Mayo Alive- June
'98
From Cobh to Ellis
Island
Continuing the Saga of John Kennedy from Mayo
Abbey
His sea journey from Cobh to Ellis
Island
Kennedy left Ireland at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, April 8,
1900. He had $30 and a train ticket to make his way from
Queenstown-to-St. Louis. By the 1890s lively rate wars
between steamship lines had halved the steerage fare from
about $20-to-$10. In an enclosure on Queenstown, Kennedy was
bathed, de-loused, and fed. His baggage and clothes were
fumigated. Then he was ferried out to the big ship in the
harbor.
The S.S. Campania was part of the Cunard Shipping Line,
and originated in Liverpool the day before, with 577
passengers all ready on board. Many of the travelers were
from England, Scotland and Wales, but others were from
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, and Russia.
The Cunard Shipping Line opened offices on West Beach
Street in 1859, across the street from Wilson's chemist
shop, and was one of the busiest shipping agencies in
Queenstown. By the turn of the century, most of the Cunard
ships were 676 feet long and weighed 20,000 tons.
The Cunard Line had special jetties along West Beach
where outgoing passengers took tenders to the ships waiting
near the harbor entrance. After the 317 Irish immigrants
reached the S.S. Campania, people hurried on board. Luggage,
trunks and cargo lay about in everybody's way. Captain Henry
Walker and the crew ignored all inquiries from people who
constantly bumped into one another; and the din merged into
the hissing steam, which, escaping through some iron plates,
wrapped the whole scene in a white mist, while the bell in
the bows went on clanging incessantly.
For the trip to New York City, the ship's physician, Dr.
Francis Verdon, was available for emergencies. Dr. Verdon
earned his degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in
London, and practiced medicine for 12 years before joining
the crew of the S.S. Campania.
At last the boat moved off; and the two banks, lined with
English military barracks, the English naval depot, and the
English powder magazine on Rocky Island, slipped past like
two wide ribbons being unwound as the S.S. Campania
passed by St. Colman's Gothic Cathedral along the seaport,
navigated past the two English forts on Roche's Point and
entered the St. George Channel for the voyage to America.
Many of the first-class passengers read the latest penny
edition of the Cork Examiner, the daily newspaper for
the Cork Harbor.
Ships leaving for Boston and New York routinely passed by
the rows of Victorian houses winding up the steep slopes to
the magnificent, unfinished French-Gothic Cathedral
dedicated to St. Colman. The Catholic Cathedral took half a
century to construct: the foundation stone was laid in 1868
and the completed building was consecrated in 1919. The
tower of the building is 287 feet high and contains a fine
carillon of bells. This view crowned the lower hill over the
port, as emigrant ships navigated past Roche's Point and
entered the St. George Channel for the voyage west across
the North Atlantic Ocean.
Soon the S.S. Campania was launched upon the deep; for a
week it seemed lost in its unshored harborless immensities.
The deplorable conditions of the "coffin ships" had changed
dramatically by the end of the 19th century, and a voyage
that once took three or four weeks, now only required one
week on much faster ships. Immigrants bound for America had
to possess three things: an exit paper, enough funds to
prevent they're becoming a public charge, and the price of
passage.
In the floating commune of the big ship, status symbols
were few but well defined. A suitcase, however battered, was
most likely the mark of a city man. To a poor peasant, a
wicker basket was elegance enough. Most people tied
everything up in a blanket or a sheet. They brought with
them what they thought to be vital to a decent life afloat.
First, the need of a pillow, goose-feather, if they were
lucky - a point of pride, a relic, and a symbol that some
families kept throughout their lives. The religious usually
took with them tokens of their faith, the Bible or a cross;
a member of a close-knit family would cherish a heirloom
yielded up in the moment of parting. It could be nothing
more pretentious than a brass candlestick or a lock of
hair.
For nearly seven days, the immigrants on board the S.S.
Campania played cards, sang to harmonicas or tin whistles,
counted their savings, continually checked their exit
papers, complained about the atrocious food and the ubiquity
of rats. The ones who could actually read, probably less
than half the flock, recited the cheering promise of the
immigrant agents' broadsides and pamphlets. The young women
nursed the elders and the chronically seasick and resisted,
or succumbed to, the advances of spry bachelors. There was
no chance of privacy in the swarm of steerage. Once each
day, the third-class passengers left their quarters for a
walk on deck.
A week later, far down in the lower bay of New York City,
Kennedy and his group crowded to the rail of the S.S.
Campania to glimpse their first sight of America in the
clean spring air. The day was Saturday, April 14. Ships at
anchor choked the harbor. Amid the trunks and suitcases, the
Kennedy group stood pressed to each other, enraptured by the
sight of the Statue of Liberty. Their bodies leaned forward,
and their hands gripped the railing of the ship as they
waited to land.
In the early 1900s there could be as many as 15,000
immigrants arriving in one day, and the ships had to drop
anchor
outside the Narrows, where Quarantine officers would come
aboard to check for signs of epidemic diseases. If a ship
was free of disease, doctors would then examine the first
and second class passengers, most of whom were given
permission to land as soon as the ship docked. Third-class
passengers were ferried to Ellis Island for inspection.
Sometimes new arrivals had to wait aboard their ships for
days before being transferred to Ellis Island. Once there,
they were often confined to the overcrowded barges for hours
without food or water, waiting for their turn to disembark
for inspection.
Yet there, on the horizon, stood Manhattan. Closer, it
grew into a cluster of pinnacles known as skyscrapers. And
then the midtown skyscrapers topped the ones first seen. To
most Europeans, New York was unlike any other city in the
world.
Until 1892, European immigrants were cleared for entry at
Castle Garden, once a fort, then a theater and a public
amusement place down at the Battery. However, the volume of
immigrants grew so great, and so many of them managed to
disappear into Manhattan before being "processed," that a
larger and more isolated sorting point was necessary. So,
from 1892 on, once immigrants were tagged with numbers they
were shipped aboard a ferry or a barge to Ellis Island.
The early Dutch settlers used Ellis Island as a picnic
ground. Much later landfill increased its three acres into
27 acres.
Kennedy had contact with his first Americans in the
persons of the immigrant inspectors of Ellis Island, two men
and a woman in uniform clambering up a ladder from a cutter
that had nosed alongside.
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