COUNTY VIEW: The long odyssey of a Mayo emigrant

As a reminder of the global reach of The Mayo News, last week’s mail brought a missive from an Irish emigrant to South Africa. Maurice Egan, a native of Tullamore, and an avid historian, was kind enough to share his research into the lineal ancestry of a family with which he is friendly in his adopted country, and whose roots are firmly set in the centre of Mayo.
Hugh Coffey was the son of a small landholder in Ballyart, Turlough. On the advice of his father, who could clearly see that the prospects of a tenant farmer under British landlord rule were none too favourable, he served his time as a carpenter, a trade that gave him a considerable head start when he made the bold decision to seek his fortune in South Africa, a century and a half ago.
At the age of 23, and with the sad certainty that he would never see home or family again, Hugh Coffey set out on his long journey. He made his way to Liverpool, where he boarded the three masted wooden clipper, The Gypsy Bride, en route to Cape Town. He was one of the luckier ones – he was travelling by way of assisted passage, as a tradesman he had secured employment with Captain Murphy in Table Bay, his wages of seven shillings a day would give him an adequate living with enough in reserve to save for the eventual investment in a profitable hotel. 
Not that the voyage of The Gypsy Bride was without its travails. The trip took two months, and the conditions were cramped and insanitary, with 514 passengers forced to share an area smaller than a tennis court. Because of an outbreak of measles, the ship was quarantined on arrival and nobody was permitted to land. Relief came only when onshore buildings were finally made available to corral the passengers pending medical assessment.
But harsh as the conditions were, they were immeasurably better than those that greeted Hugh Coffey’s fellow Irishmen just ten years earlier. The angry reception these people met – a result of Britain’s ill-judged attempt to deport Irish convicts to South Africa – remains a shameful stain on English colonial history.
After the Great Famine, Britain announced plans to use the Cape Colony as a destination for Irish deportees, rather than Australia, which had been the case until then. When news of the decision reached the Cape, it provoked widespread outrage. The Dutch and English settlers organised resistance movements across the state, petitions with thousands of signatures were sent to Queen Victoria, Anti Convict Committees prepared themselves for all out war should the policy be implemented. 
And so, when prison ship The Neptune sailed into Table Bay with 300 convicts, local fury was uncontained. A total ban was imposed by the settlers on any contact with the ship. No provisions would be supplied, no visitors could board, and not even the sick would be allowed to land. The Neptune sailed on to Simons Town, but by now the ban on selling goods to the ship had been extended to all government departments. Now, it seemed, the convicts would starve to death adrift on the high seas.
At that stage, the British Governor of the Cape Colony, Sir Harry Smith, began to grow desperate, so much so that he would embark on a course that would bring ruin and death to one of his closest friends: Robert Stanford, a native of Ballinastanford, Claremorris, the owner of a large cattle farm and extensive fishery. Smith despatched his attorney general to Stanford, who was still nominally a captain in the British Army, to forcefully remind him that it was his sworn duty to supply the authorities with provisions for the ship. If he refused, martial law would be declared and troops would be sent in to take what was needed.
Reluctantly, Stanford complied, but the personal was huge. He was banned and ostracised by his fellow citizens. Word went out that nobody was to have any dealings with him. His servants walked out, his children were expelled from school, he was unable to sell his produce or to buy for his family the necessities of life. When his daughter fell sick, no doctor would attend the child, and she was allowed to die. Defeated and distressed, Stanford and his family set sail for England. 
Ironically, after a five-month standoff, the British government gave in. The Neptune drew anchor at Simons Town and rerouted to Tasmania.
Much of the ill will had dissipated ten years later when Hugh Coffey set foot on South African soil. He prospered, married, and with his wife moved inland to Pearson, the town where the couple opened the Pearson Hotel. Sadly, he died at the young age of 37 from TB, thought to have been contracted on that long journey from Ireland, and a lifetime away from his birthplace in Ballyart.