had been the agent and instrument of all this exploration, ideal for nosing up tropical rivers and battling back up the African coast against the wind, but horribly uncomfortable on long voyages across huge seas. Dias’s rounding of the Cape had exposed their operational limits: the crews would go no farther.

…

It was Dias who was charged with designing and overseeing the construction of two stout carracks, the sailing ships the Portuguese called naus, to lead the voyage. The brief was clear: they had to be durable enough to withstand the pounding seas of the southern Atlantic; roomy enough to accommodate and provision the crews better than the rolling decks of a caravel; small enough to maneuver in shallows and harbors. The ships under construction on the banks, their frameworks chocked up by wooden scaffolding, had tubby rounded hulls, high sides, a tall aftercastle, and three masts; they were nevertheless of shallow draft, and not outsized. They were about eighty feet long, and each probably weighed about 100 to 120 tons. Their square sails made them less maneuverable in a contrary wind; the compensation was their sturdiness against the unpredictable battering of unknown seas. A supply ship, intended to be broken up near the Cape, was also constructed.

It seems that no expense was spared in the construction or provisioning of these ships, or the recruitment and payment of the crews. “They were built by excellent masters and workmen, with strong nails and wood,” remembered the mariner Duarte Pacheco Pereira.

Each ship had three sets of sails and anchors and three or four times as much other tackle and rigging as was usual. The cooperage of the casks, pipes and barrels for wine, water, vinegar and oil was strengthened with many hoops of iron. The provisions of bread, wine, flour, meat, vegetables, medicines, and likewise of arms and ammunition, were also in excess of what was needed for such a voyage. The best and most skillful pilots and mariners in Portugal were sent on this voyage, and they received, besides other favors, salaries higher than those of any seamen of other countries. The money spent on the few ships of this expedition was so great that I will not go into detail for fear of not being believed.

The barrels rolled up the gangplanks on the shores of the dockyard contained sufficient food for three years. Gama received two thousand gold cruzados for the venture, a huge sum; his brother Paulo, the same. The seamen’s wages were raised, and some of the money paid in advance to support their families. It was perhaps a recognition that many of them would not be coming back. No detail was omitted. The ships carried the best navigational aids available: as well as sounding leads and hourglasses, astrolabes and the most up-to-date maps—and possibly copies of Abraham Zacuto’s recently printed tables for determining latitudes from the height of the sun. Twenty cannons were hoisted aboard, both large bombards and the smaller breech-loaded berços, along with plentiful supplies of gunpowder tightly sealed against the sea air and quantities of cannonballs. The skilled craftsmen—carpenters, caulkers, forgers of iron, and barrelmakers—who would ensure the security of the ships were recruited in pairs, in case death thinned out their ranks. There were interpreters to speak Bantu and Arabic; musicians to lead sea chanteys and blow ceremonial fanfares; gunners and men-at-arms and skilled seamen, supported by an underclass of “deck fodder.” These comprised African slaves, orphans, converted Jews, and convicted men, enrolled for the menial heavy work: hauling on ropes, raising anchors and sails, pumping out the bilges. The convicts were particularly expendable; they had been released from prison specifically to be put ashore to make first inquiries on uncharted and potentially hostile coasts; priests also went, to lead the prayers and consign the souls of the dead to the sea with a Christian burial.

There were four ships in all: the two carracks, christened São Gabriel and São Rafael after the archangels, according to a vow made by King João before his death; with them went a caravel, the Bérrio, and the two-hundred-ton supply ship. Gama called on seamen he knew and relatives he could trust, to lessen the possibility of dissent in a tightly knit expedition. These included his brother Paulo, commander of the Rafael, and two Gama cousins. His pilots and leading seamen were the most experienced of the age. They included Pêro de Alenquer and Nicholas Coelho, who had rounded the cape with Bartolomeu Dias, and Dias’s own brother Diogo. Another pilot, Pêro Escobar, whose name was carved at the Yellala Falls, had been a navigator with Diogo Cão. Bartolomeu Dias was also scheduled to accompany the expedition on the first leg of the voyage in a ship bound for the Guinea coast.

