The Argentina Connection - how the Spierin's got caught up in the Dresden Affair

I originally wrote this article in December 2010 but I am only getting around to posting it now.

Maurice Gleeson

June 2023

The Voyage Out

On the 16th August 1910, James Patrick Spierin set sail for Buenos Aires. But three months later, on his return journey, he would die of tuberculosis and was buried at sea. An intriguing mystery surrounds this trip, which, to this day, has not been resolved, and probably never will.

James was the eldest son of Edward Joseph Spierin (1835-1902) and Mary Agnes Ryan (1837-1922). He was born in Dublin in 1868 but spent his early years in Limerick as his father moved jobs. He followed in his father’s footsteps, and joined the railroad when he was 16, working as a clerk in an office. However, by 1902 he had branched out on his own, and was working for the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company – steamships.

In 1905, he married Charlotte Dorah O’Driscoll, daughter of John O’Driscoll, a successful Dublin tailor. They set up home in 107 Seville Place, and the following year they had a baby girl – Dorothea Margaret (Doreen).

1905 marriage record of James Patrick Spierin &
1906 birth record of his daughter

But in August 1910, James sailed from Liverpool for Buenos Aires via Monte Video on the Highland Watch (see the Additional Information section at the end of this article for further information). Now, this steamship belonged to the Nelson line, and ran a combined passenger/cargo service from Liverpool to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires.

In the twentieth century, the Nelson Line was an important carrier of Irish passengers to Argentina. Founded by James Nelson in Buenos Aires, this company pioneered the carriage of refrigerated cargos, including meat, operating from South America (Nelson owned Las Palmas meat-processing plant). With the emigrant flow to South America growing at a high rate, in 1910 Nelson added new calls in London, Boulogne, Corunna, and Vigo, and its ships were adapted to the emigrant trade. It became one of the associated companies of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Co., with its own subsidiaries. Some of the Nelson emigrant ships were Highland Corrie, Highland Glen, Highland Harris, and Highland Laddie. (from http://www.irishargentine.org/passenger.htm)

The manifest for the voyage in August 1910 lists three married couples, including a Mr Jas Spierin, a commercial traveller, who was marked down as travelling (second class) with his wife … who appears to be listed as Mrs Ada Elizabeth Swain! They were travelling with four children - 3 girls and a boy: Ada Lucretia Swain, Doris Eleanor Swain, Elsie Morrell Swain, and James Albert Swain.

But who was this woman? Why was she travelling with James? And why were they listed as husband and wife? Was James a bigamist? Or was it simply a mistake in the Register?

The Passenger List from the Highland Watch, 13th August 1910

The Return Journey

They would have landed in Buenos Aires about 21 days later (early September). He stayed in Argentina for 3 months before his return in early December 1910. But he never made it home. On 19th Dec 1910, he died at sea.

James' death notice - there was no telegraph
so his family would only have learnt of his death
after the boat docked

Back in Feb 2008, Dad and I went in search of his death records at the National Archive in Kew in the hope that it would answer some of the questions surrounding his death. It did. But it raised even more questions.

Dad perusing the Register of Deaths at Sea

James left Buenos Aires on the Araby, which presumably set sail for Liverpool via Montevideo in about 10th December 1910. It was a cargo ship with room for only 6 passengers, all second class (see Additional Information below).

James' last address in Buenos Aires was “No. 6, Parish Ward, British Hospital, Buenos Aires” … so he was sick before he left. The cause of death listed in the record was “consumption” (tuberculosis). And it gave the exact latitude and longitude of where he died, or rather, where he was buried at sea: 1.5 degrees North, 28.53 degrees West, halfway between the coast of South America and West Africa – almost as far from land as he could have been.

The burial location of James Patrick Spierin

The voyage would have taken about 21 days in total, and 9 days to reach the place where James died, in the mid-Atlantic, with no prospect of hospitalisation. Why did they bury him at sea? Did the ship lack adequate refrigeration? Or was he considered highly infectious and the body had to be disposed of? What was the process in those days?

And he was travelling under a false name! He was listed in the manifest of passengers as both James Spierin and John Dayly – why?! Was he trying to hide something?

