February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
“The demand for a place on the trip has been huge,” according to a spokesman, who said the cost of a berth on the first leg to Tenerife in the Canaries is euro 2,500 and euro 3,500 euros for the subsequent crossing to Palm Beach, Fla.
It has a full program of 20 voyages up along the east coast of the U.S. and Canada planned for the summer and will not be returning to Ireland until October.
It is scheduled to arrive in Florida on April 17 and will call at 20 ports, working its way through Chesapeake in May, Delaware in June, New York and Boston in July and then farther north and into Canada in August and September.
After leaving Florida on April 28, it sails to Savannah, Ga., to arrive on May 2. It then leaves for Charleston, S.C., to arrive on May 15 and will remain there until May 19.
While in port, the Jeanie Johnston will be open to visitors who will get some sense of what it was like aboard an Irish emigrant ship during the Famine.
The ship, which cost euro 15 million to build, was seen off from Fenit in County Kerry on Sunday by Tourism Minister John O’Donoghue and the naval vessel LE Eithne.
The original Jeanie Johnston was built in Quebec in Canada in 1847 and never lost a single passenger to disease or the sea during 16 trans-Atlantic voyages.
Tom McCarthy, who was captain of the Asgard sail training vessel for nine years, relief captain of the Britain’s Lord Nelson and the sailing ship Tenacious for the last two years, will be in charge for this year