Leave a comment

Filed under Africa, language, migration, military, nationalism, Portugal, religion, travel

by | 18 August 2025 · 12:12 am

Emigrating from Liverpool by Sea

From The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America, by Edward Laxton (St. Martins, 2024), Kindle pp. 229-232:

The modern Catholic cathedral in Liverpool is known irreverently but affectionately as Paddy’s Wigwam, in deference to its shape and to the antecedents of the masses who worship within the diocese today. The six years of the Famine sailings saw a million Irish emigrants arrive in Liverpool’s port. The majority had just completed the short trip across the usually turbulent Irish Sea – the first stage of their journey to America or Canada. Nearly a quarter of them would have nothing more to do with that cruel sea and those inhuman ships. Some travelled to England and Scotland but many an Irishman and his family remained in Liverpool. For some the city symbolised the end of all their travels and a section of the city came to be known as Little Ireland.

For nearly two centuries, from c. 1700–1900, Liverpool’s port enabled Britain to dominate rival maritime nations. Liverpool sent out ships to explore the world but also ships full of human cargo, first slaves, and then emigrants. Known as the slavers’ port in the 18th century, Liverpool rapidly became an emigrants’ port in the 19th century, though Liverpool’s ship owners continued to trade in slaves until slavery was abolished by Britain in 1807. During that final year, 185 ships transported as many as 50,000 slaves. Soon the commercial rule of ‘slaves-out and sugar-back’ gave way to ‘emigrants-out and timber-back’. On ships bound for New York or Boston during the Famine, it cost 6 cs to insure US $4 worth of baggage but only 4 cs to insure your life. But the Irish were only part of the emigration story. During the 19th century, a total of nine million emigrants spilled out of Europe, sailing from Liverpool to America. Liverpool enjoyed unique commercial and geographical assets. Sited strategically close to the Irish Sea, the city lay only 3 miles up the River Mersey. Liverpool was also one of the first posts to forge a rail-link with Hull, 100 miles away. Hull, in turn, enjoyed busy trade with the ports of Hamburg and Bremen, Gothenburg and Danzig, from where a remarkable ethnic mix of people journeyed, sometimes fleeing their homelands for various reasons. The crossing from Europe to Hull over the North Sea, was as short as that over the Irish Sea, and the rail fare was only a few shillings. Of course, at this particular time the mainland Europeans formed only a minor part of the emigrant population in Britain.

It was logical for the Irish to aim for Liverpool as their launching pad into the New World, not merely because it was the nearest port of convenience, but also because it was a familiar site and source of summer work. Thousands of Irish farmhands regularly crossed to Liverpool, seeking work at the back end of summer on England’s farms. Too few opportunities existed at home at harvest time and the wages in England were better. Additionally, many more ships were available in Liverpool, with its big, fast vessels and speedy American packet ships. The fast packets grabbed a good half of the emigrant trade towards the end of the Famine years, averaging 40 days westward and 23 days eastward. Liverpool was also one of the world’s busiest shipping ports, with over 36 miles of quays and a massive ship tonnage registered as three times the overall tonnage owned in America at that period. Into this teeming city sailed the Irish families from their rural communities. Already overawed by the Irish cities of Dublin, Belfast or Cork, the rural emigrants had to survive the streetwise con-men and racketeers of Liverpool, and later of New York or Boston. At various levels the Liverpool fraternity was engaged in the business of exporting people and, as human cargo was regarded as a commodity, every trader sought to extract his ounce of flesh from that commodity. Yet help was at hand, if only the emigrants knew where to look and who to ask. Various publications offered guidance, and government circulars advised on how to find lodgings, how to seek a passage and buy a ticket, where to exchange money, what to avoid at the docks, on the ships and on arrival.

The priority for the emigrant in Liverpool was to obtain a ticket for a ship sailing within a few days. Space on most of the Atlantic ships was often sold in one block by the owners to the passenger brokers and competition was so intense that fares varied from day to day, sometimes changing by the hour. A berth in steerage ranged between £3 10s to £5 (US $17.50 to $25). The port authority licensed 21 brokers who each provided a bond plus two sureties totalling £200 (US $1,000). The brokers paid a small commission to dock-runners for each emigrant delivered to their office. Given half a chance, a runner would lead his unsuspecting victims from the brokers to a lodging house, and then on to a chandler for provisions and suitable clothing, earning further commission, if he could persuade his prey to part with his last few pennies. Before the day of departure, each emigrant had to appear before a medical officer who was paid by the ship owner or charterer £1 (US $5) for every hundred passengers he inspected. After a very rudimentary examination, he would stamp each ticket as proof of inspection. Passengers were entitled to board the ship 24 hours before departure. Once settled, if lucky to have among them a fiddler or a piper and while spirits were high, the passengers might enjoy a song and dance. Once out on the ocean, the sloping decks and strong south-westerly winds would soon restrict their activities. Occasionally, there were scenes at the quayside if passengers arrived late, after the gangway had been raised, the mooring lines cast off and the ship had sailed away. The late arrivals would be rushed to the dock-gate and as their ship passed close by, their luggage and boxes would be flung aboard, followed by the passengers themselves, hopefully landing on the deck. If they or their luggage missed the ship and splashed into the water, there was usually a man in a rowing boat positioned for a rescue, and a reward.

