The coffin-ship emigration
1846–1855 · Event
Over a decade some two million people flee Ireland — to Liverpool, Boston, New York, Quebec — many in overcrowded, fever-ridden hulks whose mortality earns them the name coffin ships; at the Grosse Île quarantine station alone, thousands are buried in mass graves. The Irish diaspora that shapes America, and Anglo-Irish memory, is made in these holds.
On these timelines: The Irish Famine, Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, USA, Master, Canada
More from The Irish Famine
- Great Famine of Ireland (1845)
- The potato blight reaches Ireland (1845)
- Black '47 (1847)
- London winds down famine relief (1847)
- The census counts Ireland's missing millions (1851)
- The Gregory clause (1847)
- Young Irelander Rebellion (1848)
Around 1846
- Revolutions of 1848 (1848)
- Opium Wars (1839)
- Crimean War (1853)
- Taiping Rebellion (1851)
- Perry Expedition to Japan (1853)
- Communist Manifesto (1848)
- Reign of Victoria (1837)
- Victorian era (1837)
- First public demonstration of surgical anaesthesia (1846)
- Revolutions of 1848 in Germany (1848)