There was no immediate response from the British government but after the deaths of three Irish deck passengers on the Britannia from exposure in April 1849, the Liverpool doctor who examined the bodies wrote to the Liverpool Mercury denouncing.

Questions were asked in Parliament and the result was an official enquiry by Captain Denman, which examined the whole question of the passenger traffic between Great Britain and Ireland, listing the shipping companies and their ships, as well as giving details of fares, routes and conditions of travel. The Steam Packet Act was passed, coming into force in 1851.

The Act laid down that if the Board of Trade required it, the owners of a steam vessel would have to declare a maximum passenger rating for the vessel, and could be fined if those limits were exceeded. Enforcement was patchy and cases of deaths from exposure did continue to occur; moreover, many vessels that carried poorer Irish travellers were cargo boats rather than passenger ships.

Things had not significantly improved by 1854, when John Besnard, weigh-master at Cork, gave evidence to a parliamentary enquiry that he had seen Irish passengers disembarking at Liverpool and 'no language at my command can describe the scenes I witnessed there: the people prostrated, and scarcely able to walk after they got out of the steamers... the manner in which these passengers are carried from Irish to English ports is disgraceful, dangerous and inhuman'.

Besnard had seen one steamer sail with 1,100 deck passengers and 300 pigs travelling below decks - pigs travelled at half the fare but, he argued, were better looked after as they were of value to someone.

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