Entry for James' death in the Register of Deaths at Sea

The Mystery Woman

According to the 1901 census of England, Ada Elizabeth Swain (nee Stark) was born about 1875, in Hull. She married Albert Morrell Swain about 1897. He was a year younger than her and was also born in Yorkshire (Goole Bridge). They had at least 4 children - only 2 are listed in the 1901 census: Ada Luacha Swain and Doris Eleanor Swain. But by the time she left for Argentina , she had had two more. In the 1881 census, Albert is 5 years old, and one of 9 children. His parents were James Swain (b1843) and Sarah Elizabeth Morrell (b1845). Albert’s father was an “engine man”. Is this the connection? Did both families work on the railways?

Several people have family trees on www.ancestry.com that tie into this family (esp. the Swain Family Tree, and Nunn Family Tree), and together with the censuses (a very rich source of information) it is possible to trace both sides of their families back another two generations to the early 1810’s (see charts below).

Albert and Ada travelled back and forth to Argentina several times, sometimes alone, sometimes together, sometimes with one or several of their children. Entries from the various manifest lists are extracted below. They appear to have lived between Hull and Buenos Aires. Albert was an engine driver so probably worked on the railways in Argentina.

10th Aug 1916 – on the Deseado from Rio de Janeiro to Plymouth, UK (gives his address and occupation)

24th Jun 1920 – on the Deseado from Buenos Aires to Liverpool (Ada travelled with her 5 children but no husband)

11th Jun 1927 – the Desna from Buenos Aires to Liverpool (Albert travelled with his wife and Ethel Swain, 20. They lived in the Argentine, Ethel in the UK)

25th Aug 1927 – Albert travelled on the Alcantara from Southampton to Buenos Aires (engine driver)

11th April 1930 – Ada travelled alone on the Darro from Buenos Aires to Liverpool as a first class passenger

28th Jan 1937 – Albert & ADA, on the Highland Chieftain from La Plata, Argentina to London (destination Hull)

These various passenger lists allow us to build up a picture of Albert and Ada’s children and their frequent transatlantic crossings.

So what really happened?

Where was Albert in August 1910? Why was Ada travelling with James Spierin to Buenos Aires, with all her children in tow? What was going on? Was James just standing in for her husband? Was he escorting her safely to join her husband in Buenos Aires? Or was he a bigamist?

James’ father Edward was Goods Manager for the Great Southern and Western Railway at the North Wall in Dublin. His work may have entailed dealing with goods transported by rail to Liverpool and thence via steamship to Dublin Port. James may have taken the job with the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company to help his father in this regard. So maybe the families met as a result of their work.

Were there any other reason for James to visit Argentina? Well actually there were! Some of his first cousins had travelled out there on the infamous “City of Dresden” in 1889. The scandal surrounding this particular voyage later became known as The Dresden Affair and effectively put paid to further emigration from Ireland to Argentina (see Additional Information below).

The ship arrived in Buenos Aires on 16th Feb 1889 with 2000 Irish passengers on board. Some had died on the 19 day journey, probably from lack of food and dehydration. The agents for the Argentine government in Ireland (J. O’Meara & John S. Dillon) had promised that the immigrants “would have houses to live in, seed to sow, machinery to work with, and the most fertile land in the world to farm”. Sadly, these were all lies. The immigrants were left destitute. The food and accommodation they were promised did not exist.

Despite appeals to the local community for assistance, many of the immigrants had to resort to desperate measures. Young girls entered prostitution. Others were conned again into working for the promise of free housing and land, which never materialised. One group of families were taken 200 miles by train into the countryside and abandoned. Another group of over 600 colonists were taken to Naposta (400 miles from Bueons Aires) where they eked out a miserable existence living in tents or ditches or under trees. One hundred of them died over 2 years before the decision was taken by the remaining 520 colonists to travel the 400 miles back to Buenos Aires on foot. Many died on the return journey. When news of the scandal reached Ireland, emigration to Argentina was effectively quashed.

James' first cousins who had travelled out on the City of Dresden were children of his uncle Patrick – Michael Speirin (21), his brother John Speirin (26), and John’s wife Charlotte Galvin (22), and their 6-month old daughter, Jane.

Michael returned to Ireland the following year, but it looks like John and Charlotte stayed behind. However, they must have fallen on hard times for by 1895, Jane (Jennie) and her younger sister Carrie were in an orphanage. Years later, in 1928, they returned from Buenos Aires to stay with their uncle Michael in Birkenhead, the same uncle who had travelled with their parents to Argentina in 1889.

So in August 1910, perhaps James Spierin was going out to Argentina to visit his cousins. Or he may have been evaluating some business opportunities there (after all, he was listed on the ship’s manifest as a Commercial Traveller).

