Scotland no more: 5,000 Highlanders and a voyage to Australia
Alison Campsie reports on an exodus of families Down Under now that records of their emigration have been released online
Details of 5,000 Highlanders who emigrated to Australia amid an unprecedented exodus from Scotland during the 19th century have been published.
The records from the Highland and Islands Emigration Society have been released online by the National Records of Scotland.
The society was set up in the aftermath of the Highland potato famine that put 200,000 people at risk of starvation after disease first hit crops in the autumn of 1846.
The society’s aim was to address the appalling destitution endured by many on the islands and west mainland coastal communities.
Landowners, who were becoming insolvent in increasing numbers, supported clearing people off the land and contributed to the passage of their tenants to Australia, along with a number of wealthy benefactors – including Queen Victoria.
In 1852, a society pamphlet listed Prince Albert as the patron with Queen Victoria personally donating £300 to the cause.
Support also came from British colonies in Australia in return for emigrants arriving on their shores.
Residents from Skye were the first to be invited to apply for funding with around 3,000 people – many of them entire families – on a list of potential emigrants within a month of the scheme being launched.
Among those to leave were Donald Buchanan, his wife Ann and their three children, from Snizort, who were described as a “fine family” in emigration records.
The society replaced a system of poor relief that was seen by critics to be too generous and ineffective at bringing improvement in quality of life in the Highlands and Islands. Its opponents believed the system was at risk of making Highlanders dependent on handouts with moves taken to tighten up access to financial support. Eventually, a pound of meal was only available in exchange for an eight-hour stint of labour.
Sir Charles Trevelyan, assistant secretary to the Treasury and chairman of the Highlands and Islands Emigration Society, wrote in 1852: “The only immediate remedy for the present state of things in Skye is emigration and the people will never emigrate while they are supported at home at other people’s expense... they will see the necessity of emigrating and working for their subsistence instead of living in Idleness and habitually imposing upon benevolent persons.”
The society, underpinned by Trevelyan’s conservative views and often blatant anti-celtic bias, was determined to erase the “mistaken humanity” of charity and cure the social ills of the Highlands by removing its people, under coercive force if necessary, wrote Sir Tom Devine in his book To The Ends of The Earth, Scotland’s Global Diaspora.
Sir Charles proposed that 30,000 to 40,000 people from the western Highlands and Islands should emigrate, according to Sir Tom.
The chairman called for a ‘national effort’ to rid the land of ‘the surviving Irish and Scots Celts’ and encourage waves of Germans – “orderly, moral, industrious and frugal” – to take their place.
In July 1852, 951 people were sent from the Highlands, all from the lands of Lord Macdonald of Waternish, and from the estates of Skeabost and Burnsdale. People from Harris, North Uist, Iona and St Kilda later followed. An article on the society’s work published by National Records of Scotland said those boarding the ship Georgiana sang the 23rd psalm amidst much sobbing. Others departed with “beaming countenances” as if they were heading on a summer excursion, according to accounts.
The voyages were often beset with danger and disease. A mutiny was reported on the Georgiana, which left Glasgow in July 1852, after a number of passengers demanded to go on shore in search of gold.
The society wound up in 1857 as economic conditions improved and the demand for labour in Australia dwindled.