steamer SS Dresden). Based on incomplete passenger list records, as well as on census returns (Buenos Aires 1855, national 1869 and national 1895) transcribed by Eduardo A. Coghlan (1982, 1987), researchers made elaborate calculations of the total number of immigrants. Juan Carlos Korol and Hilda Sabato estimated that the total number of Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century was between 10,500 and 11,500 (Cómo fue la inmigración irlandesa a la Argentina, 1981 p. 48). However, further research conducted by Patrick MacKenna shows that Coghlan, Korol and Sabato did not consider return migration and re-migration, which was significant after the 1880s, as well as the high mortality ratios for the Irish immigrants in certain periods before the 1869 census (e.g. during the 1868 cholera outbreak in the Buenos Aires province). For the nineteenth century, one out of every two Irish emigrants to Argentina went back to Ireland or re-migrated to the United States, Canada, Australia and other destinations. MacKenna says that Korol and Sabato "greatly underestimated the number of Irish immigrants" and considers that the total number of Irish immigrants in Argentina in the nineteenth century should be estimated in between 45,000 and 50,000 (M.A. thesis at NUI Maynooth, 1992, p. 83). The neglect of Anglo-Irish, Scot-Irish and in general Protestant Irish immigration in Argentina should add further numbers, particularly in the last peak of immigration after the 1920s Anglo-Irish War of Independence. The southernmost tip of Chile and Argentina, in places like the city of Punta Arenas and also the Falkland Islands, were other destinations for Irish and Scottish immigrants which are frequently underestimated. Eduardo A. Coghlan reported 16,284 Irish Argentines in Buenos Aires and Buenos Aires Province at the turn of the twentieth century. Only 4,693 of these had actually been born in Ireland, just 28.8% of the population, while another 11,591 individuals had been born in Argentina. At present, roughly 500,000 Argentines are of Irish descent. Economic activities The Irish immigrants settled mainly in Buenos Aires, the homonymous province, and the littoral provinces. Those in urban areas worked as labourers, merchants, employees, artisans, teachers, professionals and, increasingly after the 1860s and especially for women, as domestic servants. The Irish in the countryside worked as rural labourers, cattle dealers, and shepherds. Those in the flourishing sheep-farming business of 1840–1890 were most likely to succeed working as shepherds and sharing a half or a third of the produce in wool