Jeanie Johnston

The Jeanie Johnston, moored off Custom House Quay, Dublin.

The Jeanie Johnston is a replica of a three masted barque that was originally built in Quebec, Canada in 1847 by the Scottish-born shipbuilder John Munn.

Original Ship

The original Jeanie Johnston was bought by Tralee, Co. Kerry-based merchants John Donovan & Sons, as a cargo vessel and traded successfully between Tralee and North America for a number of years. The trading pattern was to bring emigrants from Ireland to North America, and then to bring timber back to Europe.

Famine voyages

She made her maiden emigrant voyage from Blennerville, Co. Kerry to Quebec on April 24, 1848, with 193 emigrants on board, as the effects of the Famine ravaged Ireland. Between 1848 and 1855, the Jeanie Johnston made 16 voyages to North America, sailing to Quebec, Baltimore, and New York. On average, the length of the transatlantic journey was 47 days. The most passengers she ever carried was 254, from Tralee to Quebec on April 17, 1852. To put this number in perspective, the replica ship is only licensed to carry 40 people including crew.

Despite the number of passengers, and the long voyage, no crew or passenger lives were ever lost on board the Jeanie Johnston. This is generally attributed to the captain, James Attridge, not overloading the ship, and the presence of a qualified doctor, Richard Blennerhassett, on board for the passengers. On the maiden voyage from Tralee to Quebec in April 1848 a baby boy was born aboard the ship. To mark the unsual surroundings of his birth, the parents, Daniel and Margaret Reilly, named the baby Nicholas (after the co-owner of the vessel Nicholas Donovan) Johnston (after the ship)so Nicholas Johnston Reilly was added to the passenger list.

In 1855, the ship was sold to William Johnson of North Shields in England. In 1858, en route to Quebec from Hull with a cargo of timber, she became waterlogged. The crew climbed into the rigging, and after nine days clinging to their slowly-sinking ship, they were rescued by a Dutch ship, the Sophie Elizabeth. Even in her loss, she maintained her perfect safety record.

Replica

Ship Jeanie Johnston at River Liffey, Dublin, Ireland.

The building of the replica ship began with in-depth research in 1993, and culminated in the completion of the vessel in 2002. An international team of young people, linking Ireland North and South, the United States, Canada and many other countries, built the replica under the supervision of experienced shipwrights. The original cost had been projected at £4.265m sterling (~€5.8m)in 1993 and the final cost was just under 14 million Euro in 2002. The final figure includes the sea-going ship, shipyard, workshops and visitor centre at Blennerville, cost of launch, fit out at Fenit and the cost of training in shipbuilding skills provided by FÁS to some 50 unemployed young people. The escallation in cost was attributed to the complex nature of the project, the delay in getting the project underway and completed (9 years)and the efforts made to meet an unachievable completion deadline of June 2000. The cost of the project was borne by the Irish government, Kerry County Council, Tralee Town Council, the European Union, the American Ireland Fund, Shannon Development, Kerry Group, the Training and Employment Authority Foras Áiseanna Saothair and the Irish Department of the Marine, most of which later agreed to write off their losses. According to a valuation obtained by Kerry County Council in 2002, the Jeanie was then worth 1.27 million Euro. Over €2m was raised though private fund raising in Ireland and the United States.

The replica ship was designed by Fred Walker former Chief Naval Architect with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. The recreation project was modelled closely on that of the 17th century ship, the Batavia and The Matthew in Bristol. While in the beginning the plan was to build a full-size replica, the final result was a ship scaled down by 30 percent.

The ship is built with larch planks on oak frames. To comply with current international maritime regulations, some concessions to modernity had to be made. She has two Caterpillar main engines, two Caterpillar generators, bow thruster for manoeuvrability in lakes and rivers and an emergency generator that is located above the waterline in the forward deckhouse. She is fully compliant to the highest standards of modern ocean-going passenger ships, with steel water-tight bulkheads, down-flooding valves, and fire-fighting equipment.