Steam tugs usually towed a sailing ship into position down-river. As tugs were not always available during these early days of steam, outgoing ships were sometimes steered by a practised pilot with a single-sail cutter in attendance. The pilot’s local knowledge of navigational hazards, tides, currents and winds and his regular practice in handling a ship were invaluable. During the short voyage down-river, the ship’s crew searched for stowaways. All legitimate passengers were mustered on deck during the search, while dubious bundles were poked with long, sharp sticks and suspect barrels were turned upside-down. Many a barrel or trunk concealed a body or two. Once discovered, the guilty stowaways were transferred to the tug and returned to shore where they would be tried before a magistrate. A lucky few survived the search and made their appearance two or three days later when the crew would be grateful as the successful stowaways worked their passage by doing the most unpleasant jobs on board.

Leave a comment

Filed under Britain, Canada, economics, Ireland, labor, migration, slavery, travel, U.S.

by | 17 August 2025 · 12:38 am

Ireland’s Oldest Lighthouse

From The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America, by Edward Laxton (St. Martins, 2024), Kindle pp. 151-152:

In 1849, shortly before Patrick Kennedy left for America, the first three ships to sail directly from his home port of New Ross to America, cast off with their quotas of Famine emigrants. The Lady Constable, the Boreas and the Dunbrody were all bound for New York, and crossed the Atlantic at the same time as the Washington Irving, carrying Patrick Kennedy to his new life in America.

The Dunbrody was named after Dunbrody Abbey standing high on the east bank of the River Barrow, just beyond the point where the Barrow joins the Suir flowing down from Waterford. Further down the river where the calmer waters emerge into the swell of the Atlantic, stands another Catholic landmark, St Dubhan’s Monastery close to Hook Point. For centuries the monks took a vow to warn mariners of the dangers of the rocks below and maintained a lighthouse near the monastery. Caligula, the Roman Emperor who ruled at the beginning of the first century AD, built the world’s first lighthouses as his legions spread across Europe. Some 400 years later, St Dubhan established the oldest lighthouse in Ireland on Hook Point. The monks kept the beacon alight in those early days by burning coal, pitch, charcoal and tar each night. Later, the Canons of St Augustine took over and built an 80-foot-high tower for the light with a small fortress below. The monks continued to preserve the light until 1657 when the lighthouse passed into public ownership. The original tower, coated in white lime to stand out by day, is now 700 years old, and ‘in such good repair it will probably last another millennium’, comments the Irish coastguard service. The tower performed an essential service for all ships entering the delta on their way to Waterford, Wexford, New Ross, or any other harbour en route. For the emigrants on a ship sailing from Ireland on a southerly course, the ancient lighthouse served as the last memorable monument to their homeland. The kindlier captains allowed emigrants up on deck, to catch a last glimpse of their beloved homeland before she disappeared beyond the horizon. With dry mouths, damp eyes and hands clasping the rail, the tearful emigrants gazed in silence at the disappearing coastline. Eventually the silence would give way to the exciting hiss of the bow wave and the roaring seas and the sad men and women would be shepherded down below.

Leave a comment

Filed under Ireland, Italy, migration, religion, travel

by | 16 August 2025 · 1:22 am

Packet Ships with Livestock

From The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America, by Edward Laxton (St. Martins, 2024), Kindle pp. 146-147:

The scene aboard the Washington Irving is dramatically brought to life in Some Famous Sailing Ships, written in 1928 by Richard C McKay, grandson of the boat-builder:

One cannot help admiring the daring that impelled Enoch Train to start his celebrated line of sailing packets and to commission Donald McKay to build them expressly for the trans-Atlantic passenger, freight and mail service. He had to contend not only with the keen rivalry of the New York packet lines, but the Lords of the Admiralty (in London) had charge of the Royal mails and sometime previously had contracted for the conveyance of these with Mr Samuel Cunard.

He then brought into existence buildings required to house the live-stock for supplying the cabin table, the most important being the cow house where, after a short run ashore on the marshes at the end of each voyage, a well-seasoned animal of the snug-made Alderney breed, chewed the cud in sweet content.

