Voyages of survival across stormy seas

IN 2017, the Irish language television channel, TG4, broadcast a programme, Bus Ghlaschú, about the bus services between Donegal and Glasgow that acted as a vital link between the two places. It was so popular that it was also picked up by BBC Alba, the Scottish Gaelic channel and would have reminded many people of the long and difficult journey as well as the many happy reunions enabled by the bus. Before that, however, there was the Derry Boat, which operated between Derry and Glasgow for more than 140 years.

The Derry Boat—which in Derry itself was known as the ‘Scotch Boat’—was the cross-channel service between Derry and Glasgow, which began in the 19th century and through much of its history was run by the Burns and Laird Company. This piece is based on a recent talk given at Grace’s Irish Centre and will look at the origins and development of the service, its central place in lives of so many Irish people and its impact on the culture of both places and farther afield.

Early travel

Travel between Derry and Scotland has a long history. Most famously it began with St Columba himself leaving his monastic settlement at Derry behind for Iona in 563AD, though it is certain that passages were made for some time before that, both for war and trade. That pattern continued through waves of colonisation, migration and settlement in the age of sail, and in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the trade in linen yarn facilitated the passage of some people to a new life in Scotland. However, as Derry’s linen industry declined in the 1820s, the appearance of a regular steamship service between the city and Glasgow also provided opportunities and markets for the new shirt manufacturers.

The first steamship on the River Foyle was in 1816 and not long after two steam-powered vessels, the Britannia and the Argyle, began regular voyages to Glasgow. The 22-hour journey from 1824 had a number of stopping-off points and cost around 42 shillings for a first class ticket—around £140 in today’s money—though in less than decade these prices tumbled as cheaper, Derry-owned paddle steamers emerged.

By the 1830s, a number of small joint stock steam packet companies vied for the growing market in seasonal migration as Ireland’s rural economy declined and its population rose. In addition, there was the chance to capitalise on the livestock trade as well as that in eggs and butter, which were loaded up at Derry quay on the waiting paddle steamers, the Foyle, Rover, and Saint Columb along with the shearers, tattie hokers, navvies and others paying their shilling fare to a new life. The Glasgow Post reported in May 1836: “Every boat that arrives at the Broomielaw from Derry is literally crowded on deck with hundreds of poor creatures, who are huddled together and mixed up with horned cattle, pigs, sheep, and lambs.”

Trials and tribulations

The image of those early years would not alter greatly over the next century and more, and though the names of the ships would come and go—each meaning more to one generation of emigrants than to another—the experience of loss and hardship, hope and opportunity would remain constant.

In the dark and terrible years of An Gorta Mór, (the Great Hunger), the steamship Londonderry—built at Greenock in 1841—was the main ship on the Derry-Glasgow route, though it occasionally extended its service to Sligo. On one awful voyage, when it pulled in at Derry on the way to Liverpool in the winter of 1848, the bodies of 72 poor malnourished men, women and children who had suffocated in the ship’s hold were landed on the quay and later buried in the grounds of Derry’s workhouse. The Londonderry returned as the regular Derry boat for another decade and many more thousands of desperate refugees took their place in the hold where their fellow countrymen and women had died.

By the 1860s, two Glasgow-based shipping companies dominated the Derry to Glasgow trade, Lairds’ Line and G & J Burns, to be united eventually as the Burns and Laird Line in 1922. Their names became associated with various ships: Thistle (1860s), Bear and Buffalo (1870s), Azalea, Mastiff and Iris (1880s), Shamrock, Briar, and Olive (1890s), Rose and Lily (early 1900s), and the Maple, Lairdsrose and Letitia in the 1920s, all on the Derry service. The cattle trade and continuing tradition of the migratory farm labourers or spailpíní, and other seasonal workers alongside the general tide of emigrants sustained and grew the shipping line. For most migrants from the west Donegal Gaeltacht or Irish-speaking district, the journey began on foot on the lonely mountain road past Errigal with the warmth and hospitality of Teach an tSlasaire, a stopover between the villages of Dunlewy and Termon before the long trek to Letterkenny and then finally Derry.

Recollections

The famous Cloughaneely writer, Mickey McGowan (1865-1948), describes the scene at Derry in his 1959 book, Rotha Mór an tSaoil (The Great Wheel of Life, translated as the Hard Road to the Klondike in 1962): “There were crowds of people getting on to the same boat—people from every corner of Donegal all bent on the same mission as ourselves. There they were, men and women, young and old, all off to Scotland looking for work to gather a bit of money to keep themselves and the families they were leaving behind alive. You could see that the older ones, who already had tasted the foreign parts, had no great wish to be on the move again. They knew that they would have neither ease nor peace until they returned. But we were young, we didn’t know any better and we were like young people going to a feast.”

Róise Ní Ghallchóir (1879-1964)—also known as Roise Rua and Róise na nAmhrán (Red-haired Róise and Róise of the Songs)—who has a festival named after her in Arranmore Island, spent many years travelling back and forth on the Derry boat.

She remembered: “People are always scared of being on the sea in rough weather, but it’s a hundred times worse when you’re out on the sea after nightfall. So great was our fear, we weren’t able to go up on deck that night. We were dreadfully sick, and none of us was brave enough to stir from where we were sitting or lying. We hadn’t a berth anyway; we were stretched out there on the floor looking the image of death... she started to plunge this way and that in the horrendous sea. It put the heart across us and no wonder... those that had spent their life going over and back—even they were sick that night... A woman from Cloughaneely fell against a door and blood poured from the centre of her forehead; a sailor tried to bandage her head to staunch the blood; as far as I could see he made a poor fist of it.”

People were understandably relieved whenever they finally landed, as the great Irish language writer from Rannafast, Séamus Ó Grianna (1889-1969) recalled in his memoir Nuair a Bhí Mé Óg (When I Was Young, translated by Art Hughes in 2001): “It was a cold, gloomy morning as we pulled into Glasgow quay (in 1905). Every man took his bundle and we disembarked pushing each other at the approach to the bridge. We were in as much of a hurry to get off her as we were as we were to board her in Derry the previous afternoon. When we arrived on dry land we headed off towards the station—Glasgow Central. There were hundreds of us there and all in such a hurry. Every man looking for and making enquiries about the train he was going on. Anyone who could read the names had no problem. Anyone who couldn’t was trying his best asking directions of everyone he met.”

In the next part of this two-part feature on the history of the Derry Boat we will cover war, revolution, and a new boat.

Dr Máirtín Ó Catháin taught modern Irish history at Ulster University and the University of Lancashire. He lives in Derry and has written on the Irish community in Scotland, aspects of Scottish and Irish labour history and oral history