Coffin Ship

A search on Google provides many references to Coffin Ships that carried emigrants escaping famines or clearances in Ireland or Scotland to distant lands.

Wikipedia has a long article on coffin ships. The first papagraph offers a succinct description: “A coffin ship (Irish: long cónra) is a popular idiom used to describe the ships that carried Irish migrants escaping the Great Irish Famine and Highlanders displaced by the Highland Clearances.^[1]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin_ship

The Irish National Famine Monument at the base of Croagh Patrick in Murrisk, County Mayo, depicts a coffin ship with skeletons and bones as rigging. (Photo by Robert Ball)

Swimmers

I have been known to lament about the Swimmers in my family, not those who take daily to the pool to do a few laps but Swimmers of the ancestor variety.

My mate Pauleen obviously has Swimmers in her family as she also suggested in a recent tweet that I include Swimmers in the Geneadictionary.

Swimmers: probably a southern hemisphere term for those whose arrival ship is unknown, and possibly likely to remain so.