The Jeanie Johnston is one of the most famous famine ships of Ireland’s great famine. The ship was originally a cargo ship, however the owner decided to use it to bring people to The United States and bring cargo back to Ireland. The tour showed us around an almost exact replica of this ship. It was very informational and interesting. The ship we saw sailed the same route that the Jeanine Johnston sailed, the only differences between the two ships was the current one had more safety features than the original. Throughout the tour, we learned that the Jeanie Johnston was the single best way to escape the great famine. During the six-year period of the great famine 100,000 people died on coffin ships, other ships bringing people to America, but no one died on the Jeanie Johnston. The main difference that made this ship safer is that the owner of the ship was from Ireland and knew his passengers. Because the owner knew his passengers and treated them like neighbors, he put a few simple precautions in place to ensure the health of the passengers. The first thing he did was transport only 200 people at a time. While the guide told us this fact, the twenty-some people on the tour were crammed into a very small room. I was shocked that 200 people had lived there for months, but even more shocked when our tour guide explained that most ships at the time carried many more 
than 200 people! Another simple precaution the owner took was hiring a good, qualified captain and a well-trained doctor who ensured that passengers were healthy before they boarded. Most “coffin ships” at this time didn’t have a doctor on board, which was part of the reason there was such a high death rate. Another big reason was that the owners of the other ships would not let the passengers above deck or let them empty the chamber pots, which led to diseases spreading very quickly. The tour guide showed us a replica of a chamber pot that would have been used. Imagining using this chamber pot and not being able to empty it for months was horrifying. On the Jeanie Johnston, the owner ensured that each passenger had at least an hour above deck each day to empty their chamber pots and shake out their bedsheets. While on the tour, I was able to compare what I was learning to Robert Whyte, Journey of an Irish Coffin ship, a journal about what life was like on these ships. In the journal, Whyte discusses the patients and sickness on board his ship. ” The number of patients upon the list now amounted to thirty and the effluvium of the hold was shocking. The passengers suffered much for want of pure water and the mate tried the quality of all the casks.” (Whyte) I was able to contrast this with having a doctor on the Jeanine Johnston and making sure that there were no sick passengers before setting sail. I could also see parts of the movie, Black 47, in the tour. Black 47 is a hollywood-esque movie that shows a little about life in Ireland during the famine. 
Our tour guide mostly focused on the ship, but he did touch on what pushed people out of Ireland and what happened to people who decided to stay. When he talked about this, I noticed similarities between the facts from the tour and the movie. An example of this is that the famine in Ireland was caused because of the rich exporting grain instead of feeding their country. The famine ship tour was an amazing experience, but after the tour I still wonder why other ship owners didn’t try to enact the simple procedures of the Jeanine Johnston. These procedures made the ships a lot safer and they were very cheap and easy to enact. I wonder if it’s just because the owners didn’t have a connection to their passengers or if they just didn’t want to spend the little money it costs? If they had only tried a little harder, or cared a little more, thousands of lives could have been saved.