“...give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore
Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.*
Timothy Collins, who has written extensively on the Galway Line, writes that it must rank as one of the most unfortunate shipping lines ever registered. Although Galway’s ambitions to become a major transatlantic port by offering the shortest, and most comfortable route to America, set off at a gallop in the summer of 1858, it was not ready. Steam-powered ships were still in their infancy.
Part of Galway’s plan, to bring passengers through Ireland by train, was realised when the Midland and Great Western Railway Co brought the Dublin to Galway line into the centre of the town. The plan to continue through the town, out to a deep-water harbour at Barna/Furbo never happened. The deep-water harbour was never built. Passengers had to be ferried out to the transatlantic ships waiting in the bay.
Yet for six years it employed 16 steamers (eight paddle-powered and eight screw-powered ) which made a total of 55 return voyages across the Atlantic. ‘These voyages were made during winter months as well as during the calmer summer season, with the result that six ships were involved in serious accidents due to ice and fog as well as storms; while five either made only one round trip, or foundered on their first crossing’.
The company’s decision to opt for speed rather than caution, often pushed the ships to the limit of their design, which meant that mechanical breakdowns were a common occurrence.
The Galway Line offered to deliver the fastest crossing of the Atlantic, and on occasions it held the record for the fastest; but generally the crossing was seldom made within the time specified. As a result it soon lost all its valuable mail contracts.* * A Government commission set up to test the viability of Galway and Shannon as possible transatlantic ports reported that neither location was suitable.
Following a succession of man-made and natural accidents the company was wound up in 1864 resulting in heavy financial loss for those who had invested in the venture.
The Galway Express commented that ‘the closure cast a pall of gloom across the Galway business community, which for a few short years saw itself as being largely responsible for making the City of the Tribes, the Liverpool of Ireland’.
Good boots and stockings
Initially the principal mover behind the Galway Line was the Manchester businessman John Orrell Lever who had made a fortune leasing ships to the British army during the Crimean War. He exuded all the confidence and robust manhood of the successful Victorian industrialist that he was, and easily convinced Galway that if his transatlantic venture was even half the success he promised it would be, the whole town would benefit from the thousands of travellers passing through, and investors would become very rich indeed.
On February 2 1859 it was announced in the Galway Vindicator that Lever was going to take the unexpected step of opposing the popular Sir Thomas Redington as a parliamentary candidate at the forthcoming by-election. Fr Peter Daly gave him his full support. At a colourful and boisterous inaugural meeting, led by a marching band, the two men walked in a procession to Eyre Square to be greeted by a huge welcome to which the ships of the Galway Line added to their cheers by blasting their steam-horns.
Lever claimed, according to the Galway Vindicator, that as a result of his coming to Galway, men’s wages had doubled - from one to two shillings a day, and that he looked forward to a time when that would be doubled again. He wanted ‘ every man, woman and child in Galway well fed, well clad and well housed; their children well educated; bonnets on the heads of working men’s wives, good boots and stockings on their feet, and a twelve pound leg of mutton in their kitchen ranges every Sunday and Thursday, with all the appropriate accompaniments’.
Poor Redington. He announced that in the interests of the town he would not stand. Lever was duly elected the member for Galway Borough, and re-elected at the general election 1880.
Flax and cotton
At the collapse of the Galway Line, however, Lever proposed that he would establish an Irish flax and cotton manufacturing company with a capital of one million pounds. A site for the factory was inspected and in due course forty Lancashire cotton looms arrived which were transferred to Newcastle on forty carts to advertise the beginning of the new industry.
It did not see the light of day, however, and the looms rotted where they were stored. Lever had lost credibility, and all popular support, and probably most, if not all, of his money. The favourite jibe against him was to repeat his chief slogan, ‘If you h’elevate me I will h’elevate you’.
It appears that he returned to live in England. When Messrs Persse of Newcastle brought an action against him for outstanding rent, and as Lever was no longer a resident in this country, the summons was served on his agent in Galway, namely Fr Peter Daly.
Reconciliation
For the best part of a decade Bishop MacEvilly suffered humiliation and defeat, in his efforts to curb the worst indignities which Daly heaped upon him, which were only resolved on Daly’s death September 30 1868. Surprisingly there was a reconciliation between the two men. When Daly was taken seriously ill, he sent for MacEvilly and some kind of expiation was reached. The Bishop later wrote ‘Poor man; I frequently saw him before he died’.
He was by far the richest cleric in Ireland, and apparently left the ‘bulk of his large fortune to his relatives, but was not unmindful of his obligations to religion’.
A brilliant spectacle
Timothy Collins concludes that although the Galway Line was unsuccessful it had a dramatic effect on the self-esteem of the people of Galway and the west of Ireland. This was a time when the after effects of the Great Famine were still being felt, in the midst of continuing poor harvests and large-scale destitution and poverty. For a while Galway dreamed of greatness.
It also prompted other companies to take up the Atlantic run, and explore less well known ports of call. British, American and continental ships, or liners, as they became known, called regularly at Belfast, Moville (outside Derry ), Cobh and occasionally to Sligo, Westport, Rosslare, Waterford, and Foynes. People in Galway will remember the Maasdam, a Holland-American liner, which until relatively recently, called annually, and anchored in the bay. Lit up at night it was a brilliant spectacle.
NOTES: * Part of the famous poem by Emma Lazarus at the base of The Statue of Liberty, a colossal neoclassical sculpture in New York harbour, which was a gift to the people of America from France 1886. There is no more potent symbol of freedom and arrival in the world, and must have thrilled the hearts of emigrants when first seen as they approached America.
** Other factors that led to the demise of the Galway Line was growing competition from the Cunard and Inman lines which operated out of Liverpool, and had the government’s backing; and the Allan Line which operated out of Montreal, was also supported by government.
It coincided with the American Civil War (1861 - 1865 ), where there was little or no export/import business to be had, the only business was emigration.
Sources include The Galway Line in Context, by Timothy Collins Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, volume 46 1994; and Fr Peter Daly by Dr James Mitchell JGAHS, 1983 - 1984.
