31 Coffin Ships Facts: Details On Irish Immigration Revealed

Can you guess how people escaped the Great Irish Famine?

In the mid 19th century, when the Great Irish Famine was raging, Irish emigrants fled from their country. They went to Canada and the United States by ships.

The Great Irish Famine, also known as the Irish Potato Famine or the Great Hunger, started in 1845 and lasted till 1852. During this time, the citizens of Ireland faced mass starvation as a result of potato blight, which infected the potato crops.

West and south of Ireland were severely affected, which forced them to flee.

The main aim of the Irish emigrants' families, when they fled the country, was to escape the Great Famine and attempt to find a better life elsewhere. The ones who tried to immigrate to America were met with rejection.

After rejection at US immigration stations, they were forced to return back across the ocean and restart their search for a new home. Because of this, many Irish emigrants resorted to traveling on coffin ships.

The coffin ships are named as such because they were deemed by sailors as being just as dangerous as taking a voyage on a coffin.

These coffin ships transported thousands of Irish immigrants who died during the journey due to starvation, disease, or abuse from opportunistic captains looking for an easy profit off of desperate travelers. Most of these ships had too many people than they could hold and too few survival supplies.

The Passenger Vessels Act was adopted in Britain in the 19th century to safeguard emigrant passengers, and it evolved over the years. New legislation was approved in 1828, signaling the British government's direct involvement in immigration concerns for the first time.

After a few years, regulations were imposed to establish the maximum number of people that the captain of the ship may take on board. Restrictions were also imposed to guarantee that there would be enough food and water during the journey. However, the legislation was not always enforced.

Continue reading to learn more about the coffin ships!

What are coffin ships?

Are you wondering what these coffins ships are that were used by the Irish families to escape the Great Irish Famine? Read on to learn some facts about the legendary coffin ships!

Any ship that used to transport Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Irish Famine and Highlanders displaced by the Highland Clearances was referred to as a coffin ship.

The coffin ships were built back in 1763 and could only legally only hold about 165 people on board, but they used to overflow with people, and it was disease-ridden. In addition to all this, these ships had limited access to food and water.

The limited access to food and water resulted in the deaths of many people as they crossed the Atlantic. The limited access to food and water even contributed to the 1847 North American typhus outbreak in quarantine facilities in Canada.

Coffin ship owners gave as little food, drink, and living space as was legally feasible, and merely half the people survived. In 1847, one coffin ship that sailed to Quebec City got lost in the storm somewhere around the Peninsula coast; 100 individuals survived, while 87 people died.

A coffin ship was named so because they were deemed by sailors as being just as dangerous as taking a voyage on a coffin. Even though coffin ships lacked sufficient food, water, or any type of medical care, many families still decided to board coffin ships due to their limited options in order to survive.

During the coffin ship journeys, there was no separation between passengers and the dead bodies that were laid on board with them. Those who died were left at sea.

Many coffin ships had as many as 300 people dying during a single journey, but coffin ship captains still charged families full fares even though people died before reaching their destination. It took them about 40 days to three months to reach America.

History Of Coffin Ships

Here are some historical facts about the coffin ships.

Some vessels from Northern Europe sailed exclusively in the spring and summer, until some time in the 19th century, to avoid ice and inclement weather on their transatlantic trip.

Despite the fact that it was the worst winter during those times in 1846, ships continued to leave Ireland. The majority of them traveled southwest to US ports.

Concerned about the degree of misery and disease aboard these ships, the US Congress swiftly approved two additional Passenger Acts to make the journey even more costly.

The next March, the minimum fare to New York increased to £7, which was a sum that was reasonably above the means of an average Irish family facing hunger. Nonetheless, by the middle of April, all tickets had been sold.

That year, around 85,000 passengers traveled straight from ports in the south and west, mostly Cork/Queenstown and Limerick. Another 11,000 went from Sligo, 9,000 from Dublin, and 4,000 crossed the Irish Sea to catch a ship from Liverpool, England.

The number of passengers that traveled from minor fishing ports like Baltimore, Killala, and Tralee is unknown, but it is certain that the passenger acts were not enforced and that the circumstances for their passengers were atrocious.

The ships that made it over the Atlantic Sea arrived at Grosse Isle, the Canadian immigration stop and depot established in the Gulf of St Lawrence (Ontario) in 1832 to detain sick immigrants to British North America.

Statistics for only one month, July 1847, showed the monstrosities that were taking place. Ten ships arrived that month; of the 4,427 Irish immigrants who had begun their trips, 804 perished on the voyage, and 847 were ill upon arrival on the deck.

Purpose Of Coffin Ships

Here are some purposes for coffin ships.

Coffin ships were used for long-distance voyages or where other ships might be unsafe coffins or boxes that contain a body, especially one for burial at sea.

The passenger ships became home to the Irish, who tried to escape the Great Famine and run to North America or Canada via the Atlantic crossing but failed to at least make it to the deck.

A coffin ship was any ship used to convey Irish emigrants escaping the Great Famine.

Uses And Features Of Coffin Ships

Continue reading to discover the uses and the features of the Coffin ships that played a huge part in protecting the people of Ireland and that led to the death of the people of Ireland too.

Many Irish found themselves settling in other European countries such as England, Scotland, and France due to their lack of port availability.

There was no distinction between the passengers, who were the emigrants from Ireland, and the passengers who were dead. Many coffin ships had up to 300 people die in a single voyage, yet coffin ship captains still charged full family fees, even if victims' death occurred before arriving at the shore.

The passage from Ireland to America was very expensive, which forced many immigrants into debt bondage for years after making it to America. In order to pay off their debts, they were often forced to work for free for a number of years.

During the coffin ship expedition, families were forced to stay together, which meant parents had to watch their children die before succumbing to death themselves.

The food supplied on coffin ships was not adequate for long voyages, which led to the people having no choice but to catch and cook any animals that happened to be swimming alongside the boat during their journey in order to survive starvation.

Many passengers also resorted to eating shoe leather strips in order to stave off hunger pains.

Coffin ships were often overcrowded with passengers who paid extremely high fares just to board. Since there was no medical care or proper food supplies on these ships, many passengers succumbed to illness for lack of treatment and starvation due to a lack of food.

During the coffin ship journeys, many Irish people faced life and death situations. Dysentery, a disease caused by bacteria in contaminated food or water, made their travel harder.

Did You Know?

Did you know that references to these ships have been made in popular culture? Read on to find out where!

The Pogues' song, 'Thousands Are Sailing', says that '...in a coffin ship I came here/And I never even got so far that they could alter my name'.

The Kenn Gordon and 1916 song 'The Ships' explains how they were packed with people, dead, sick, and healthy alike, and how they didn't expect to survive the voyage on the sea that they had paid for.

The coffin ships are mentioned by Irish poet Eavan Boland in her poem 'In a Bad Light' from the collection In a Time of Violence, as well as in her book 'Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time'.

The word 'coffin ship' was used by Flogging Molly, an Irish-American punk band, in their song 'You Won't Make a Fool Out of Me' from their album Float.

'The White Plague', a novel by Frank Herbert about a worldwide plague-like virus that only took the lives of women, included modern coffin ships that transported Irish people back home to their deaths, as ordered by the tale's antagonist who had released the infection.