An Examination of the Rough Cargo Capacity of the Irish Rover
There is, to my knowledge, no currently existing examination of the claims made in the Irish folk song, “The Irish Rover”, which attempts to estimate the approximate size of the vessel described in it’s lyrics. This is an attempt to estimate just that, or, falling short, to at least estimate the rough cargo volume allegedly carried by the vessel.
In order to “accurately” determine an estimated size of a vessel described in this song, we first must gather an estimation of the size required to carry the contents of the cargo hold, as described in the lyrics. Fortunately, precise numbers are found within the lyrics, with the exception of the primary cargo of the ship. In the first verse, the purpose of the journey is described as follows:
On the fourth of July eighteen hundred and six
We set sail from the sweet cove of Cork
We were sailing away with a cargo of bricks
For the grand city hall in New York
Our attempts to determine how many Irish bricks were used in the construction of New York’s City Hall ultimately led to the same conclusion; there are no written references to the use of any Irish bricks in that building. This is not terribly surprising, considering the weight of bricks, and the existence of the materials already in New York, or much closer than Ireland, from which bricks could easily have been made, as opposed to the shipping costs of taking them on a boat from County Cork, Ireland. So, from the beginning of our cargo estimation, we have a large unknown number, and no idea how to determine the capacity. Were the bricks bound for NY City Hall to be all of the bricks to be used? If so, we could determine the number of bricks used in the construction of that building, and estimate the size needed to carry that number of bricks, but the song doesn’t state this as fact, so it could well have been only a small portion of the bricks needed to build the building, with the assumption that said Irish Rover would be making sequential trips to transport the bricks, load by load.
So next, we examine the listed contents which are more precise; those provided in the subsequent verse which describes, line by line, the fine Irish items being brought along the journey.
We had one million bales of the best Sligo rags
We had two million barrels of stones
We had three million sides of old blind horses hides,
We had four million barrels of bones.
We had five million hogs, we had six million dogs,
Seven million barrels of porter.
We had eight million bails of old nanny goats’ tails,
In the hold of the Irish Rover.
We know the size of an average bale, which, in volume, comes to about 84.95 liters. This covers the “bales of Sligo rags”, and the “old nanny goats’ tails”. We know that the average size, in liters, of a barrel used for shipping is 160. Fortunately for our study, many of the items being shipped were being shipped in barrels. Horse hides, hogs, and dogs prove a bit more complicated, but are not inestimable.
If one were to buy a “horse hide” today, you can find them from a few different places geared towards manufacturers of leather goods. We were able to find a rawhide, meaning that the hair had already been removed, an assumption we are not willing to make about the original content here, available in sizes of “about 20 square feet”. The thickness we estimated in order to calculate the volume of one horse hide was .5 inches, with the assumption that while some horse hair may be, on average, longer than that, piling a substantial quantity of horse hides on top of one another would result in some degree of compression, thus settling at our .5” number. Also keep in mind that the “20 square feet” described is for an entire horse hide, so we halved that number in our calculations, to arrive at 0.0118 liters per horse hide.
For the hogs, it is unclear whether these were living or dead, but we can reasonably assume they were dead, or at least would be dead had the ship actually ever completed its journey, since there is no account of anything that would have been necessary to keep the horses alive during this journey. What would they have eaten? And how much water would they have needed for a journey from Cork to New York? Obviously, the hogs were shipped as meat. Therefore, we can assume that each hog would take about 141.584 liters, based on the size of half of a hog, times two, as it consumes space in a modern freezer.
As for the dogs, we basically slightly modified the size of the hog estimate, and arrived at “about 56.6337 liters per dog”. Again, we are assuming these dogs are being shipped as non-living parcels, not to be confused with the dog who was amongst the crew of the Irish Rover, who sadly drowned when the ship suffered its mortal collision with the rock.
Given all these numbers, this now becomes a simple series of calculations to estimate the non-brick cargo of the Rover, and one we performed with a spreadsheet:
Our grand total, in liters, comes out to 3,892,307,600, or 1.374555e+8ft³. And, again, this is the estimate not including the bricks listed as the primary reason for the journey. But then again, a volume this large would explain why the ship needed twenty seven masts.
Sadly, the world may never know the true size of the Irish Rover, as the crew, except for the song author, all passed away, either from the measles break-out, seven years into their journey, or from the tragic, somehow-fatal fog the ship became lost in, which resulted in the crew being winnowed down to the author and the ship’s living dog, who later perished when the ship was capsized.
Some things are better left as mysteries.
