Undoubtedly, we’ve all wondered about the transatlantic experience. We’ve heard the horror stories of the many people dying in steerage, but how much is true about these tales?

How did your immigrant ancestor arrive on the North American shore? Did he or she come on a creaking, wooden sailing vessel in the 1600s with the country’s earliest Pilgrims; on a coffin ship during the Irish potato famine in the mid-1840s; or perhaps on an iron-hulled steamship in the 1900s? How long was the trip, and what were the physical surroundings? What were the psychological and emotional experiences of such a trip?

Beyond the physical realities of the trip, what was the social context? What countries or geographic areas were seeing large numbers of people emigrate to the United States? And why would so many people leave their homes and families if there were not significant social factors at work?

The transatlantic experience was profoundly influenced by the historical context of the entire emigration experience. Your emigrant ancestor could have been in a situation like any one of the following:

A middle aged family man from Wuerttemberg recruited by the Virginia government to mine iron ore in the early 1700s, traveling with his wife, three children, and twenty other families from his home village; a young Irish teen leaving Liverpool during the famine in the 1850s, the sole survivor of her starving family; a young man and his new bride leaving rural Italy to seek their fortunes in the fertile farm lands of the Midwest; an African man captured in the 1830s, chained to the wall of the ship alone, frightened, physically abused and terrorized, with no one speaking his native language to share his horror.

Between 1820 and 1840, 70 percent of U.S. immigrants came from just three countries: Ireland (35 percent), Germany (21 percent), and Britain (14 percent). Immigration in those times was fueled by the industrial revolution in Europe and a huge increase in population. Varied job opportunities made the United States a popular refuge for the throngs of unemployed artisans who were pushed out of the old agrarian economies in Europe.

From 1840 to 1860, 87 percent of the immigrants were from the same three countries, with an even greater percentage coming from Ireland. Famine immigrants came in large numbers as a result of the potato crop failure and the consolidation of land holdings by the large landowners. The second largest immigration group at that time came from what is now Germany. The immigrants were generally farmers settling the Midwest region who were in need of new land after having been displaced by the industrial revolution and increased population pressures.

By the 1860s to 1880s, Chinese immigrants made up 11 percent of the immigration population. Ten percent of the immigrants were Italian, and nearly 20 percent were from Austria and Russia. And by the turn of the century and on into to the 1920s, Italy, Hungary, and Russia (or the USSR) were the chief sources of immigrants into the United States.

Runners, who were associated with brokers, literally accosted inexperienced travelers upon their arrival into the ports of embarkation. These runners made another 7 percent commission for bookings and made even more money if they arranged accommodations for weary travelers before the sail date. Such runners were typically dishonest and took advantage of the many inexperienced immigrants. They often snatched the baggage from the new arrivals in town at a station or dock and, in the confusion, forced the emigrant to use their services.

Earlier ships were primarily cargo vessels of slaves, cotton, tobacco, wheat, beef, and pork for the westward crossing, and of iron, pots and pans, nails, salt, bricks, glass, chemicals, and textiles for the eastward crossing. Passengers were taken on to increase profits. For example, a ship leaving Great Britain in 1849 had 280 passengers, but more important, 240 cows, 206 pigs, nineteen sheep, and four horses. Passengers were packed shoulder to shoulder with difficult access to a water pump. The deck was afloat with animal mire. The crossing was likely to last anywhere from fourteen to twenty-eight days.

Of course, many of the problems the emigrants experienced were not due to the shipping business, but were due instead to the demand for passage to America. In the 1830s, there were only 30,000 to 50,000 people who crossed the Atlantic from Europe. But by the 1840s to 1850s, there were a quarter of a million people seeking passage. Naturally, this growth led to a breakdown in the protective regulatory system and pressed more and more ships into service to cross to the New World.

By the mid-1840s, more protective regulations were enacted. These regulations ensured that there were physicians on board, that men and women were housed separately, and that there were at least two toilets on the ship—two more for each additional 100 passengers. However, these regulations were usually only observed by Great Britain and the United States, which meant that when traveling to nearby countries, such as Canada, ships could evade the new laws. As a result, coffin ships to Canada sometimes carried two or three times the number of people as those ships that went directly to the United States.

At best, some captains would set a watch at night as a precaution against fire, open hatches every sunny day to assist ventilation, fumigate with vinegar, have deckhands sweep floors every day and scrub every third day, and require passengers to air their bedding regularly.

But the bottom line is that the trip was an ordeal. Many emigrants were illiterate, inexperienced, and easy prey for the brokers, runners, and others who made their living from emigration. The costs were enormous, and the emigrants had little or no extra money to cover the cost of the trip. If there was a delay, an unforeseen expense, or illness, their situation was potentially disastrous.

Once onboard, the passengers might find carpenters hurriedly constructing berths in what had recently been cargo space in the eastward crossing. Ship hands would load cargo, supplies, and passengers, but even when everything was on board, the voyage did not necessarily begin. Adverse winds could delay the ship for days or weeks. And during this time, passengers dared not leave the ship for fear the captain would leave without notice whenever the wind changed.

It was only by the 1850s that a passenger to America would have embarked on a vessel that specialized in passenger traffic. And until the 1850s, only cabin passengers could rely on a supply of cooked food, utensils, and bedding from the ship.

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Kamphoefner, Walter, D. et al., editors. News from the Land of Freedom: German Immigrants Write Home. Ithaca: Cornell Press, 1991.

Mangan, James J., editor. Robert Whyte’s 1847 Famine Ship Diary. Dublin: Mercier Press, 1994.

Miller, Kerby A. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America. New York: Oxford Press, 1985.

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Nolan, Janet A. Ourselves Alone. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1989.

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