When several of the oak frames were in place and planking was being applied, the density of the oak was checked and the floatation levels estimated. These checks revealed that the ship would float higher than anticipated in the water, causing stability problems. To rectify the problem, a steel keel was attached beneath the original oak keel. This is the reason that the Jeanie Johnston draws more water than most ships of her size and cannot enter some ports the original ship would have been able to visit, e.g. Nantucket. However, she has proved to be remarkably stable even in the most harshest weather conditions at sea. During her maiden voyage to America in March 2003 she was battered by Force 10 storm in the Bay of Biscay and similarly on the return voyage from New Foundland in November 2003 and prevailed unscathed. The replica Jeanie Johnston performs a number of functions: an ocean-going sail training vessel at sea and in port converts into a living history museum on 19th century emigration and, in the evenings, is used as a corporate event venue.

In 2003 the replica Jeanie Johnston sailed from Tralee to Canada and the United States visiting 32 US and Canadian cities and attracting over 100,000 visitors. She has taken part in the Tall Ships Race from Waterford to Cherbourg in 2005 and finished 60th out of 65 ships. Other notable Irish tall ships or sail training ships are the Asgard II (lost in the Bay of Biscay in 2008), the Dunbrody, the Lord Rank (N.I.) and the Creidne (I.N.S.).

A wooden plaque is mounted on the foremast listing some of the many people involved in the physical building of the ship. Many people gave time, money and support to the project. The reconstruction efforts involved the labor of trainees from different religious and political backgrounds in Northern Ireland’s disadvantaged areas who were funded by the International Fund for Ireland. The aim of the fund being to promote economic and social advance and to encourage contact, dialogue and reconciliation between nationalists and unionists throughout Ireland.

The replica is currently owned by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority who bought it in 2005 for a reported 2.7 million Euro, which were used to clear outstanding loans on the vessel guaranteed by Tralee Town Council and Kerry County Council. From 2006 to 2008 she was operated on their behalf by Rivercruise Ireland. During that time she carried approximately 980 sail trainees and over 2,500 passengers, making regular visits to ports around Britain and Ireland, and also undertaking several trips to Spain each summer, often carrying voyage crew who intended to join the Camino de Santiago. In between these voyages she would offer day-sails in Dublin Bay. In early 2009 the Dublin Docklands Development Authority and Rivercruise Ireland could not reach agreement. DDDA then offered the Department of Defence use of the ship as a training vessel for free (as a replacement for the sunken Asgard II), but the offer was turned down. The Department of Defence declared the Jeanie Johnston unsuitable because of her lack of speed, her required crew size of 11 and her inability to participate in tall ships races. No alternative operator was found until mid-2010, when Galway-based company Aiseanna Mara Teoranta was appointed to operate the ship as a museum. As of 2010, the ship is not in seagoing condition. The Dublin Docklands Authority have plans to refit the ship in time for the visit of the tallships to Waterford at the end of June 2012.

Gallery

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  The Jeanie Johnston, moored off Custom House Quay, Dublin.

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  Jeanie Johnston replica in New York, 2003.

Replica Specifications

Jeanie Johnston
Type:	Three Masted Barque
Built:	2002, Blennerville, Co. Kerry, Ireland
Homeport:	Tralee, Co. Kerry, Ireland
Sparred Length:	154 ft (47 m)
Length on deck:	123 ft (37 m)
Beam:	26 ft (7.9 m)
Draft:	15 ft (4.6 m)
Rig Height:	92 ft (28 m)
Displacement:	510 tons
Sail Area:	6,943 sq ft (645.0 m2)
Number of sails and material:	18; Duradon
Length of rope used in rigging:	3,280 ft (1,000 m)
Wooden materials used:	Oak frames, larch planking, iroko and Douglas fir decks, and Douglas fir masts and spars
Range under sail:	70 days
Range under 1 engine:	17 days
Engines:	2 Caterpillar (3306 Diesel Type 280 h.p. @ 2200 r.p.m.)
Generators:	2 Caterpillar (3304 producing 105 KVA), 1 Emergency Generator in Deckhouse
Safety Features:	4 steel bulkheads; 6 watertight doors and 5 fire doors. Down-flooding valves.
Architect:	Fred Walker, former Chief Naval Architect, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England
Crew:	40 (11 permanent and 29 sail trainees)

References

• The Jeanie Johnston Walk-around Guide

External links

• Jeanie Johnston Tall Ship & Famine Museum