A hooker is a large wooden-hulled sailing boat, typically used for fishing or cargo. We can only imagine the atmosphere at the quayside as the youngsters waited for the currachs to take them the short hop to one of four hookers which would bring them across Clew Bay to Westport, where they would transfer to a steamship to Scotland. These were purchased on credit to be repaid when the migrant workers returned later in the year, so families needed the income from as many working children as they could send. In 1894 it is believed that an unusually large number of first-timers were travelling, due to a poor potato harvest at home the previous year which forced families to purchase seed potatoes in the spring as their own were rotten. This annual event would see the young people of Achill travel to the west of Scotland to stay and work for up to six months during late spring, summer and into the autumn.
About 400 people, many of them teenagers, were about to set off on a journey to Scotland to work ‘tattie hoking’, or picking potatoes. They had traveled from villages all over Achill Island and the Curraun Peninsula. On the morning of 14th June 1894 a large crowd assembled at Darby’s Point, Cloughmore, at the south-east corner of Achill. 32 Achill People Drowned at Westport Quay
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