Immigrant Ships
Transcribers Guild

US Jamestown

PORT OF BOSTON

There was no captain's sworn statement with this list.

COPY of Report and List of the Passengers taken on board the U. States Jamestown of U. States whereof R. B. Forbes is Master, burthen 960 tons and --/95ths of a ton, bound from the Port of Cork for Boston.

Columns represent: name, age, sex, occupation, trade or profession, country to which they severally belong, country of which they intend to become inhabitants.

    
   
  1 Miguel Torras    41    male    merchant    U. States   U. States
  2 Dr. H. Holmes    28    male    M. D.       Cambridge   U. States
  3 James Sawyer     23    male    merchant    Halifax     U. States
  4 H. Parker        21    male    merchant    Cork        U. States
  5 J. H. Donovan    28    male    merchant    New York    U. States
  
Transcriber's Notes:
The above list is the return voyage from a very historic trip to Cork.  
During this, the height of the Famine years, the people of the United States 
took up collections of money to buy provisions for the relief of the suffering 
in Ireland.  Money was raised very quickly and even the Choctaw Indians 
contributed $170 to this relief effort.  Great quantities of food, including 
grains, beans, peas, ham, and cornmeal were bought within a matter of a few weeks, 
and loaded onto the U. S. Jamestown by a group of Irish immigrants in Boston, 
members of the Labourers' Aid Society, who donated their efforts, working 
without pay.

The U. S. Jamestown was a warship, loaned by the United States Goverment 
for this mission of mercy when other shipping became scarce at that point.  This 
sloop was 157 feet long, 1000 tons, and with 22 guns which were removed 
for this voyage to make room for the supplies for the starving.  The Jamestown 
was needed desperately by the U. S. at this time, during the war with Mexico, 
as there were only 5 other sloops in the U. S. Navy, but it was sent on this 
relief mission.  Loading of the ship began on St. Patrick's Day, 1847, 
in Boston Harbour.  The Jamestown was ready to sail by the end of March, 
and the voyage took only 2 weeks, a very swift crossing.

The Jamestown was commanded by Captain Robert Bennet Forbes, "a well-known 
Bostonian".  From the Cork Examiner, April 1847: "Arrival of the Jamestown, 
American sloop of war in Cove, with provisions for the destitute Irish.  
This event...took place at 5 o'clock on Monday evening, at which hour this 
noble ship was described entering the mouth of our harbour, majestically 
gliding in beneath a cloud of canvas."  

Captain Forbes wrote of his time in Cork:  "I went with Father Theobald Mathew 
only a few steps out of one of the principal streets of Cork into a lane: 
the Valley of the Shadow of Death, was it?  Alas no, it was the valley of death 
and pestilence itself...hovels crowded with the sick and dying...Some called 
for water to Father Mathew and others for a dying blessing...women assail 
you at every turn with famished babies imploring alms."

Captain Forbes added however: "I shall ever look back on the voyage of the 
Jamestown as the happiest event of my life."

Information for this note, including all quotes above, was found in the book 
"The Famine Ships--The Irish Exodus to America", pp. 49-52, by Edward Laxton, 
pub. 1996.  A more detailed account can be found on this historic voyage in 
that book, including a wonderful illustration of the man-o'-war 
U. S. Ship Jamestown being pulled into Cork Harbour, while men in small boats 
greet her, with the hills of Cork rising from the water.

National Archives and Records Administration, Film M277, Reel 22.

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