What is it about?
This paper argues the massive increase in transatlantic British and Irish emigration after 1840 was encouraged by declining fares and ocean travel costs. New series of transatlantic steerage fares drawn from the unique Cope Line records in the Pennsylvania Historical Society (HSP) show westward fares fell rapidly from 1830. Adjusted for British and US manual wages, westward travel costs, including provisions, almost halved between 1847 and 1851-3, when Irish migration peaked. Hence although the Irish had to leave Ireland, they might not otherwise have gone so extensively to North America. Eastward travel costs also fell after 1830 encouraging an unexpectedly large return migration to Britain in the late1850s, and possibly earlier.
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Why is it important?
The consensus is that the dramatic growth of transatlantic migration between 1845 and 1855 was mainly caused by the Irish potato famine, and English, Scottish and Welsh rural poverty and industrialisation. Once migration started, family and social networks perpetuated the flow. North America had its own independent pull. However we know today that low fares can also have a massive impact on popular travel, but in the early nineteenth century we do not know exactly when, why, and with what effect fares fell. The aim of this article is to fill that gap, and therefore presents several series of transatlantic steerage fares – westward and eastward - from 1815 to 1870, and shows how they were constructed. The major findings are that eastward and westward fares fell in the 1830s, and again in the early 1840s, rose during the first famine surge between 1846 and 1848, but fell again until 1853. In addition captains were increasingly required by the British Passenger Acts to feed the passengers and improve health and safety standards – from a very low level. Simultaneously British and American money wages rose and the real cost of travel fell. In conclusion, the trend of falling travel costs over the period correlates well with the trend of rising migration suggesting declining transatlantic fares had a significant influence on the decision to emigrate to America, and – in the 1850s - on a far larger return migration than generally believed
Perspectives
This paper has developed several eastward and westward fare series for the first time. The implication is that particular events – famine, depression, nativism - sparked off long distance migration, but that declining travel costs made it possible. Migration was more than a flight from hardship and hunger. Migrants were sensitive to declining fares, seasonal realities and sensible networking. It was fortunate that shipowners had sufficient capacity and organisation, and that transatlantic fares were low enough, to enable the flight from Ireland to continue to America. The Passenger Acts reduced travel costs further by forcing ships to provide basic maintenance. Once in America, migrants worked hard to bring over relatives, but if assimilation failed, eastward fares were low enough by the mid 1850s for a substantial minority to return home.
Mr John Roper Killick
University of Leeds
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Transatlantic steerage fares, British and Irish migration, and return migration, 1815-60, The Economic History Review, July 2013, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/1468-0289.12014.
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