![]() While coffin ships were the cheapest way to cross the Atlantic, mortality rates of 30 percent aboard the coffin ships were common. ![]() With death rates commonly reaching 20 percent and horror stories of 50 percent dying, these vessels soon became known as coffin ships. Owners of coffin ships provided as little food, water and living space as was legally possible, if they obeyed the law at all. Ĭoffin ships carrying emigrants, crowded and disease-ridden, with poor access to food and water, resulted in the deaths of many people as they crossed the Atlantic, and led to the 1847 North American typhus epidemic at quarantine stations in Canada. No one ever died on the Jeanie JohnsonĪ coffin ship ( Irish: long cónra) is a popular (but not entirely accurate) idiom used to describe the ships that carried Irish migrants escaping the Great Irish Famine and Highlanders displaced by the Highland Clearances. ![]() Replica of the "good ship" Jeanie Johnston, which sailed during the Great Hunger when coffin ships were common. For other uses, see Coffin ship (disambiguation). ![]()
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