The ships of sorrow
In 1819, ships sailed from the port of Inverness carrying displaced Highland families across the Atlantic to Nova Scotia. These vessels — overcrowded, poorly provisioned, and often barely seaworthy — were the transport of the Highland Clearances, carrying away communities that had lived in the glens for centuries. The departures from Inverness, Cromarty, and other northern ports became a recurring scene of anguish throughout the early 19th century.
The Highland Clearances were the forced removal of thousands of families from their ancestral lands to make way for large-scale sheep farming. Landlords, many of them clan chiefs who had once owed a duty of protection to their people, calculated that sheep were more profitable than tenants. Families were evicted from their homes, sometimes with only hours' notice. Houses were burned to prevent return. Those who resisted were met with force.
The ships that sailed from Inverness carried families who had often lost everything. They were packed below decks in conditions that were little better than slave ships. Disease was rife — typhus, dysentery, and smallpox killed many during the crossing. Those who survived faced the challenge of building new lives in the forests and coastlands of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, and Upper Canada. Many settlements in Nova Scotia still bear Gaelic names and maintain traditions brought from the Highlands two centuries ago.
The Clearances were not a single event but a process that continued for over a century, from the 1780s to the 1880s. The Sutherland Clearances of 1811-1820, the evictions on the islands of Rum and Skye, and the forced removals in Knoydart in 1853 were among the most notorious episodes. The Clearances depopulated the Highlands, destroyed the Gaelic-speaking community, and created a Highland diaspora that now numbers millions across Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. The empty glens of the Scottish Highlands are their memorial.