And as for returning under a false name … maybe a friend saw how sick he was and gave him his own ticket to try to get him home as quickly as possible. Maybe that friend’s name was John Dayly. Maybe he told him “don’t tell them who you really are until you’re sure they can’t turn back or put you ashore” …

At any rate, poor old James Spierin passed away half-way across the Atlantic. He must have been very sick. Perhaps the other passengers shunned him for fear of infection. Perhaps he spent his days on the deck, exposed to the potentially curative powers of the fresh air. Perhaps, as he looked across the sea, he came to realize that despite his best intentions, he would never see his wife and child again …

But who knows what the real story was …

Abbreviated family tree - James P Spierin is far left, 3rd row down.
His 1st cousins John & & Michael are also in the 3rd row.
My grandfather (Jack Gleeson) is in the 4th row.

Additional Information

The Highland Watch

Here is some info about the Highland Watch (from http://www.merchantnavyofficers.com/nelson.html):

Completed for Nelson Line (Liverpool) Ltd in 1901 and sunk by torpedo when south east of St. Catherine's point on the 7th of April 1918. There followed the Highland Enterprise and the Highland Hope from the yard of Russell and Company, Port Glasgow, in 1903.

Then came three larger vessels of just over 6,000 gross tons from Russell's yard, all completed in 1904. Named Highland Harris, Highland Heather and Highland Watch, they had considerably more passenger accommodation, divided into first- and second-class, and were remarkably successful in establishing the reputation of the company for a reasonable passenger service to the River Plate. The ships had a deadweight capacity of 7,250 tons, and triple-expansion engines giving a speed of 12 knots. Accommodation for the passengers was comfortable but not elaborate, and they soon had a regular clientele among South American travellers who did not care for the grandeur of the Southampton mail ships.

 

The Araby

The Araby was a ship of the MacIver Line. The MacIver family were pioneers in steamships and operated coastal steamship services from Glasgow as early as 1831. David and Charles MacIver were closely associated with Samuel Cunard in the formation of the Cunard Line.

David MacIver, a nephew of the original founder was admitted into the Cunard partnership in 1863, but left the company in 1874 to found his own steamship line. His earliest ships were registered under the name of Birkenhead Shipping Co., Ltd and these were followed by a number of one ship companies, all managed by David MacIver & Co. In 1894 a new company was registered in the name of David MacIver, Sons & Co. and all subsequent ships were registered in this ownership.

In its early days, the MacIver Line had no regular routes, but in 1885 a regular trade was established between Liverpool, Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Rosario.

Accidents were few, but in 1890 the Thessaly caught fire at sea while carrying a cargo of cotton between New Orleans and Hamburg and was lost. Losses were heavy during the Great War with the Araby being wrecked near Boulogne in 1916, Barbary was torpedoed and sunk near Port Said in 1917, Gascony torpedoed and sunk off Portsmouth in 1917 and the Brittany was sunk after collision with HMS Eglantine the same year. The last loss was the Tartary which was torpedoed off Ireland in 1918.

The whole of the shares of David MacIver, Sons & Co. were purchased by Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. in 1919 and the name of the company changed to David MacIver & Co., Ltd. Although owned by Royal Mail, the ships continued to sail under their old colours and Liverpool management.

In 1932 the whole of the MacIver ships were transferred to the Royal Mail Line and their grey hulls and red black-topped funnels were changed to the black hull and buff funnel of Royal Mail. At this time, the MacIver Line lost its identity and went into liquidation.


The City of Dresden

Argentina: Land of Broken Promises

By Michael John Geraghty
Buenos Aires Herald, 17 March 1999

From http://www.irlandeses.org/dresden.htm

The Irish and their descendants have always come together on St. Patrick’s Day, today, to celebrate in prayer, parade and party, the arrival in Ireland in 432 of St. Patrick and Christianity. Some of these festivities, such as the Fifth Avenue parade in New York, have become world famous.

The 2,000 Irish immigrants who arrived in Buenos Aires on the M.V. City of Dresden on 16 February 1889, had less than little to celebrate on St. Patrick’s Day that year. The "Dresden affair", as it was then called, became infamous and was denounced in Parliament, press and pulpit. Argentina, their "land of promise," became the land of broken promises.

Here’s what happened.

The Argentine government of 1889, under President Miguel Juárez Celman, actively encouraged immigration. It issued 50,000 free passages and its agents promoted Argentina all over Europe where people were sick and tired of toiling in poverty and pillage and were more than ready to take their chances on foreign shores. Droves of immigrants were sailing west every day to the New World – most to North America and a few to South America. The Irish immigration to Argentina began around 1825, peaked in 1848, and by the end of the century had petered down to a trickle as a result of the "Dresden Affair".

