I don’t think many realize how desperate a person who was not rich had to be to emigrate. The conditions were rough and the voyage was very expensive.
For my ancestor, that was during the Irish potato famine and people were literally starving to death. They were Protestant Irish, people now tell it like it was just the Catholics who were affected, but everyone was. I’ve read histories that indicate much of Northern Ireland was depopulated by the Famine, they all left for Canada or America.