The Not So Good Ship Lime

Thomas Jameson emigrated from Ireland in 1738, aboard the ship Lime. Little did he know the calamity that voyage would turn out to be.

Sailing to America in the late 1730s was no longer rare or only for explorers, but neither was it common or all that frequent. Most crossings were still being made by smaller and not really by ships made for passenger travel, at least not by ships designed to take volumes of people across the open Atlantic Ocean. Although there were some designed fr that purpose, most were smaller and older cargo ships, sometimes even older military or ships used for exploration. The same was true of most sailing ports at that time. Many were not deep water ports needed for any larger ships and few were designed to handle and volume of departing passengers. This was certainly true in Ulster, with the exception of maybe Belfast and to a lesser extent the city of Londonderry. Porttush, a popular point of departure for those in Coleraine and the Bann River Valley area, was a more typical example of the limited ports of the day.

Traveling across the open Atlantic Ocean from Northern Ireland in a small wind driven boat like the Lime would be a trying and perilous journey today, let alone two hundred and fifty years ago with so much less known about the waters and the weather, say nothing of the lack of any possible help or rescue possibilities totally unknown back then. Nevertheless that's the chances you took if you wanted to come to the new world. This is how all our ancestors came, especially those who who came early, before it became commonplace and a much safer journey. Thomas came aboard the Lime in 1738, why that ship at that time we don't really know. We know the ship sailed from Portrush, on the norther coast of Ireland, near Coleraine, on July, 26th of that year.

We know a fair amount about the journey, more then most of that time, unfortunately because of all the troubles it encountered. It turns out much of what we, and everybody else knows about it comes from testimony given in Boston on April 23rd 1739 at and inquiry intended to get as the facts.

The trouble aboard the Lime became a real problem from the beginning of the homeward bound part of it's round trip journey, to Ireland and back. Hired originally by Joshua Pierce, Jr. and Robert Boyce, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire to take goods to Ireland then return home again, with goods and passengers. Even while in Portrush, off the northern Ulster coast, the ship was already leaking so badly that is was unsafe to make any attempt to sail. Things were delayed to make improvements only finally getting underway on July 26th, nearly a month late. The ship didn't make it very far with it's 123 passengers before it had to make for shore at Killybegs. unworthy of further progress. Repairs here took nearly two weeks before the ship set sail again, this time making it no further then Galloway, a little further down the western coast of Ireland before it again needing to stop for further and this time more extensive repairs. This time it wasn't until September 19th that it finally set sail again. During this time twenty five of the people who had started the voyage in Portrush abandoned ship, some no doubt finding their way to New England by other means. But the misfortunes continued. The ship's master, John Cate, died of Small Pox, and the only mate, Matthias Haines, who was also ill of that same disease, was unable to continue the rest of the homeward voyage. As a result the passengers themselves were pressed into doing the rest of the repairs aboard ship and for the remainder of the voyage. We don't know much more about the rest of what would normally have been the more difficult part of the voyage, except that a new ships master was brought aboard and apparently most of the passengers were reluctantly obliged in the sailing and operations of the ship for the remainder of the passage.

The ship Lime finally arrived in Boston on November 16th, all in all, a nearly four month journey.

Other related page of interest:

Which Thomas Jameson was in the Ship Lime - A study and analysis.