- description
- # CHAPTER LI. THE EMIGRANTS
## Overview
This is a chapter from the novel [Redburn: His First Voyage](arke:01KG8AJ9CVDS15WWAP46A9M4XP) by Herman Melville. The chapter, titled "CHAPTER LI. THE EMIGRANTS," describes the narrator's observations of Irish emigrants aboard a ship as they approach Ireland after having left for Liverpool weeks earlier. It was extracted from the source text file, [redburn.txt](arke:01KG89J1GP71YDJ60P8SRH97MF), and is part of the [Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW) collection.
## Context
The chapter is positioned between [CHAPTER L. HARRY BOLTON AT SEA](arke:01KG8AJT56E0P2PPTSG89EMH92) and [CHAPTER LII. THE EMIGRANTS’ KITCHEN](arke:01KG8AJT51W0VXG01P5T2QSR5Q) within the novel.
## Contents
The chapter recounts the narrator's experience with Irish emigrants on a ship. The emigrants, initially excited at the prospect of arriving in America, are crestfallen to discover that the land they see is actually Ireland, their point of departure. The narrator describes the emigrants as simple people with little understanding of distance, who would eagerly anticipate seeing America each morning. He also shares an anecdote about an old man who constantly searched for land and was amused by the sight of porpoises, which he called "great pigs of the sea."
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- CHAPTER LI. THE EMIGRANTS
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- 2026-01-30T20:47:38.127Z
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- CHAPTER LI.
THE EMIGRANTS
After the first miserable weather we experienced at sea, we had
intervals of foul and fair, mostly the former, however, attended with
head winds, till at last, after a three days’ fog and rain, the sun
rose cheerily one morning, and showed us Cape Clear. Thank heaven, we
were out of the weather emphatically called _“Channel weather,”_ and
the last we should see of the eastern hemisphere was now in plain
sight, and all the rest was broad ocean.
_Land ho!_ was cried, as the dark purple headland grew out of the
north. At the cry, the Irish emigrants came rushing up the hatchway,
thinking America itself was at hand.
“Where is it?” cried one of them, running out a little way on the
bowsprit. “Is _that_ it?”
“Aye, it doesn’t look much like _ould_ Ireland, does it?” said Jackson.
“Not a bit, honey:—and how long before we get there? to-night?”
Nothing could exceed the disappointment and grief of the emigrants,
when they were at last informed, that the land to the north was their
own native island, which, after leaving three or four weeks previous in
a steamboat for Liverpool, was now close to them again; and that, after
newly voyaging so many days from the Mersey, the Highlander was only
bringing them in view of the original home whence they started.
They were the most simple people I had ever seen. They seemed to have
no adequate idea of distances; and to them, America must have seemed as
a place just over a river. Every morning some of them came on deck, to
see how much nearer we were: and one old man would stand for hours
together, looking straight off from the bows, as if he expected to see
New York city every minute, when, perhaps, we were yet two thousand
miles distant, and steering, moreover, against a head wind.
The only thing that ever diverted this poor old man from his earnest
search for land, was the occasional appearance of porpoises under the
bows; when he would cry out at the top of his voice—“Look, look, ye
divils! look at the great pigs of the sea!”
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- CHAPTER LI. THE EMIGRANTS