74 - Liberty's Sweet Shore

Words: John Doyle & Cathy Peterson Doyle
Tune: John Doyle

This song from John Doyle's 2011 album Shadow and Light, describes the plight of Irish migrants emigrating to North America.
Grosse Isle is located in the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada. The island was the site of an immigration depot which housed predominantly Irish immigrants coming to Canada to escape the Great Famine of 1845–1849 who had contracted typhus during their voyages. Thousands of Irish were quarantined on Grosse Isle from 1832 to 1848. John & Cathy Peterson Doyle have kindly given us permission to reproduce the lyrics here.
John Doyle's recording can also be found on the 2015 compilation "The Ballads of Child Migration - Songs for Britain's Child Migrants"

In this fading light the mainland
Lies vague but on the horizon
A lighthouse beaming its welcome
To Grosse Isle and liberty’s sweet shore

Three months and a day we’ve been sailing
Round pinnacles of ice we’ve been steering
Squalls and Nor’easters a-raging
To deliver us to liberty’s sweet shore

Sailing to liberty’s sweet shore
Sailing to liberty’s sweet shore
We left all we know to this new life we’ll go
Sailing to liberty’s sweet shore

Two pounds a head for the passage
With ease our landlord surrendered
And wiped his hands clean as he tendered
From a distance he watched us all go

We sail on the fifth day of September
Two hundred poor souls crammed together
From our families and homeland we’re severed
The clothes on our backs all we own

Sailing to liberty’s sweet shore …

We’re bowed down in sickness and in hunger
And we pray for the hand of the maker
My child was lost to a fever
A quick prayer then hauled over-board

Oceans of tears they are falling
In hope and despair both recalling
Now the gulls of St. Lawrence they are calling
Soon Quebec and liberty’s sweet shore

Sailing to liberty’s sweet shore
Sailing to liberty’s sweet shore
We left all we know to this new life we’ll go
Sailing to liberty’s sweet shore