Irish Famine - Coffin ships - 1847 - Glasgow.
'' No ships on which they had sailed had ever appeared like these one's. Looking down on them(from Greenock hills) from a distance, all that could be clearly discerned was the pink tinge of the enormous deck cargo, each of the tiny

ships was carrying. It was puzzling until one man produced a short brass telescope, he cried out '' mother of jesus!' when the glass defined the scene more clearly. Others exclaimed in disbelief, some were wailing and crying at the sight the little spyglass revealed to them.

For the deck cargo was human beings, so tightly packed together that the pink tinge they saw, from that distance, was the faces of humans, crammed closely together on the ship's decks. They were to become known as '' the ships of heads and faces '' ''

source - John Burrows Irish
newspaper - Glasgow Chronicle