Tall Ship Irish Famine History Guided Tour Dublin

The famine tall ship on Custom House Quay

The ship you board is a faithful replica of a three-masted barque built in Quebec in 1847, the worst year of the Great Famine. The original sailed from County Kerry to North America and became famous because, across many crossings, it is said never to have lost a passenger or crew member, a rare record at a time when so many famine ships earned the name coffin ships.

The replica was built in Kerry and launched at the turn of the millennium by craftsmen and volunteers from Ireland and abroad, then sailed across the Atlantic before settling in Dublin. Today it is moored at City Moorings on Custom House Quay, one of the most photographed spots in the Docklands, beside the bronze Famine Memorial figures on the same quay.

Above deck: masts, rigging and the shipping trade

The tour starts on the upper deck, where your guide explains how a 19th-century sailing ship worked, from the masts and sails to the ropes and the ship's wheel. You learn why the original vessel was first used to carry timber from Canada and how, during the famine years, ship owners filled the return voyages with emigrants.

From the deck you also see the River Liffey and the modern Docklands from a new angle, with the wind off the water and gulls overhead. It is the best moment for photos, and many visitors searching for unusual things to do in Dublin rate this part of the visit as a highlight before heading below.

Below deck: life on a famine voyage

Below deck the mood changes. You enter the low, narrow space where up to 250 passengers spent most of the voyage, crowded into simple wooden bunks and allowed on deck for only about half an hour of fresh air each day. Life-size figures and recreated belongings help you imagine the noise, darkness and smell of a crossing that could last six weeks or more.

Your guide introduces individual passengers and crew, telling how they raised the money for the fare, what food they carried, how they passed the time, and the dangers they faced from disease, hunger and storms. It is a respectful and personal way to understand the history of Irish emigration, and suitable for older children studying it at school.

The Great Famine and Irish emigration

Between 1845 and 1852, potato blight destroyed the main food source of Ireland's rural poor. Around one million people died and about one million more left the country, most of them for North America and Britain. Thousands crossed the Atlantic on sailing ships like this one, and the population of Ireland has still not returned to its pre-famine level.

This tour gives a human face to those numbers through the story of one ship and its passengers. Visitors interested in Irish emigration history in Dublin often combine it with other sights in the Docklands and along the north quays, all within easy walking distance of the ship, and the morning tours leave plenty of time for the rest of the day.