Advertisement
Published: August 8th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Saturday continued....
Next we went to Cove (formerly known as Cobh and Queenstown). I really enjoyed Cove for a couple of reasons: 1) it was the last port of call for Titanic 2) The exhibit on the Titanic, emigrate ships, and convict ships was very well done, and 3) I found out the Coleman is an Irish surname.
First we stopped at the St. Colman Cathedral-- it is a very beautiful and well kept cathedral. It was built in 1868 (but not finished until 1915). The carillon (A stationary set of chromatically tuned bells in a tower) is the biggest in Ireland, with 49 bells. They are tuned to the accuracy of a single vibration!! That must be really hard to do. My camera died right after I stepped inside, but Sarah has kindly shared her pictures with me. There is a great view of the port from the cathedral.
We spent the rest of our time in Cobh Heritage Centre. It has an exhibition in it which shows the lives of Irish emigrants, convicts aboard convict ships to Australia, and the Titanic and the Lusitanian.
The convict ships were pretty ghastly. Some of them were even
called Coffin ships. Over 40,000 people (9,000 of which were women) were sent to Australia from Ireland. Not all the convicts were hardened criminals-- petty theft could get you sentenced to Australia. While prisoners were waiting to be put on the ship to Australia they were kept in ships in the harbor. The ships were generally in very bad condition. They were very close to sinking and the living conditions were atrocious. There were several riots on the ships. The ships usually held up to 5,000 men. After the full shipment of convicts arrived in Cove they were all loaded up and sent to Australia. The journey took anywhere from 4 to 9 months. After you served your sentence you were free to go back home (which rarely ever happened- it was very expensive to get back) or start a new life. The British started subsidizing Irish emigrants to go to Australia so that it would become more of a British province. At one point girls in orphanages were forced to go so that there would be enough women for the men to marry (ratio was about 8 men to 1 woman).
The emigration stories were very interesting. I
knew the potato famine had killed a lot of people but I did not realize how many. About one million died (roughly 12% of the population) and another one million emigrated. Ireland lost a quarter of its population in the space of about 5 years. The population has actually just started growing again in the past decade. The ships were terribly crowded and some of them were actually known as coffin ships because so many people died.
There were exhibits on the Titanic and the Lusitania. They did not have a lot of things actually from the Titanic (the Americans kept it because we pulled the ship up...seems to me that some of it should be shared with the countries who lost a lot of citizens on the ship), but they did have a lot of information on the ship and the sinking. It was kind of neat to stand on the dock and see the last place the Titanic docked before it sank.
The Lusitania was a passenger cruise that was torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1915. Most of the survivors of the Lusitania were taken to Cove (then called Queenstown) to be cared for. Nearly
St. Colman's Mosaic Floor
Original floor--notice the swastikas. They were christian symbols long before Hitler used them. every building and home housed survivors (761 in all). 150 of the bodies recovered were also buried in Cove. Nearly 1200 were never recovered.
I went to the gift shop (and when I say went...you pretty much have to go through the gift shop to exit anything in Europe) and I found a pin with the name Coleman on it and the family emblem. Apparently Coleman is a surname from western Ireland. If I had known that and known some of my ancestors names I could have looked it up in the heritage center. They have a huge genealogy database that is open to the public. Interesting to note-- the first Coleman settler in the US came from Marlborough (Anne's birthplace and childhood home). After walking around the docks for a little while we got back on the train to head home!
Map Link: http://www.travelblog.org/gmaps/map_4ae.html
________________________________________
Links
http://foscc.com/Gallery.html
http://www.cobhheritage.com/index2.html
http://www.houseofnames.com/coatofarms_details.asp?sId=&s=coleman
Advertisement
Tot: 0.088s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 59; dbt: 0.055s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb