Harper's Weekly image of the "coffin ships" showing the cramped, unhealthy accommodations for the Irish immigrants.

'The Wild Geese come in their thousands with the October moon. They blacken the sky and they cry the coming of Autumn. Where there are low marshlands, or sloblands, they settle down, and then the cabins are cooking them with much butter or grease in the bastables all the Winter. About the estuary of the Shannon, and all up the river into Limerick, they must have whizzed and moaned, that Winter of 1691, when Ginkel offered the terms that ended the Jacobite War, and started bitter quarrels among the tired and tattered Irish. The flying Irish, down the Shannon or down the Lee with Sarsfield, looked up at the skies, and took the name, The Wild Geese. It was the end of a period. It was all but the end of a race.’ Seán O’Failáin

There is no doubt that the Irish were among the first immigrants to the New World; of which individual was the first, is more debatable. There are many works dealing with the first Irish man or woman to touch American shores. St. Brendan the Navigator is frequently mentioned, an Irish crewman accompanying Columbus, Patrick Maguire is named in one account and a William Ayers of Belfast in another.

St. Brendan depicted with  his monks. Brendan was born in County Kerry, Ireland about about 484 AD

English troops Marched on Drogheda on September 11,  1649. Over 3,000 innocent people were put to death after the garrison fell. The 30 or so survivors of the massacre  were sold into slavery and sent to Barbados .

The beginnings of immigration from Ireland to America, in such numbers as to become a matter of definite historical record,  may be said to date from the invasion of Ireland by Cromwell, and subsequent squelching of Irish rebellion in 1651. Cromwell landed at Dublin in 1649, and immediately set siege to the town of Drogheda. During the bloody  conquest, not only the garrison, but the entire civilian population of over 3,000 were put to death.   In the years directly following Cromwell's invasion, large-scale land confiscation followed.  Land owners where driven from their homes, and over 11 million acres were given to Protestant settlers. On 1 may, 1654 the British past the law forcing all Irish Loyalists, and land owners west of the river Shannon. Those that did not go, faced the death penalty or slavery in the West Indies or Barbados (the Great Irish Famine, 1996 pg. 6-7). Thus the cry of "To hell or Connaught" was born.  Sir William Petty , an English economist, scientist, and philosopher serving under Oliver Cromwell, estimatied that in 1641, Ireland's population was 1,466,000.  By 1652, the population had dropped to 616,000. According to Petty, 850,000 were wasted by the sword, plague, famine, hardship, and banishment into slavery during the Confederation War between 1641 and 1652.

The native Irish had been deprived of their lands, routed from their homes, and ordered to remove their families and such effects as were permitted to the province of Connaught in the northwest of Ireland. Connaught was a territory mostly wild and desolate within which they were to remain under military surveillance, and establish new homes under the harshest of conditions.  Thousands died of starvation, and disease. Soon the commissioners appointed by Cromwell to over-see the Irish, started ordering the deportation of  many to Barbados and American plantations. Seeing an economic opportunity, enterprising merchants from Bristol and London carried on a lucrative business in shipping and transferring these unfortunate victims to their destination. In order to sustain their traffic, leave was granted to fill their ships with destitute or homeless inhabitants (made so by their conquerors) as might be delivered to them by the military governor for transportation abroad. The records show, during the years 1651 to 1654, at least 6,400 young exiles were carried away and delivered, some to Barbados, and some to the different English colonies in America. Two thousand young boys and girls were shipped the following year to plantations in Barbados and  the Americas. It has been estimated that in1660, there were at least 10,000 Irish distributed thus among the different English colonies in America ( American Catholic Quarterly Review, IX, 37).  Of the total number shipped out of Ireland the estimates vary between 60,000 and 100,000 (Lingard, "History of England", X (Dolman ed., 1849, pg.366).

Coffin ships in route to the Americas

Of those transported, most had little choice. Either be indentured and transported to America, or face prison or execution. The reasons ranging from political prisoners, rebellion, paupers, to petty thieves and criminals. Some came of poverty. Most came as bonded servants and were given passage to America, paid by the person who brought them over and would have to work off their passage upon their arrival as per their contract, a period which usually lasted for seven years. At the end of that time, they were on their own and it was up to them to make something of their life in the New World.

The bondage of Ireland by the English predated the development of colonies in America. In fact, the English relied of the experiences of colonizing Ireland, and adjusted approach to the conditions in the New World (Liggio 112). Of the Virginia Company at Jamestown, more than forty members had an interest in Irish conquest and the colonization by Englishmen of Ireland. Many of the of the original Virginia company had an active interest in Irish plantations, such as Lord de la Warr, once a military officer who became Governor of Virginia; or Lord George Carew, first Lord Justice for Ireland, who became a council member of the Virginia Company; or Arthur Chichester, first captain, then Lord Deputy and Earl of Belfast, who became very active in the Virginia Project (Jones [1944] 60-61; [1945] pg.548-551). The Library of Virginia records Land Patents given to early Irish immigrants in 1655 (Cavilers and Pioneers). In conquering the Irish, the English claimed that "they brought a slavery that was preferable to the freedom the Irish had previously held under barbarous customs" ( Charshee C. L. McIntyre).

Olvier Cromwell

A great many historical writers of the 17th century agree that as many as 2/3 of all white immigrants in the British West Indies and mainland America were Irish servants, and severely mistreated. Of these, almost all were “repatriated” Catholics, and most were of ancient Irish families or clans. They were shipped in droves. Indentured, enslaved and starving they were stripped of their lands, titles, belongings and transplanted without care. For these first immigrates, coming to America was no joyful event. It was on the backs of these despised people that England first looked to carve new colonies from the American wilderness. A land destined to become one of the greatest symbols of freedom, the United States of America.