Dunbrody

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Type:	Barque
Built:	2001, New Ross, Wexford, Ireland
Homeport:	New Ross, Wexford,Ireland
Designer:	Colin Mudie
Length on deck:	176 ft (53.7 m)
Length waterline:	120 ft (36.6 m)
Beam:	28 ft (8.5 m)
Draft:	11.5 ft (3.5 m)
Rig :	3-masted barque
Sail Area :	10,100 square ft. (c. 940 sq. m.).
Displacement:	458 tons

The original Dunbrody was a three-masted barque built in Quebec, Canada, for the Graves family of New Ross, Co. Wexford in 1845. She carried many emigrants to the new world from 1845-1870. The Dunbrody Project involves the construction of a full scale sea-going replica. The Dunbrody was finished in early 2001 and has been opened to visitors since 1st May 2001 at the quayside in New Ross.

1 History
2 The Replica
3 See also
- 3.1 External links

[edit] History

The present ship is a reconstruction of the original Dunbrody, built in Quebec in 1845 by Thomas Hamilton Oliver, an Irish emigrant from Co. Derry. She took less than six months to build under the careful supervision of John Baldwin, who captained her from 1845 to March 1848. The merchant Graves family from New Ross commissioned her. They commissioned eight such ships to carry cargo from America and Canada.

Dunbrody was primarily a cargo vessel and carried timber from Canada, cotton from the southern states of the USA and guano from Peru. The ship was fitted out with bunks and facilities for passengers desperate to escape the harrowing conditions at home. From 1845 to 1851, between April and September, she carried passengers on her outward journeys to Canada and the USA. She usually carried 176 people but on one crossing, at the height of the Famine in 1847, she carried 313.

Many of the passengers were the evicted tenants of Lord Fitzwilliam's Wicklow estates and Viscount de Vesci's Portlaoise estates. She carried two classes of passenger - the cabin passenger who paid between £5 and £8 and the steerage passenger who paid between £3 15s 0p and £4. This fare was at least the equivalent of two months income for a tenant farmer in the 1840's.

The cabin passengers (usually Protestant gentry) had food and services provided but the steerage passengers had to cook and fend for themselves. 1847 was the worst year of the Famine. In the first open months of the Spring 40 ships were waiting to disembark and the quarantine station at Grosse Île in Canada had more than 1,100 patients suffering in terrible conditions. In May 1847, Captain Baldwin finally landed his passengers at Grosse Île after a very long passage. In a letter addressed to William Graves, he reported "the Dunbrody was detained in quarantine for five days because there were too many ships queuing in the St. Lawrence River. Doctor Douglas is nearly singled-handed….everyday, dozens of corpses are thrown overboard from many ships….I have heard that some of them have no fresh water left and the passengers and crew have to drink the water from the river. God help them!"

Although the Dunbrody was detained at Grosse Île on a number of occasions, her onboard mortality rate was practically non-existent. This was, without doubt, due to her good and humane captains, Captain Baldwin and his successor, Captain John W. Williams. Emigrants writing back home to Ireland praised their dedication to their crew and passengers more than once. Thanks to a very well organised overseas mail system, the Captains were also able to keep in regular contact with William Graves.

Dunbrody remained in the Graves family ownership for 24 years. She was sold in1869 and became a British registered ship. In 1874, en route to Quebec from Cardiff, Dunbrody's captain chose not to wait for a pilot to assist him in navigating the St. Lawrence. He paid for this when he ran aground. She was fortunate, however, to be bought by a salvage company, repaired and sold on. Unfortunately, in 1875, she took her second and fatal grounding. Sailing home to Liverpool with a full timber cargo worth £12,500, a fierce gale blew up and drove her dangerously off her usual route towards the shores of Labrador. Though the exact details are not known, it is assumed that if she grounded fully laden with a timber cargo, her aging hull would have been broken up beyond economic repair.

[edit] The Replica

The mammoth task of building this 176ft. long 19th century sailing ship attracted large visitor numbers. They experienced a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the traditional skills of shipbuilding. The shipwrights worked the wood into the complex lines of this magnificent three-masted barque designed by world-renowned naval architect, Colin Mudie. The dream became a reality on the morning of Sunday 11th February, 2001 when Dunbrody was launched by An Taoiseach, Mr Bertie Ahern nd former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, Mrs Jean Kennedy Smith. The magnificent vessel is now moored at New Ross quayside where onshore facilities are being constructed.

An interactive exhibition will re-enact life on the Dunbrody as she carried her passengers from New Ross to the US and Canada 150 years ago. Visitors will experience life on board an emigrant ship as they explore the authentically recreated decks of the ship.

Visitors will have the opportunity to access a huge database of emigrants who sailed from Ireland in the nineteenth century. This database has been complied in collaboration with the Balch Institute of Philadelphia from the original passenger lists of ships, which sailed from Ireland and the UK.