Emigrant ship
Emigrant ships were steam or sailing ships that were primarily intended for the transport of emigrants from Europe to North America and other overseas countries. Comfort and equipment were sparse. The term emigrant ship was mainly coined in the 19th century.
history
When, at the beginning of the 19th century, side-wheel steamers were able to cross the Atlantic for the first time in less than 30 days, passenger transport became cheaper and therefore affordable for a broader population. The Indiana , which sailed under the British flag from 1854, is considered to be the first emigrant steamship used exclusively for emigrants .
The European main port of emigration until the mid 19th century, Le Havre in France until the German ports of Bremen and Bremerhaven and Hamburg was exceeded. Unfavorable domestic political conditions stimulated emigration from Germany. By the mid-1880s there was a tie between sailing and steam emigration ships, and around 1900, with a few exceptions, only steam ships still used the emigration lines to North and South America . The conditions on the ships were initially very bad. The space required for the boiler , machine and coal supplies was partly at the expense of the passenger seats. General improvements took hold in the 1870s and 1880s. For example, ordinances and laws were passed for the construction and furnishing of emigrant ships, which stipulated the space requirements per passenger, sleeping places, ventilation , lighting, sanitary facilities, food, medical care, life-saving equipment ( life jackets etc.) and the watertight subdivision of the ships.
After the end of the Second World War , emigration ships were used to transport displaced persons from Europe to overseas.
Coffin Ships
The famine in Ireland caused many Irish to emigrate around 1847. They were encouraged to do so by the landlords, sometimes with false promises and money, in order to get less able-bodied people, such as widows, children, old, crippled and weakened people, from their lands and also forced to emigrate through British policy. Transport ships unsuitable for passenger traffic were used for emigration on the return journey from the United Kingdom for a fee. Provided with little and inferior provisions and without sanitary facilities, the people crammed together below deck had to endure a six to twelve week crossing to North America. Typhus, which can be transmitted by lice, spread among passengers and crews, and thousands of people died on these so-called coffin ships ( floating coffins ) during the crossing, and their bodies were mostly thrown overboard.
literature
- Alfred Dudszus, Alfred Köpke: The big book of ship types. Ships, boats, rafts under oars and sails, steamers, motor ships, marine technology . Weltbild-Verlag, Augsburg 1995, ISBN 3-8935-0831-7
- Anthony Cooke: Emigrant Ships . Carmania Press, London, 1992, ISBN 0-9518-6560-9 (English)
See also
- emigration
- TV series wind force 8
Footnotes
- ↑ Not to be confused with the SS Indiana , which served in the Atlantic for 24 years from 1873 .
- ↑ John A. Gallagher: The Irish emigration of 1847 and Its Consequences Canadian . CCHA Report 1936, University of Manitoba, accessed January 8, 2019.
- ↑ George C. Kohn: Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence: From Ancient Times to the Present . Facts on File 2008, ISBN 978-0-8160-6935-4 , p. 62.