Highland and Island Emigrant Passenger Lists

The emigration organised by the Highland and Island Emigration Society in the 1850s was the last substantial chapter in the story of the Clearances.  This society represented a short-term response to a specific problem in a particular geographical area.  The potato blight which brought on the Great Famine in Ireland earlier in the decade, struck the Isles and western Highlands in 1846.  Sir Charles Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, became very interested in the problems of the Highlands.  He properly saw emergency food supplies as a “useless palliative”.  He wrote to the Sheriff Substitute of Skye, Thomas Fraser, concerning the necessity of adopting a final measure of relief for the Western Highlands and Islands by transferring the surplus of the population to Australia.