They combined, however, absorbing the Irish and Scots, and no small part of the White English bloodline, to be described as a single demographic group a century later, with the Bermuda's population being divided into White and Black Bermudians. As 10,000 Bermudians had emigrated, prior to American independence, most of them White, this left Blacks with a slight majority. Portuguese immigration, which began with a shipload of Madeiran families in the 1840s has been offset by sustained immigration from the West Indies which began at the end of the 19th century.