An animal farm might be a practical option aboard one of Cunard’s early steamships, which could proceed with reasonably level decks, but keeping livestock aboard a sailing ship was a tricky business.
However, as Enoch Train was forced to compete with Cunard’s steamships, live animals were kept aboard his packet ships to supplement supplies. As McKay points out:

Preserved milk was unknown in those times; and the officers of a passenger ship would rather have gone to sea without a doctor, to say nothing of a parson, than without a cow and some nanny-goats. The ship’s cow and her health was always a most important matter and it is related that on one occasion, after a long spell of very bad weather, one of these creatures fell off in her supply of milk and was brought around again by a liberal supply of nourishing stout, wisely prescribed for her by the ship’s doctor.

Pigs always proved a thriving stock on a ship farm. Next to the pig, goats were the most useful stock. These animals soon made themselves at home on shipboard; they had good sea legs and were blessed with an appetite that nothing in the way of tough fibre was too much for, from an armful of shavings to an old newspaper or logbook. It was not, however, always practical to turn in sheep to feed with pigs at sea, for the last-named animals were apt to develop a taste for a good live leg of mutton after a few weeks afloat.

Truly in those days a ship was more like a small bit of the world afloat than it is now. One can imagine the noisy confusion that must have reigned aboard one of these packets on sailing day. Ducks, geese and poultry in general always sympathised with excitement near them while pigs and even sheep, thrown together for the first time, had a noisy way of their own. At intervals, even the old cow bemoaned her lot in life.

Leave a comment

Filed under Britain, Canada, food, migration, travel, U.S.

by | 15 August 2025 · 2:19 am

Poland-Romania Cultural Season, 2025

Culture.pl has been celebrating a Poland-Romania Cultural Season 2024-2025 with many postings on diverse topics.

The Poland-Romania Cultural Season 2024-2025 is being announced in Warsaw and Bucharest on March 3rd for a reason. In a joint decision by both countries last year, the date now marks the celebration of Polish-Romanian Solidarity Day, commemorating the signing of their first defensive alliance in 1921. That document sealed the bonds of friendship that long connected both countries and its leaders – Józef Piłsudski and the Romanian royal family of King Ferdinand and his wife Maria. Tangible later evidence of these relations was the Romanian reception in September 1939 of tens of thousands of Polish refugees, as well as the assistance given in hiding Poland’s gold reserves and the Jagiellonian tapestries, which found safe refuge in Romania.

Here’s a snippet from one contribution by Mikołaj Gliński, who writes on language-related topics. He titles it Shared Roads.

Often called a ‘Romanic island in a Slavic sea’, Romania and the Romanian language have been under a variety of cultural influences since their inception. Romanian, a Romance language, has absorbed a considerable number of Slavic elements – according to some estimates, as much as 20% of the Romanian vocabulary has Slavic roots.

To Polish or Slavic eyes, certain words in Romanian may look familiar:

  • drag (dear) and dragoste (love) both remind us of ‘drogi’ (dear)
  • glas (voice) looks similar to ‘głos’, its Polish equivalent
  • a iubi (to love) has hints of the Polish word ‘lubić’, meaning ‘to like’
  • rai (paradise) sounds just like the Polish word ‘raj’
  • prieten (friend) has echoes of ‘przyjaciel’
  • pivniță [corrected] (cellar) is very similar to ‘piwnica’
  • coasă (scythe) is like an accented ‘kosa’
  • plug (plow) is one letter off ‘pług’

Many were adopted early in the language’s development, likely from Old Church Slavonic and its local adaptations.

From the 15th to the early 18th centuries, Romanian (especially in so-called Moldavian-Slavonic documents) borrowed eagerly and directly from Polish. Words like pan (a noble title), zlot (gold coin), basta (tower), and a rocosi (to rebel) entered the language. However, most did not survive due to the 19th-century re-Romanisation reforms, which aimed to purge Romanian of foreign elements, replacing them with Romance neologisms.

But a handful of Polonisms from that era did survive and still remain today. According to Henryk Misterski, a professor specialising in Romania, they are komornik (bailiff), pan, stolnik (carpentry), sołtys (village mayor), szafran (saffron), and złoty (golden). Other terms, like sanie (sled) and lopată (shovel), also persist.

Meanwhile Romanians can easily recognise many Carpathian pastoral terms in Polish, such as watra (hearth) and bryndza (a type of mountain cheese). These entered Polish via the language used by Wallachian shepherds grazing their animals in the Carpathians.

