Title
Kildavnet graveyard
Kildavnet graveyard
Description
This shows the grave of the young people who drowned in a tragic accident in 1894. About 400 people, many of them only teenagers, set off from Darby's Point, Cloughmore on the south east of Achill Island to travel to Scotland to work 'tattie hoking' or picking potatoes. That year an unusually large number of young people were travelling, due to a poor potato harvest on the island which had forced families to purchase seed potatoes in the spring. The boat the young people had boarded to take them to Westport, overturned when they all rushed to one side of it in their excitement to view the steamer they were about to board. 32 of the young people drowned including my grandmother's two brothers Martin and Joseph Cooney and her sister Nancy who was only 15.
This shows the grave of the young people who drowned in a tragic accident in 1894. About 400 people, many of them only teenagers, set off from Darby's Point, Cloughmore on the south east of Achill Island to travel to Scotland to work 'tattie hoking' or picking potatoes. That year an unusually large number of young people were travelling, due to a poor potato harvest on the island which had forced families to purchase seed potatoes in the spring. The boat the young people had boarded to take them to Westport, overturned when they all rushed to one side of it in their excitement to view the steamer they were about to board. 32 of the young people drowned including my grandmother's two brothers Martin and Joseph Cooney and her sister Nancy who was only 15.
