ATLANTIC EXODUS

Sir, - Posing historic "ifs" and "if onlys" can be an interesting, if futile exercise

Sir, - Posing historic "ifs" and "if onlys" can be an interesting, if futile exercise. Kevin Myers, in, "An Irishman's Diary" (January 18th) carried this to the extreme when he suggested that were it not for the mass exodus of our people arising from the Famine, the Russians could not have achieved the assembly line for tank production, due to the advice of Henry Ford, nor would there have been the Beatles group, nor a Kennedy to face down the Russians over Cuba.

By convoluted reckoning, he conjectured that "in many senses the world was made a better place by the Famine and it is an event which changed and enriched the world!" However, in the same piece Mr Myers made the really astounding statement that until Edward Laxton's book The Famine Ships, "nobody has given us the story of these sailing vessels crossing the Atlantic Ocean." He concluded: "It is amazing that it has taken so long to tell this tale".

I would hazard that in the annals of sea travel no subject has received as much attention as emigration to the Americas, especially the US. To mention just two of the many books which dealt with this subject, I would draw specific attention to The Great Emigration by Edwin Guillet and Destination American by Maldwyn Jones, on which a comprehensive television series was based.

In the bibliography to his book, Edwin Guillet provided only 500 references rather than, as he put it, "an exhaustive list of all available source material". Not all, but most of this material which deals with what Maldwyn Jones described as "the greatest mass migration in history" (35 million people between the early part of the 19th to the early 20th centuries) dealt with shipping.

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In addition, a considerable number of enquiries and special committee reports are available. There are 48 volumes for Canada, for the period 1803 to 1896 alone. Further, between 1803 and 1855, no less than 12 Acts were promulgated through the British Parliament which, due to abuses, were designed to "regulate conditions of passage in sailing ships". Exhaustive details of why this was deemed necessary are contained in the Hansard volumes for the period. Thus, the source material relating to the passage of emigrants to the Americas is virtually inexhaustible. - Yours, etc.

Ballsbridge Terrace,

Ballsbridge,

Dublin 4.