Between 1848 and 1855, the Jeanie Johnston made 16 heroic voyages to North America, sailing to Quebec, Baltimore and New York. She carried over 2,500 Irish people across the Atlantic on the first step in a brave new adventure. Unlike many of the emigrant ships of these times, no crew or passenger lives were ever lost onboard the Jeanie Johnston, a remarkable record. On average the length of the journey between Tralee and Quebec on the Jeanie Johnston was 46.75 days. Many Irish emigrants travelling across the Atlantic were stricken by disease and died. It is estimated that at least 30% of the 100,000 who left for Canadian ports in 1847 contracted typhus, of whom two-thirds died at sea or following arrival in Canada. During the Famine years, almost 3,000 voyages were made across the Atlantic to America, carrying over 650,000 Irish people. The Famine killed an estimated one million people as it ravaged Ireland in the mid-1840s and led to 1.8 million people taking the emigrant boat to England or America. By 1860, about one quarter of New York's population of 800,000 were Irish-born! The original Jeanie Johnston was built in Quebec in 1847 by noted Scottish-born shipbuilder, John Munn. A year later, the prominent Tralee, Co. Kerry hardware merchant, Nicholas Donovan, purchased the ship to use it on the North Atlantic route as a cargo vessel. The dire circumstances of the starving Irish soon altered his plans and the ship made its maiden voyage to Quebec on April 24, 1848, with 193 emigrants on board in search of a new life as the effects of the Famine ravaged the land. The transatlantic fare on the Jeanie Johnston was £3 10s (in our currencies €4.50 euro or $4.50). However, in famine times, this represented close to a half years wages for the average laborer. In those harsh times, the cost of the fare had often to be subsidised by a family member who had already emigrated. In this way a system of chain migration was set up to the extent that it was estimated in 1850 that one million pounds had been sent back to Ireland from America to encourage further emigration.
James Attridge, the captain of the Jeanie Johnston, was from Castletownsend in Co. Cork and had first gone to sea as a fifteen year old in 1820. By the time he joined the Jeanie Johnston in 1848 he had been at sea for twenty-eight years, twenty of them as a captain. Attridge retired from the sea in 1862, having served on the Wilson Kennedy (wrecked in 1856) and the Georgiana. He became the Deputy-Harbourmaster in Passage in 1864. He died in 1885. A complete passenger list for the Jeanie Johnston voyage to Baltimore in 1849 exists. Farmers and labourers figure prominently and many of the passengers travelled in family groups, a feature of Irish emigration during these times. Julia Finn, aged 15, and her husband Pat, aged 17, are a reminder of what young age people married at, a practice that disappeared after the Famine. The largest group of passengers on the Jeanie Johnston Baltimore passenger list were single women, the majority of them between the ages of 16 and 30. In the early part of the 19th century men made up about two thirds of the emigration from Ireland. It was estimated in 1850 that one million pounds (€1.3 million or $1.3 million), a fortune in those times, had been sent back to Ireland from America in the form of remittances to encourage further emigration. Daniel Dowd also arrived in Baltimore in 1849. He bought a 150 acre dairy farm in Rockville County, Maryland, and by the late 1850s he also owned a row of buildings in Washington DC. His descendant is John Kudlik, a professor of history in Pittsburgh. Amazingly, John's wife Susan is also descended from Jeanie Johnston passengers, the Babbingtons of Castleisland, near Tralee. They arrived in Quebec in June 1854. On the day before the Jeanie Johnston was due to leave Tralee, a baby boy was born on board the Jeanie Johnston. To mark the unusual surroundings of his birth, the parents - Daniel and Margaret Ryal from Tralee - named the child after both the ship's owner, Nicholas Donovan, and the ship, and consequently Nicholas Johnston Ryal was added to the passenger list. James Stack, a passenger on the ship in April 1851, lost his farm during the Famine. He became so destitute that he and 11 members of his family ended up living in a mud cabin built against a ditch on the farm that he had once owned. Advertisements such as the following in the Boston Pilot give us a glimpse into the lives of the passengers: "Information is wanted of Denis Mahony, native of Beehenough, parish of Kilgobbin, sailed from Tralee 3 years last April in the ship Jeanie Johnston; when last heard from he worked in Pleasant Valley, Nicholas County, Kentucky. Any account of him will be thankfully received by his wife and 2 children. Direct to Ellen Mahony, care of Wm Garnett, corner of Genesee and Clinton St., Syracuse NY." In April 1853, 65 tenants from the Earl of Kenmare's estate in Killarney emigrated on the Jeanie Johnston. The Jeanie Johnston was blown out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence twice in October 1853 and eventually had to put into St. Andrews, New Brunswick. Fifty seven passengers remained in St. Andrews, induced by promises of work on the railway line. The work turned out to be less than they had hoped and most of them eventually walked to Portland, Maine in the middle of winter in search of work. The Jeanie Johnston's doctor, Richard Blennerhassett, spent all of his adult life at sea. As a graduate of Edinburgh, then one of the most prestigious medical colleges in Britain and Ireland, and with a well-connected family, Blennerhassett would have had a whole range of more comfortable career options available. He was born in Dublin in 1818 and grew up in Dingle. His reputation and popularity were so great, that one of the first questions asked before taking a berth by an emigrant was, "does Dr. Richard Blennerhassett sail in the ship this voyage?". He left the Jeanie Johnston in 1853 and died of cholera, which he contracted on board an emigrant ship called the Ben Nevis, in 1854. He is buried in an unmarked grave in Cobh (formerly Queenstown), Co. Cork. Almost all of the Jeanie Johnston's crew lists and agreements survive. The sailors on the Jeanie Johnston came from all points on the globe, one of them from as far away as Valparaiso. There were usually seventeen crew members on board, including at least two apprentices. In 1855 the Jeanie Johnston was sold to William Johnson of North Shields in England. In 1858, en route from Quebec to Hull with a cargo of timber, the Jeanie Johnston became waterlogged. The crew climbed up to the main-top, and after nine days clinging to a slowly sinking ship they were rescued by a Dutch ship, the Sophie Elizabeth. The following is taken from Lloyd's List 13 December 1858: The Jeanie Johnston, from Quebec to Hull, with timber, has been abandoned at sea, water-logged; crew taken from the maintop, after being there nine days, by the Sophie Elizabeth (Dutch Brig), arrived at New York. It is estimated that blight destroyed 80% of the potato crop – the staple diet of the Irish people – in 1848. The blight, which flourished in mild, damp conditions, led to Ireland's Great Famine. Most transatlantic voyages from Ireland took place in the Spring and Summer months to avoid the worst weather conditions. The fleeing Irish were so desperate in the Famine era, however, that they were prepared to encounter the perils of trips very late in the year – ships were recorded leaving Tralee as late as November.