Famine Ship Memorial

Two hundred names of the Famine Ship Memorial in Celia Griffin Memorial Park, Salthill, Galway, are cut into two sandstone sails flanking a limestone monument to Celia Griffin, a child of six who died on the streets during the Great Famine. The ships, sometimes called coffin ships, carried people fleeing hunger on decks so crowded and rotten that disease moved through them like a tide. To read one name is to imagine a life; to read two hundred is to hear a whole coast speaking at once.