![]() ![]() Out of sentiment or to save labor, the bodies of children were placed alongside their mothers in the same coffin. The living were trying to identify the dead-a difficult task, since some of the bodies were bloated from drowning, while others had struck repeatedly against the rocks. Those victims who had already washed ashore lay in rough wooden boxes on a nearby hillside. ![]() When he arrived, fragments of the wreck were scattered across the strand. Two days later, a thirty-two-year-old Massachusetts native, en route from Concord to Cape Cod, got word of the disaster and detoured to Cohasset to see it for himself. All but nine crew members and roughly a dozen passengers perished. Within an hour, the ship had broken up entirely. Those below deck drowned when the hull smashed open. Early the next morning, the ship was caught in a northeaster, driven toward shore, and dashed upon the rocks just outside Cohasset Harbor. They had been at sea for a month now, with less than a day’s sail remaining, they celebrated the imminent end of their journey and, they hoped, the beginning of a better life in America. John was a so-called famine ship: Boston-bound from Galway, it was filled with passengers fleeing the mass starvation then devastating Ireland. ![]() On the evening of October 6, 1849, the hundred and twenty people aboard the brig St. ![]() Why, given his hypocrisy, sanctimony, and misanthropy, has Thoreau been so cherished? Illustration by Eric Nyquist ![]()
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