SEARC'S WEB GUIDE - Edward Hay (1761-1826)

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Searc's Web Guide to 18th Century Ireland - Edward Hay (1761-1826)

Edward Hay was born in County Wexford. He was educated in England, France and in Germany. On his return to Ireland he joined the Catholic Committee and actively pursued the cause of Catholic Emancipation. In 1792 Hay became the Wexford delegate of the Committee of the Catholics in Ireland and in November of that year the Committee petitioned King George III to grant 'the union of all descriptions of subjects' which resulted in widespread Protestant unrest.
In January, 1795 Hay collected 22,251 signatures which he presented with a Petition from the Catholic Committee to King George on the 22nd of April, 1795. Hay turned his attention to developing a method of making a population census in Ireland, believing that, unless all Irish citizens were accounted for, it would be impossible to serve their interests properly. He submitted his plan to the Royal Irish Academy who subsequently appointed him a member.
In 1797 Hay planned to emigrate to America but was detained while trying to sell his possessions. When the Rising began in May, 1798 Hay was arrested and imprisoned aboard a prison ship in Wexford Harbour for five weeks before being moved to gaol in Dublin where, a year later, he was tried and acquitted of High Treason. This extract is from Hay's History of the Insurrection of the County of Wexford AD 1798 (1803).©

Two sloops had been prepared as prison-ships during the insurrection; one of them, however, was immediately condemned as unfit for that service, and afterwards, on the occasion of Lord Kingsborough and his Officers being put on board for a few hours, she was again, on the inspection of the butchers of Wexford, pronounced unfit for the reception of a pig.
After the second condemnation, the Lovely Kitty (for so this infernal vessel was called) was hauled to one side of the harbour, where, from her leaky state, she sunk within a foot of her deck, and so escaped firing when the other sloop which had been used as a prison-ship was burned.
This was the vessel the Wexford Commander ordered to be their prison-ship; and accordingly on the 3rd of July she was hauled into the channel, a little dry straw was shaken over that which remained in her hold for a month before, and the prisoners then were sent on board. Our walking on the fresh litter soon made it as wet as the dung underneath, so that it was impossible to sit or lie without imbibing the moisture; nor indeed could we have the comfort of resting against her sides, as the planks were water-soaked, and the effervesce of putrid malt, accumulated between her timbers, was so strong as even to turn silver black in our pockets, in the course of a few hours. The stench was, besides, insupportable; and there was such an infestation of rats, that some of the prisoners were bitten by them.
The weather at the time was mostly warm, and this raised such an exhalation, that small as the vessel was, we could scarcely see each other from either side of the hold. If it rained the deck was so open, that it was impossible, in any part of the ship, to avoid being wetted; and contrary to the usual state of leaky vessels, (where the bilge-water is not offensive) we were nearly suffocated while she was pumping.
In our own defence we were obliged to be continually at the pump, to prevent our being over-flowed; and though our last occupation at night, we were always summoned to the same task early every morning; the water, by this time, having got above the double flooring - a cautionary plan always used in vessels employed in the transportation of malt. Among the twenty-one doomed to this dreadful and loathsome confinement (which I believe not to be par by any dungeon in the world) there were desperate villains and scums of the earth; a circumstance more degrading and offensive to a liberal mind than any other punishment, which unable to aviod such intercourse, as was the case aboard the Lovely Kitty, whose burden was but about fifty tons. © Searc's Web Guide 1997-2008

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