Tidewater Triumph: The Development and Worldwide Success of the Chesapeake Bay Pilot Schooner

Front Cover
Mystic Seaport Museum, 1998 - History - 305 pages
The Great Irish Famine is the most pivotal event in modern Irish history, with implications that cannot be underestimated. Over a million people perished between 1845-1852, and well over a million others fled to other locales within Europe and America. By 1850, the Irish made up a quarter of the population in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The 2000 US census had 41 million people claim Irish ancestry, or one in five white Americans. Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (1845-52) considers how such a near total decimation of a country by natural causes could take place in industrialized, 19th century Europe and situates the Great Famine alongside other world famines for a more globally informed approach.

The Atlas seeks to try and bear witness to the thousands and thousands of people who died and are buried in mass Famine pits or in fields and ditches, with little or nothing to remind us of their going. The centrality of the Famine workhouse as a place of destitution is also examined in depth. Likewise the atlas represents and documents the conditions and experiences of the many thousands who emigrated from Ireland in those desperate years, with case studies of famine emigrants in cities such as Liverpool, Glasgow, New York and Toronto. The Atlas places the devastating Irish Famine in greater historic context than has been attempted before, by including over 150 original maps of population decline, analysis and examples of poetry, contemporary art, written and oral accounts, numerous illustrations, and photography, all of which help to paint a fuller picture of the event and to trace its impact and legacy. In this comprehensive and stunningly illustrated volume, over fifty chapters on history, politics, geography, art, population, and folklore provide readers with a broad range of perspectives and insights into this event.

About the author (1998)

Geoffrey Marsh Footner was born in Baltimore, Maryland on September 1, 1923. He attended Loyola University Maryland, but left to join the Navy during World War II. After being discharged, he returned to Loyola and received a bachelor's degree in economics on the GI Bill. He later did graduate work at Johns Hopkins University. He worked as a foreign trade representative for the Association of Commerce and secretary of the Foreign Trade Forum of Baltimore. In 1950, he and Roberto M. Gutierrez established Footner & Co. They focused their business on ocean and air shipping. Footner also established Intermodal Transports Inc. with Rolf Graage and Bay Agencies. He retired from the shipping industry in the early 1980s. His first book, The Last Generation: A History of a Chesapeake Shipbuilding Family - M.M. Davis and Son, was published in 1991. His other books included Tidewater Triumph: The Development and Worldwide Success of the Chesapeake Bay Pilot Schooner; USS Constellation: From Frigate to Sloop of War; and A Bungled Affair: Britain's War on the United States - the Final Years, 1814-1815. He died from heart failure on April 5, 2018 at the age of 94.

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