It changed Ireland forever and cast a shadow over the country for the next 150 years. to find food. Irish Potato Famine, also known as the Great Famine, took place in Ireland between 1845 and 1852.It caused numerous deaths due to starvation and disease and led to mass emigration from the island. For instance, one Irish clan – The O’Donnell family of today’s Donegal – was known in continental Europe as the Fisher-Kings for the export of fish from North West Ireland to Europe. Clearly, during the Irish Potato Famine years of 1845 to 1850, the British government pursued a policy of mass starvation in Ireland with intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, and racial group commonly known as the Irish People. The Passenger Act of 1842 was the one under which the Irish potato famine exodus took place. No passenger deck was allowed beneath the … Ireland’s… The Great Famine also referred to as "The Great Hunger", that lasted between 1845 and 1849 was arguably the single greatest disaster that affected the Irish history.. There is no clear record of the number of deaths from the Potato Famine since members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) destroyed most church records in 1922. Here are 10 interesting facts about this event which is considered a … The estimates range from 500,000, to 1.5 million deaths due to starvation. The famine was caused by the potato blight (fungus) that was inadvertently brought over initially from North America to mainland Europe and had eventually made its way to Ireland during the summer of 1845. The Great Famine of the late 1840s is the single most catastrophic event in Irish history. A group of 600 Irish starving during the Great Hunger set out to Doolough, in County Mayo. [This article originally appeared in The Free Market, April 1998; Volume 16, Number 4.]. A STARVING population cut by a quarter, with a million dying and a million more emigrating as refugees, the Potato Famine of 1845-1852 shaped the history of Ireland more than any event since the pl… A heartbreaking Irish famine story of death and despair in a small west of Ireland village. It stipulated that the height between decks, where emigrants lived and slept during their voyage, had to be at least 4 feet (120cm). In other words, the Irish Famine was a genocide. Emigrants were trying to flee from the devastating potato famine which began in 1845, when the potato crop began to fail from blight (P. infestans). It caused a million deaths and forced a million people to emigrate. T he potato was not native to Ireland. This was an industrial affair and started at least as far back as the 1240s – fully 600 years before the Potato famine. It is believed that Sir Walter Raleigh brought the tuber to the island from the New World around 1570. ‘Coffin Ships’ were the name given to the emigration ships that carried members of the Irish population across the Atlantic to North America and Canada during the Irish famine.