Arrived at Salthill Caravan club site 3 miles out of Galway city, some 150 miles west of Dublin and walked along the 5k sea front promenade.There were plenty of cold water swimmers in skins embracing the very cold Atlantic waves, and walkers, runners , cyclists and a skater.
We walked along the front to a famine boat memorial park. A 100 ships set sail for America from Galway bay after the great potato famine in Ireland when 1.5 m lost their lives due to starvation in 1847
Some didn't escape the famine
The Galway Advertiser
This memorial stone reads
GALWAY, SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 1847 STARVATION - INQUEST
An inquest was held on Thursday last, before Michael Perrin, Esq., D.C., at the Presentation Convent, on view of the body of Celia Griffin, a girl about six years of age, from the village of Corrindulla, near Ross, in this county.
It appeared in evidence that the poor creature had been reduced to extreme poverty, and that the family to whom she belonged, eight in number, were in the same pitiable condition. She had been recommended to the Ladies of the Presentation Convent by Rev. George Usher, as a fit object for relief, and accordingly she and her two sisters received a daily breakfast at that excellent institute. They met Mr. Usher on the Rahoon road, about a fortnight ago, but famine had so preyed upon her feeble constitution, that, on the morning of Wednesday, she was unable to taste food of any description so that on the post mortem examination made by Doctor Staunton, there was not a particle found in the stomach She, with her father, mother, brothers and sisters, came to Galway, about six weeks ago,in the hope of obtaining some charitable relief, and during that period they had been begging in the streets, and about the country. The parents of the deceased, formerly resided on the estate of Thomas Martin, Esq., M.P.. When Doctor Staunton was called on he found deceased in a state of inanition, except for an occasional convulsive action of the muscles, and her body might be said to be literally skin and bone; with all the appearance of starvation.
She was so exhausted, as not to be able to use the food supplied to her. The Jury found that death was caused for want of common necessaries of life, before she received relief at the Presentation Convent.T his park is named in memory of Celia Griffin and all the children who suffered and died in The Great Famine.
It's a windy rain lashed night tonight
You find these kinds of memorials all over Ireland. At the time of the famine Ireland was part of the United Kingdom. The UK Government of the time did almost nothing to help the starving Irish People.
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