The Coffin Ship: Life and Death at Sea during the Great Irish Famine (The Glucksman Irish Diaspora Series)

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2022 Honorable Mention, Theodore Saloutos Book Award, given by the Immigration and Ethnic History Society A vivid, new portrait of Irish migration through the letters and diaries of those who fled their homeland during the Great Famine The standard story of the exodus during Ireland's Great Famine is one of tired clichés, half-truths, and dry statistics.In The Coffin Ship, a groundbreaking work of transnational history, Cian T.McMahon offers a vibrant, fresh perspective on an oft-ignored but vital component of the migration experience: the journey itself. Between 1845 and 1855, over two million people fled Ireland to escape the Great Famine and begin new lives abroad.The so-called "coffin ships" they embarked on have since become infamous icons of nineteenth-century migration.The crews were brutal, the captains were heartless, and the weather was ferocious.Yet the personal experiences of the emigrants aboard these vessels offer us a much more complex u