I found this horrific account quoted in a lecture entitled “Irish immigrants from Australian records: the real keys to finding them in Ireland” Here is the link to the full lecture: https://www.nma.gov.au/audio/not-just-ned-irish-in-australia-series/transcripts/irish-immigrants-from-austral
The reason I am copying and pasting it in full, as well as linking to it, is because I have found that much of the of the data I found in years past has simply disappeared from the internet search engines, and I would like to preserve it. Also, over time, links break.
This excerpt is from the “Select Committee’s report of 1854 printed in British Parliamentary Papers”:
“Were you ever in a gale of wind? I cannot say that I was but I have had the unhappiness to come from Cork – this is going across to England – with a large body of immigrants, many of whom had to be put in hospital after arrival. And one man of the name of Ryan from Nenagh in the county of Tipperary, the father of seven children, died an hour after he landed from cramps produced by the wetting and fatigue he passed through during the night.
How many might there have been upon that occasion on the deck? I think the numbers were about 140. [This would be a boat about the size of the current Manly ferry, those of you who have been to that other colonial port just up in Sydney. ]No shelter? Not the slightest. What length was the run? 30-odd hours. What year was that? 1840. Fifteen years ago. Yes.
That occurrence terminated my connection with the bounty immigration from the port of Plymouth. Do such things occur now? I cannot answer that. All I am prepared to state or prove is that there is no shelter or protection given to Irish immigrants proceeding to English ports. You have heard the evidence of the last witness with reference to the deck passengers, does your own experience bear that out? Yes, entirely.
I have gone to Liverpool expressly to wait the arrival of Irish steamers, and no language in my command can describe the scenes I have witnessed there. The people were positively prostrated and scarcely able to walk after they got out of the steamers. And then they were seized hold of by unprincipled runners so well known in Liverpool.
In fact, I consider the manner in which passengers are conveyed from Irish to English ports, disgraceful, dangerous and inhumane. Just a comment that it’s people in Liverpool trying to get money from potentially emigrants to go to America. That was not the situation from Liverpool or Portsmouth to Australia. Was that because they were just off a voyage and seasick or merely because they had been on an upper deck exposed to the weather? Prostrated from the inclemency of the weather. And the cold? Yes. And wet through or anything of that sort? As wet as if they had been dipped in the sea.
But the great majority of the passengers shipped in a vessel for a passage from Ireland to England who had never been at sea before would be seasick all the way? Yes, and if you add to that the wetting I described, they would be in a most helpless state. Do you think not the greater part of that would probably be from seasickness? Seasickness must always leave a very debilitated feeling for a long time, and that must be greatly increased by the suffering from cold at night.” And it goes on.
These Select Committees on Immigration throughout the nineteenth century are well worth you getting out and reading. That is just a tiny piece of it. When you consider that short voyage was a day and a half across the Irish Sea, after they may well have walked from somewhere to get to Cork to get across the Irish Sea, or from Dublin, the beginning of the voyage is possibly the worst for them.