Between 1788 and 1868, about 162,000 convicts were transported from Great Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia. The British Government began transporting convicts overseas to American colonies in the early 18th century.
The first convict transport to sail directly from Ireland to Sydney was the Queen, which in 1791 carried 148 convicts to Sydney. Between 1791 and 1867 about 40,000 Irish convicts were sent to the eastern Australian colonies. Roughly a quarter of them were women.
Most came directly from Ireland but some were transported after conviction in England and a few, such as those tried as soldiers in the British Army, arrived from places like India. A few did extremely well, despite their past as felons.
Some of those who were transported to Australia were prisoners of war, many of whom had fought in the 1798 Irish rebellion for independence, whereas others were settlers who struggled to establish their lives during the Irish famine and the harsh years in Ireland that followed.
Between 1787 until the termination of the system in 1853, Australia received over 160,000 convicts, approximately 26,500 of whom sailed from Ireland [see footnote 4].
The eleven ships which arrived on 26 January 1788 are known as the First Fleet. They carried around 1400 convicts, soldiers and free people. The journey from England to Australia took 252 days and there were around 48 deaths on the voyage.
The database to date shows that 672 County Limerick inhabitants, 443 men and 229 women, became involuntary residents of Van Diemen's Land during the convict period, 1803-53. Unlike other countries, Ireland sent a considerable proportion of females.
Pushed out of Ireland by religious conflicts, lack of political autonomy and dire economic conditions, these immigrants, who were often called "Scotch-Irish," were pulled to America by the promise of land ownership and greater religious freedom.
The area around Koroit has often been called the “beating heart of Australia's Irish heritage”, and the town was once in a shire called Belfast, although the town's name is from a Koroitch Gundidj word.
By this time there were a total of 2086 Irish convicts, nearly all Catholics, living in New South Wales. The first Mass was celebrated in Sydney on 15 May 1803.
Hundreds of thousands of convicts were transported from Britain and Ireland to Australia between 1787 and 1868. Today, it's estimated that 20% of the Australian population are descended from people originally transported as convicts, while around 2 million Britons have transported convict ancestry.
Convict Colonies. There were two major convict colonies: New South Wales (1788-1840) and Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania, 1803-1853). Eventually, Swan River (Western Australia) would become a third penal colony when the failing settlement requested an injection of convict labourers (1850-1868).
The First Fleet of British ships arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788 to establish a penal colony, the first colony on the Australian mainland. In the century that followed, the British established other colonies on the continent, and European explorers ventured into its interior.
Today some 80 million people worldwide claim Irish ancestry, including an estimated seven million Australians. For St Patrick's Day, we take a look at the story of the destitute Irish orphans who arrived in Australia 170 years ago at the height of the Great Famine.
The United States has the most people of Irish descent, while in Australia those of Irish descent are a higher percentage of the population than in any other country outside Ireland. Many Icelanders have Irish and Scottish Gaelic forebears.
Sometimes, donations to Ireland came from the poorest and most unexpected countries, including islands in the Caribbean and West Indies. Despite their own hardships, people in Barbados, Jamaica, Saint Kitts, and many other small nations came together during one of the hardest times in Irish history.
Irish Catholic immigration, unfortunately, was opposed by the Know- Nothing movement.
Great Famine, also called Irish Potato Famine, Great Irish Famine, or Famine of 1845–49, famine that occurred in Ireland in 1845–49 when the potato crop failed in successive years. The crop failures were caused by late blight, a disease that destroys both the leaves and the edible roots, or tubers, of the potato plant.
The English government issued bills of attainder against the rebels. These bills of attainder were laws passed against specific individuals to confiscate their lands, which formed the legal basis for plantation. When the lands were confiscated, they would be Anglicized.
It was the time of the colonization of Ulster — when land in Ireland's northeast was forcibly taken over by English and Scottish settlers — that is the root of the island's division today. O'Neill sided with English forces to take on a rival, the powerful chieftain Shane O'Neill, and was knighted by the crown.
Some locations, such as Koroit in Victoria, Kapunda in South Australia and Kiama in New South Wales had disproportionate numbers of Irish settlers, but virtually every community in every colony had its Irish component.