FOR HUNDREDS OF years scores of Boston-bound ships have foundered on the rocky ledges that lurk just beneath the waves all along the coast of Massachusetts Bay. The wreck of the brig St. John must surely be the most tragic of all. She was a “famine ship” out of Galway, packed full of hopeful youths and desperate families escaping the dire poverty rampant throughout Ireland during the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s. On October 7, 1849, after an uneventful month-long crossing of the North Atlantic, the St. John was hit by a grim nor’easter. She had just reached the entrance to Massachusetts Bay, so close to Boston that, the night before, Captain Oliver invited the passengers to light up the deck and share libations to celebrate the beginning of their new lives in America. It was indeed the end of their journey, but for most of them, the only new beginnings would be in the afterlife.
