What were the coffin ships?
The name given to the worst of the emigrant ships of 1847, the Famine's deadliest year. The Canada route drew the poorest passengers because the fares were cheapest, and many of the ships were timber vessels making the return crossing with human ballast: crowded, short of food and clean water, and carrying typhus, which emigrants called ship fever. Disease spread below decks, and the quarantine station at Grosse Île below Quebec City was overwhelmed; 5,424 people from that year are buried on the island, passengers and some of those who nursed them. Not every Famine ship was a coffin ship, and crossings to New York, on better regulated American vessels, were generally safer. The name belongs to the worst of 1847, and it stuck because the worst was so bad.
Useful pages: Irish in USA · The Irish surnames map · Trace your Irish roots · Coming home · Irish around the world
Sources
- Published research on the Great Famine: National Museums NI teaching resources and peer reviewed studies
- Parks Canada: Grosse Ile and the Irish Memorial National Historic Site, pc.gc.ca
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