The Ocean Plague, first published in 1848, is an account of a voyage from Dublin to Quebec on an Irish emigrant ship. In it we read of the horrific symptoms of disease that so many of the passengers and members of the crew succumbed to. We hear of the decimation of families, the orphaning of children, the practicalities of disposing of the dead, and the callous indifference of many to the suffering of others. And, soberingly, the conditions aboard the vessel in question were without doubt better than those that many Irish emigrants had to endure in other ships. For here, at least, was a captain and his wife who showed genuine concern for those in their care and did what little they could to alleviate the distress of the sick and bereaved.

The author was evidently a man of reasonable means and good education. He had his own berth and dined with the ship’s captain and his wife. However, although Robert Whyte did not have to suffer the same deprivation and misery as his compatriots in the hold, his view of the many dreadful events that befell them is seen through a lens of religious compassion and social conscience, and his diary is nevertheless invaluable eyewitness testimony to the hardship and tragedy experienced on board an Irish ‘famine ship’ in the mid-Nineteenth Century.

“My heart sickens when I think upon the fatal scenes of the awfully tragic drama enacted upon the wide stage of the Atlantic ocean, in the floating lazar houses that were wafted upon its bosom during the never-to-be-forgotten year 1847.”—Robert Whyte.