"The Emigrants", Atlantic Quay, Derry / Londonderry

Image: © Kenneth Allen Taken: 6 Feb 2012

I watched a program that Michael Portillo made on the Railways in the British Isles, in which he followed the footsteps of George Bradshaw who produced the Railway Guide for Tourists in Great Britain and Ireland as it was then, in 1866 (the cost was one shilling). In it he traced the journeys that Bradshaw made by train and he was seeing if some of the original features of the countryside remained. Also included was the journey undertaken by emigrants who left the north of Ireland through the port of Derry. When they arrived in the train station, they were met by a shipping agent and they embarked in barges, often overloaded with 300-400 people, dangerously listing and were ferried 18 miles further along to Moville, where a waiting ship that had sailed across from Glasgow, would sail across the Atlantic to Ellis Island. In the case of my aunt Jean's relatives, in 1895 the ship was the Anchoria from the Anchor Line. 10 out of a family of 13 emigrated over a period of 10 years to the new world. Michael Portillo made a documentary on the railways, which included a reference to emigration from Ireland to America This series of sculptures had been previously located at Waterloo Place Image]

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