Series 9 - Hugh Quin Jnr voyage journal

118pp

PRONI provided this transcript to Kerby A. Miller. The original manuscript is held in PRONI [reference number T2874/1].

Transcript (with an introductory summary by Kerby A. Miller) of the journal of Hugh Quin Jnr of Ardkeen, County Down, kept during this 1817 voyage from Portaferry to New Orleans. Per Miller: 'Quin was a sincere, learned young man, of sensitive feelings, but a bit pompous and ridiculous with his frequent quotations from Pope and Virgil, and his frequent, fashionably melancholy musings on the sad state of the world and his own loneliness. He was a Catholic. of well-to-do means and family, and had been well-educated at a local academy. He was very nationalistic, devoted to Ireland, and to musing and expostulating on her wrongs, devoted to his Church, and felt an instinctive kinship with the United States and republicanism, especially vs. England and monarchy. He certainly did not have to leave Ireland, but was obviously going to New Orleans in search of opportunities which simply did not exist in comparable abundance for young men of education in Ireland, probably particularly educated Catholics. Yet his melancholy sorrows certainly gave the impression of unwilling exile... Quin was completely removed from the life and culture of Gaelic Ireland; when his ship to Liverpool passed fisherman from the Isle of Man, he found Manx 'perfectly unintelligible.' ...With his republican and anti-British sentiments, Quin rejoiced to see the site of the Battle of New Orleans: 'I was pleased to have it in my power to state that I saw the spot whereon British pride and treachery was humbled and chastised.' Thus, politically, were the immigrating Irish often 'instant Americans.' Quin felt strong sadness when disembarking from his ship for the last time in New Orleans.'