This provided the opportunity for archaeologists to explore Spike Island for the first time. The 104-acre island was under the ownership of the British and, later, the Irish military from the late eighteenth century until 2011, when it was transferred to the civilian Cork County Council. As the years wore on, some inmates were sent to Australia, some returned to their homes in Ireland, but many never made it off the island. In the 1840s, even minor offenses could get someone sent to Spike Island. While Spike Island did house hardened criminals and political prisoners-most famously Irish nationalist John Mitchel, for whom the fort that became the prison is now named-many confined there were petty thieves who had fallen on hard times and committed small crimes to make ends meet. The British, who controlled Ireland until 1921, conceived of the prison as a solution to what authorities saw as the increasing criminality of the Irish people. Early on, it was a place synonymous with death-more than 1, 000 prisoners perished in its first seven years of operation. Once the site of the largest prison in the British Empire, Spike Island was described by those held there as hell upon earth. Today, Cobh is perhaps best known as the place to catch the ferry to Spike Island, which is one of Ireland’s most popular tourist attractions. Memorials to both tragedies stand close to its waterfront. In the early twentieth century, the harbor’s scenic town of Cobh gained some notoriety for its link with two famous maritime disasters-it was the last port of call for Titanic in 1912 and, three years later, Lusitania was torpedoed just off its shores. At its northern end lies the mouth of the River Lee, and farther inland, Cork, the Republic of Ireland’s second-largest city. Pleasure yachts, cruise ships, tour boats, even Irish naval vessels, crisscross its waters. Located along Ireland’s southern coast, Cork Harbor is perpetually bustling with activity. It was Spike Island, the site of Ireland’s most notorious prison. The island was known all over Ireland, and everyone who sailed past it must have shuddered. Many were seeing their loved ones and their homeland for the last time.Īs they sailed out through Cork Harbor, they passed a foreboding island on their right featuring a bleak stone fortress that must have struck a jarring contrast to the colorful rows of Victorian architecture that lined the streets of the town they had just left behind. Tearful families gathered on the waterfront to say their goodbyes. 5 million Irish men, women, and children departed from Cobh alone, more than from any other port in Ireland. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as many as 2. Many of them left from the small town of Cobh, in Cork Harbor. This catastrophe, combined with the simmering social, religious, and political tensions associated with British rule in Ireland, forced thousands of people to flee the country each month. The repeated failure of the potato crop had driven millions of people to the brink of starvation. In the mid-nineteenth century, Ireland was in the midst of a crisis.

Spikeisland