IV: Perspective: Steam Revolution (3)

Perspective: Steam Revolution

Steam technology also made immigration safer. In the 1830s and 1840s, almost 90 per cent of immigrants to America traveled "steerage" on sailing ships, that is, crowded below decks in windowless holds. Termed "floating coffins," early nineteenth-century immigrant vessels usually arrived in American ports rampant with contagious disease. Port communities feared their arrival each year. The North American cholera epidemics of the 1830s and typhus epidemics of the 1840s were likely imported on boats carrying immigrants. One of the greatest immigration tragedies in Canadian history occurred in 1847, when some 40 sailing vessels lined the St. Lawrence River in preparation for landing at the Grosse-Ile immigration processing station. The ships carried typhus; that year, alone, some 5,000 immigrants-mostly Irish-died on the island. Besides dramatically shortening the Atlantic crossing and thereby reducing the danger of contagious conditions, steam shipping allowed for significantly lower rates on travel. By 1900, steerage from England to Halifax fell as low as $20. 3

National Archives of Canada (PA-136924, photo by Jules Livernois).

Memorial for Irish Immigrants, Grosse-Île, QC, 1909.

In 1849, thousands of Irish immigrants fled the poverty and famine of their homeland for the promise of North America. Many of these migrants, however, died aboard ships due to the ravages of disease, especially typhoid and cholera. Hundreds gathered in 1909 to remember those who had perished during passage to British North America.