Creating Irish Tourism: The First Century, 1750-1850 (Anthem Studies In Travel) - Softcover

Williams, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 085728407X ISBN 13: 9780857284075

Verlag: Anthem Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Based on the accounts of British and Anglo-Irish travelers, ‘Creating  Irish Tourism' charts the development of tourism in Ireland from its origins in the mid-eighteenth century to the country's emergence as a major European tourist destination a century later. The work shows how the Irish tourist experience evolved out of the interactions among travel writers, landlords, and visitors with the peasants who, as guides, jarvies, venders, porters and beggars, were as much a part of Irish tourism as the scenery itself.

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William H. A. Williams

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Creating Irish Tourism

The First Century, 1750–1850

By William H. A. Williams

Wimbledon Publishing Company

Copyright © 2011 William H. A. Williams
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85728-407-5

Contents

Preface, ix, 
Introduction, xi, 
Part I, 1, 
Chapter 1: Getting There and Getting About, 3, 
Chapter 2: Tours Grand and Petite, 27, 
Chapter 3: Property, Class and Irish Tourism, 49, 
Part II, 67, 
Chapter 4: The Sublime and the Picturesque in the Irish Landscape, 69, 
Chapter 5: Picturesque Tourist Sites in Ireland, 89, 
Chapter 6: The Tourist Experience, 107, 
Chapter 7: Killarney — A Case Study of the Irish Tourist Experience, 129, 
Part III, 151, 
Chapter 8: Tourist Semeiotics, Stereotypes and the Search for the Exotic, 153, 
Chapter 9: On the Road—In Search of Ireland, 165, 
Chapter 10: The Famine and After, 183, 
Conclusion, 193, 
Notes, 199, 
Bibliography, 227, 
Index, 245, 

CHAPTER 1

GETTING THERE AND GETTING ABOUT

When they embark on a journey, travelers begin a rite of passage, detaching themselves from their home and homeland, initiating a series of adventures and challenges, which, no matter how minimal, prepare them for their unfamiliar status as strangers in a new and different place. The longer and more difficult the trip, the greater their sense of leaving behind the certain and familiar for the strange and foreign. By the time of arrival the journey has already cost time and money, as well as the inevitable wear and tear on body, mind and spirit. Today's tourists must brave the traffic to the airport, negotiate crowds and endure delayed flights and endless security checks at the airport. Once on board the airplane, they must survive cramped seats and bad food. This is tame stuff, however, compared to travel a few centuries ago. Prior to the age of steam, anything beyond a trip to the next village required careful preparation, a good bit of time and much endurance.

Until the 1820s those British tourists intent on visiting Ireland had to first travel by coach or horseback to a western port and then board a sailing ship for a sea journey of uncertain duration and minimal comfort. For much of the eighteenth century, many Ireland-bound travelers went first to Chester, a six-to-seven day horseback ride from London. There they remained until they could take sail from Parkgate, a harbor twelve miles outside of the city. In the 1740s theatrical manager William Rufus Chetwood was lured out of his comfortable hotel in Chester by a Parkgate innkeeper, who had sent word that the ships would soon embark. It was all a ruse. Once ensconced in an uncomfortable but no less expensive establishment by the harbor, Chetwood found himself cooling his heels, awaiting both a ship and favorable winds. He finally gave up and hired a guide to take him on a three-day trip over the mountains of Wales to Carnarvon and then on to Holyhead. From there, with help of a telescope, he could at least see the Wicklow Mountains across the Irish Sea.

The shortest link between Great Britain and Ireland was from Port Patrick in Galloway, Scotland to Donaghadee in County Down, a route convenient only for those with business in Ulster. By the nineteenth century, however, Liverpool and Holyhead had become the preferred embarkation points from Britain, although one could also sail from Bristol to Cork. Anne Plumptre considered the Bristol route in 1814, until she realized that, after paying three guineas for the journey, she would still face the cost and time of the overland trip from Cork up to Dublin. She chose instead to pay just one guinea for the direct Liverpool to Dublin route. Sailing to Cork from Bristol sometimes offered worse than inconvenience and added expense. As John Bush noted, that route took ships nearer to the open sea and possible encounters with the French and Spanish privateers prowling Ireland's south coast. Even Samuel Derrick's ship out of Liverpool in the 1760s was attacked by a Frenchman. Fortunately, Derrick's vessel, itself bearing a letter of marque, was armed and easily drove off the intruder.

Usually nature proved more of a threat than pirates. Depending on the time of year, the waters around Britain and Ireland were frequently churned by storms. Around 1810, for instance, John Melish, an American business man, embarked on the usually short passage between Port Patrick to Donaghadee. Unfortunately, he encountered a gale worse than any experienced on his Atlantic crossing. After battling the storm for about for 27 hours within sight of the Irish coast, his ship returned to Port Patrick. When the wind changed, he crossed in just a few hours. In Chetwood's case, by the time he embarked from Holyhead, a storm arose, tossing the ship about so violently that he feared for his life. The vessel missed its Dublin landfall and had to make for Cork instead. In the 1760s John Bush endured a 40-hour storm-plagued trip from Holyhead to Dublin. Under such circumstances those prone to sea sickness could do nothing but accept the opportunity for what Bush called "a good stomach scouring."

Although less harrowing than storms, the complete absence of wind created its own problems. In 1792 Dr. Edward Daniel Clarke's ship out of Holyhead, after initially fighting headwinds, found itself completely becalmed the next day. Clarke's aesthetic sense suffered as much as his timetable: "There is such a degree of insipidity in its [the sea's] appearance: the water, like one vast mirror, smooth and glassy; the canvass all hanging supine ... the complexion of a storm contains something awful, grand, and interesting; the attention is awakened, and the mind alarmed, but in a calm I know no single feature of beauty; all is dullness and disappointment." An anonymous writer, becalmed in the Irish Sea in 1804, related how his fellow passages fished for gurnard and mackerel while waiting for a favorable wind. On one day in 1788, strollers along the strand at Bray in Wicklow were surprised to see 30 square-rigged ships becalmed off the Irish coast. Whether by storm or by calm, a delayed sea journey could leave travelers hungry, unless they had furnished themselves with ample provisions. Anne Plumptre had been told that her journey would take no more than 36 hours. Progress was slow, however, and, when her ship was becalmed on the second day, she found herself running short of food. She was still better off than Dr. Clarke, who discovered too late that the food hamper purchased from his hotel contained rotten meat.

It is little wonder that Anna Maria and Samuel Carter Hall had few good words for the sailing packets, usually small schooners or sloops, that plied the Irish Sea. The cramped accommodations and the lack of on-board food, not to mention the vagaries of the weather, rendered the Irish crossing "a kind of purgatory. ..." By the 1820s, however, the sea journey from Britain to Ireland had become less uncertain and uncomfortable. As a result of the long wars with France, British ship design had improved, while the introduction of steam in 1819 rendered sea travel less dependent upon fickle winds. Writing in the 1840s, the Halls announced (a bit too optimistically) that steam had essentially transformed England and Ireland into a single island. The sea crossings, they insisted, had become less fatiguing than a land trip from London to York. In addition, the fittings were elegant and the fares moderate. The trip from Bristol to Cork generally took only 24 hours; from Liverpool to Dublin 12 hours and from Holyhead to Dublin only...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Anthem Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 085728407X
• ISBN 13: 9780857284075
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland