# Patrick Coffin

A coffin ship (Irish: long cónra) was any of the ships that carried Irish immigrants escaping the Great Irish Famine and Highlanders displaced by the Highland Clearances.Coffin 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. Owners of coffin ships provided as little food, water and living space as was legally possible, if they obeyed the law at all. While coffin ships were the cheapest way to cross the Atlantic, mortality rates of 30% aboard the coffin ships were common.