Leave a comment

Filed under art, language, nationalism, Poland, Romania

by | 14 August 2025 · 2:32 am

1848 in Ireland

From The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America, by Edward Laxton (St. Martins, 2024), Kindle pp. 85-86:

The government in London still declined to recognise the state of Ireland’s rapidly diminishing population. There was little fight left in the people, little strength to fight the hunger and none at all to fight the British who mistook the mood of the people and remained insensitive to the reality of their situation: even peasant armies cannot fight on empty bellies. Tenants on some of the larger estates banded together to avoid paying rents, current or arrears, and formed combinations while in the towns and cities Confederate Clubs were set up; but that was as far as they went – there is no evidence of well-organised conspiracies to murder landlords or agents, however much they were hated. But the apprehension of an Irish uprising had been growing steadily for more than two years among Britain’s leaders. Elsewhere in Europe, uprisings were rife: in January 1848 the people in Sicily forced concessions from their King; in February a bloodless revolution overthrew the French Parliament; in early March the army in Vienna was routed by the city’s people; then the Austrian rulers were driven out of Milan by the Italians. These winter insurrections encouraged radical leaders of the Young Ireland Party to rebel. As a result, in March three men, William Smith O’Brien, Thomas Meagher and John Mitchel, were arrested and charged with sedition. After the first two were acquitted, the third, Mitchel, a journalist, was tried in May under another act and convicted. The Attorney General in London had just drafted a new Treason Felony Act, decreeing, ‘… any person who, by open and advised speaking, compassed the intimidation of the Crown or of Parliament,’ was made guilty of felony. And in the current climate any person found guilty under this Act would be sure to face a heavy sentence – transportation to an overseas colony possibly for life. Within an hour of the jury returning their verdict, and sentencing Mitchel to 14 years’ transportation, he was on his way out of the country, not on an emigrant ship but aboard a British warship, bound for Tasmania on the other side of the world.

Fear is often fuelled by rumour, which was rife at the time. Misleading stories spread of great protest gatherings, 10,000-strong, and marches of 20,000 militants were reported to London. It was rumoured than an Irish Brigade was being raised in America, and that the Confederate Clubs were arming their members. As a result, the British Government determined to quash the threat of a peasant uprising. More English troops and weapons poured into Dublin and spread around the country. Additional English warships were despatched to strengthen the fleet at Cove, near Cork.

The British decided that further examples should be made among the would-be leaders and early in July, Thomas Meagher, son of the Mayor of Waterford, was re-arrested. His speeches in previous years, urging armed rebellion, had earned him the title Meagher of the Sword. He was detained by the police right outside the offices of the Waterford Chronicle whose editorial that day, on July 12th, cautioned against immediate rebellion, urging instead, ‘Wait until England is engaged in a major European war. The Chronicle will equip 200,000 men to fight against England.’

Leave a comment

Filed under Australia, Austria, Britain, France, Ireland, Italy, migration, military, nationalism, U.S., war

by | 13 August 2025 · 3:03 am

U.S. Aid for Ireland, 1847

From The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America, by Edward Laxton (St. Martins, 2024), Kindle pp. 54-56:

No fewer than 5,000 crossings are estimated to have carried the million Irish Famine emigrants westwards over the Atlantic. Yet a single passage in the opposite direction has achieved great significance historically. This was the voyage of the Jamestown, a well-armed man-of-war and one of only six sloops in the American navy, transformed overnight into a merchant vessel on a mission of mercy.

The winter months of 1846 right through to the following spring were bitterly cold, with unusually heavy snowfalls, and the full extent of the suffering in Ireland, especially during the early months of 1847, was never fully or widely appreciated around the world, especially in England where the plight of the Irish achieved neither recognition nor sympathy. The greatest help came from the United States: the recent emigrant arrivals carried the news with them and each one had a personal story which bore testimony to the hopeless situation in every corner of their homeland. Months before the first of the coffin ships sailed, a wave of relief organizations and meetings broke across America. Ships from Newark, Philadelphia and New York sailed before the spring arrived for Cork, Londonderry and Limerick, carrying some clothing but mostly food.

The Quakers Society of Friends were the first large-scale organizers of relief for Ireland, and when the American Vice-President chaired a huge public meeting in Washington on February 9th, they urged that every city, town and village should hold a meeting so that a large national contribution might be raised and forwarded with all practicable dispatch to the scenes of the suffering. Just before that meeting, the government in London announced they would pay the freight charges on all donations of foodstuffs to Ireland.