Some of the early immigrants had done very well - rags to riches - thanks to the sheep and wool business that boomed as 19th -century Argentine sheep breeders disputed leadership of the international wool trade with Australia. These immigrants were originally from the farmlands of Wexford and the Irish midlands - Westmeath, Longford and north Offaly - and they knew how to dig ditches, handle sheep, cattle and horses and thrived on hard work and hard conditions. Irish diplomat, Timothy Horan, wrote in 1958: "it is one of history’s little ironies that our immigrants came to Argentina to assist in building up a system and a class the creation of which in Ireland had led to their own emigration".

The City of Dresden carried the largest number of passengers ever to arrive in Argentina from any one destination on any one vessel. British immigrants – and the Irish were British at the time – were highly prized by governments as decent, hard working, God-fearing people who would improve their lot and their adopted land by the strength of their limbs and the sweat of their brows. The Argentine government agents in Ireland - J. O’Meara, and John S. Dillon, a brother of the famous Canon Patrick Dillon who founded The Southern Cross – made effective sales pitches for Argentina as "the finest region under the southern cross".

Unfortunately honesty was not among O’Meara’s or Dillon’s virtues - both of them were Irish. To get their commissions they lied through their teeth and told the desperate Irish they would have houses to live in, seed to sow, machinery to work with, and the most fertile land in the world to farm. They said a famous patriarch priest and benefactor, Fr. Anthony Fahy, had his own bank to finance all of this. At the time, Fr. Fahy was almost twenty years dead and buried!

It had taken O’Meara and Dillon more than two years to get 2,000 people together to fill the City of Dresden. The delay was caused by a press campaign conducted by influential Irish and Anglo-Argentines in Buenos Aires who knew perfectly well that the promises made by these two Argentine government agents in Ireland would not be fulfilled.

Nevertheless, O’ Meara and Dillon left no stone unturned and even "decrepit octogenarians" were accepted for the voyage. According to The Story of the Irish in Argentina, a book by Thomas Murray published in 1919, rumor had it "convicts undergoing terms of imprisonment in Limerick and Cork jails who were released on condition they would not return to Ireland," were also on board.

The City of Dresden, built in Glasgow in 1888 for Norddeutscher Lloyd as an immigrant ship, could carry 38 first-class, 20 second-class and 1,759 third-class passengers. On the voyage to Buenos Aires some passengers died at sea, probably due to lack of food and water.

Serious difficulties immediately arose when the ship docked in Buenos Aires. After nineteen days at sea, the passengers arrived undernourished and dehydrated. They had sailed from Cobh – "the holy ground" - on a bitterly cold winter’s day into a heat beyond their wildest imagination. The food and accommodation O’Meara and Dillon had promised them in Buenos Aires simply did not exist. The only lodging available, the Hotel de Inmigrantes, was, according to La Prensa, a "pigeon house in the Retiro". It was known as the Rotonda and was located where the Mitre terminal of Retiro railway station is today.

"It was a piece of cruel burlesque to speak of the place as a hotel, for there were no beds; the people had to sleep huddled together on the bare floors, and there was scarcely any food provided, although the government was spending one million dollars a year to provide accommodation to newly-landed immigrants," Reverend John Santos Gaynor wrote inThe Story of St. Joseph’s Society published in 1941.

The plight of the immigrants was compounded because Argentina was at that time going through a boom in immigration and 20,000 people were arriving at the port of Buenos Aires every month. The City of Dresden and the Duchesa di Genovacarrying 1,000 Italians arrived on the same day. It was a veritable Tower of Babel for the incoming Irish who could not understand a word of Spanish or Italian, the linguas francas on the teeming docks where husbands were separated from wives, children from parents, brothers and sisters from each other.

"The Immigration Department of those days was, like most other government departments, mostly an institute for the upkeep of party hangers-on who had no thought of honestly earning their salaries", Murray wrote. In The Southern Cross, Father Matthew Gaughran O.M.I. who was in Argentina on a fund-raising mission wrote that "anything more scandalous could not be imagined. Men, women and children, whose blanched faces told of sickness, hunger and exhaustion after the fatigues of the journey had to sleep as best they might on the flags of the courtyard. Children ran around naked. To say they were treated like cattle would not be true, for the owner of cattle would at least provide them with food and drink, but these poor people were left to live or die unaided by the officials who are paid to look after them".

