One of the show’s most striking displays is the ship’s wheel, a mighty object of oak and teak. Forbes, like the entire crew, was a civilian. In a strange foreshadowing of nativism, Congress wouldn’t pay for the supplies or allow Navy sailors to man the ships. It was one of two Navy ships sent to Ireland. Not coincidentally, Boston’s Irish-born population increased nearly sixfold between 18.Īmong the personalities is Robert Bennet Forbes (hence the involvement of the Forbes House Museum), who captained the USS Jamestown when it sailed to Ireland in 1847 with relief supplies from Boston. Within a few years, 1 million had died and another million had left the country. Ireland’s pre-famine population was 6 million. Some numbers remain staggering almost two centuries later. Recurring throughout are statistics and personalities (that’s where O’Reilly comes in). has organized the exhibition around several nodes: Boston’s response to the famine, nativism in Massachusetts in the 1850s, the Civil War, the emergence of the Irish as a political force. “The Irish Atlantic,” cosponsored by the Forbes House Museum, in Milton, looks at Irish immigration and its impact on Boston.
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