Washington matched this by stating that no tolls would be charged on roads or canals for goods on their way to Ireland, and several independent railway companies promised to carry suitably labelled packages for free. Cash came in from all sides, including a noteworthy contribution of US $170 dollars from the Choctaw Indian Tribe. Suddenly, available shipping for the eastern crossing of the Atlantic became scarce, and another crowded February meeting, this time in Boston, heard that Congress had been petitioned that one of the ships of war now lying in Boston Harbour, be released to sail for Ireland freighted with provisions.

Reaction in the capital was swift. We need to remember that at this time America was heavily engaged in war against Mexico. Congress voted on March 8th that the USS Jamestown in Boston and the USS Macedonian in New York be released from service, their armaments removed and assigned to the Irish Relief Committee in each city who would arrange for a civilian captain and crew to sail these ships to Ireland with relief supplies.

Three weeks later, the Jamestown set sail. The sloop, which was 157 feet long, 1,000 tons and normally carried 22 guns, was now commanded by Captain Robert Bennet Forbes, a well-known Bostonian. By May 16th he was back home, fully a month before the Macedonian, a frigate of 1,700 tons with 44 guns and buffeted by all sorts of political problems, could leave New York.

Loading had begun in Boston on St Patrick’s Day; the Labourers’ Aid Society composed almost entirely of native Irishmen, stowed all the cargo without drawing pay. If the departure of the Jamestown was seen as such a triumph in America, imagine how she was greeted as she dropped anchor after a voyage of only 15 days in the harbour of Cove, close to Cork City.

Leave a comment

Filed under Britain, democracy, disease, food, labor, Mexico, migration, military, nationalism, U.S.

by | 12 August 2025 · 6:07 am

Coffin Ships of 1847

From The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America, by Edward Laxton (St. Martins, 2024), Kindle pp. 41-44:

The potato crop had failed again, so it was not surprising that the direct shipping trade picked up dramatically, and 1847 lives in the memory as the worst year of the Famine, the year of the coffin ships. Thousands of passengers who suffered in these few months were not willing emigrants, they had not voluntarily given up their homes to seek a better life. They were the evicted tenants of wealthy landlords, sent out of Ireland aboard ageing ships on cheaper fares, the victims of landlord clearance.

This was really a phenomenon particular to the Canadian sailings and various estimates of the number of deaths have been voiced over the years. They can only be estimates, as so many died unreported on board ship and by no means all the burials on land could be recorded. In 1847 the emigration to Canada swelled enormously for several reasons. Considerably more than 100,000 set out for the Canadian ports, as compared with 43,000 in 1846, and began arriving as early in the spring as the melting ice would allow. The death toll was similarly out of all proportion: the most conservative estimates show that around 30,000 were struck down with typhus. One third of passengers managed to survive but there were at least 20,000 deaths, over 5,000 at sea, and 8,000 in Quebec and 7,000 in Montreal.

…

Typhus is a fever, one of the most contagious diseases in existence, and the conditions endured in almost every facet of the emigrants’ lives, in the weeks and days leading up to departure, on the ocean, detained on board awaiting inspection and then in the quarantine centres, were ideal for its survival and propagation. Workhouses, lodging houses, ship’s holds without any form of sanitation, hospital wards and tents were perfect, and the typhus spread like wildfire. In 1847 it was called ship fever but before then it was known as hospital fever, gaol fever or camp fever. The microorganism is carried in the faeces of body lice and fleas which dries into a fine dust. The dust can be absorbed through the eyes or by being inhaled, and even people who were fit, healthy and clean, and not living in overcrowded conditions, went down with typhus.

Avoiding typhus was difficult indeed, and some emigrants contracted the disease at home before they travelled. In the first half of the year 300,000 Irish were crammed on to tiny vessels to reach Liverpool, where they slept as many as 20 to a room in boarding houses while awaiting passage, and there is no doubt that the fever started to spread in that environment. Residents of Liverpool suffered too, and in May alone, 1,500 cases were reported; the local landlords were as much to blame as the recently arrived Irish who then had to spend weeks at sea, jammed together in a ship’s hold, on their way to Canada.

The body lice which spread the fever are easily dealt with today by fumigation but the disease was a killer 150 years ago, with the surrounding problems. Doctors, nurses and priests in Canada, working in the quarantine hospitals and immigration sheds, died trying to save the lives of their new patients.

Leave a comment

Filed under Britain, Canada, disease, food, migration