The local Irish and Anglo-Argentine community as well as the British Consulate made appeals to the community on behalf of the immigrants in The Standard, The Buenos Aires Herald, and The Southern Cross. Temporary accommodation was found for families in stables on the Paseo de Julio which were, according to La Prensa, "an immense pool of putrid, stagnant, filthy water". They were later moved to a hovel in Plaza Constitución and to a shed near the port on 25 de Mayo. Young single women and girls were sent to the Irish Convent on Tucumán street.

Nevertheless, according to The Southern Cross, "young girls of prepossessing appearance were inveigled into disreputable houses – a swell carriage with swell occupants drives up, promises of a splendid situation are made and accepted, and away go the unsuspecting girls". Thus began a long tradition of Irish whores in the squalid, now-gone-red-light port area of Buenos Aires and some of the most famous "madams" were reputed to be Irish!

A lucky few of the immigrants found employment with rich families and landowners in the Irish and Anglo-Argentine community. Quirno Costa, the Argentine Foreign Minister, took a number of families to work on his estates. Renowned tailor, hosier and hatter, James Smart, offered work to any tailors on board at his business on Piedad street. Some others found their way to Rosario in the province of Santa Fé, and others to Quilmes, Zárate and Mercedes in the province of Buenos Aires.

For the great majority of the immigrants however, there was nothing and the trail of broken promises continued. One colony offered free to each family a two-room house on a 50-hectare ranch. The only requirement for ownership was to live on and till the land. After two years, the family would receive its title deed. If an additional 100 hectares were purchased at $4 a hectare, a team of bullocks, a plough, and fifty sheep would be also thrown in for good measure. The families that entered into the agreement toiled and tilled their land but the deeds, the bullocks, nor the machinery were ever forthcoming.

According to The Standard, a group of families were offered farm employment and were taken by train 200 miles into the province of Buenos Aires. At a railway station next-door to nowhere the train stopped in the middle of the night. The guide told the immigrants they had arrived, to get off and wait for him while he went to the farm to fetch transport. He never returned!

This was mild compared to what happened to the colonists who reached Napostá, north of Bahía Blanca. David Gartland, an Irish-American businessman who had started a colony there, offered each family 40 hectares, 1,000 pesos at nine-percent annual interest and 12 years to pay back the loan.

When the would-be colonists got to Napostá, they had no luggage. It had been sent on separately and was "lost". The land was there to work but there were no houses and no way to build them because Gartland did not have enough money to finance his project. Those who had tents lived in them and those who did not lived under trees or in ditches, neither of which were very plentiful on an open, windswept plain, dry and dusty in summer, cold and wet in winter.

Dublin-born Fr. Matthew Gaughran was their only true friend. He discontinued his fund-raising, traveled to Napostá and lived for some months with the poor unfortunates attending their spiritual needs. "The immigrants eked out a miserable existence for two years. The land was unsuitable for agriculture", wrote Gaynor of the St. Joseph’s Society, "the death rate was terrific: over 100 deaths in two years. In March 1891 the colony was broken up and 520 colonists trekked the 400 miles back to Buenos Aires". Some of them never made it and fell along the wayside broken in spirit and utterly destitute.

The City of Dresden affair did not go unnoticed. The Archbishop of Cashel, T.W. Croke, minced no words and left no one in any doubt about his feelings in an 1889 letter to Dublin’s The Freeman’s Journal : "Buenos Aires is a most cosmopolitan city into which the Revolution of ’48 has brought the scum of European scoundrelism. I most solemnly conjure my poorer countrymen, as they value their happiness hereafter, never to set foot on the Argentine Republic however tempted to do so they may be by offers of a passage or an assurance of comfortable homes".

Such reports effectively finished any further organized emigration from Ireland to Argentina. In May 1889, The Southern Cross wrote: "if the Argentine government should have employed agents in Ireland to dissuade people from coming to this country, they could not have succeeded better than they have done through the services of Messrs O’Meara and Dillon…Whoever in the old country may have previously approved of this country as a field for immigration will do so no longer and the occupation of the agents is gone forever".

For its part the M.V. City of Dresden sailed the seven seas – Europe and America north and south, Australia and the Far East, Suez and South Africa – until it was sold to the Houston Line in 1903 and renamed "Helius". In 1904 it went to the Union Castle Line and was laid up until Turkey purchased it in 1906 and renamed it "Tirimujghian" to sail the Black Sea where it was sunk by a Russian torpedo in the early days of World War 1.