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|  By Richard Smith, who came to Concord in 1998 because of his love for the Concord Authors and Concord history. He can usually be seen around Concord doing Living History as Henry Thoreau, especially at Walden Pond.
 On Sunday October 7, 1849 the Irish brig St. John was
shipwrecked off the coast of Massachusetts near Cohasset. The ship
was a "famine ship" loaded with emigrants from Galway, Ireland who
were escaping the devastation of the potato famine, heading
to America and, hopefully, a new life. This ship wreck, the worst in
Cohasset's history, would have an impact on families on both sides
of the Atlantic. And, in a strange twist, the wreck would also
affect one of Concord's native sons, Henry David Thoreau, and the
story of the St. John would become one of his most gripping essays.As the brig entered Massachusetts Bay that Sunday morning it encountered a severe coastal storm. The ship's master, Captain Martin Oliver, dropped anchor two and a half miles off the coast, hoping to ride out the storm. But the St. John's anchors failed to hold and the ship was washed onto a submerged, rocky ledge- known locally as the Grampus Rock- with devastating results. Stuck between the rocks and the pounding surf, the St. John's hull was quickly torn apart, with terror-stricken emigrants being washed into the sea. In a panic, the crew began to cut away masts and sails in a desperate attempt to lighten the ship, but their work was useless; the St. John stayed on the rocks. Within an hour the hull was in pieces, and parts of the ship -- as well as the bodies of her passengers -- started to wash up on the beaches of Cohasset.
Two days later on October 9, Henry Thoreau and Ellery Channing left Concord for a trip to Cape Cod. This was to be Thoreau's first visit to the Cape. Having been "accustomed to...excursions to the Ponds within Concord" Thoreau now decided to "extend [his] excursions to the sea-shore." In Boston, the two companions saw handbills saying "Death! 145 lives lost at Cohasset!" This was news about the St. John. The prospect of seeing a shipwreck would be a novel experience to the two Concordians, something they just couldn't pass up. Thoreau and Channing decided to go to the Cape by way of Cohasset. When the two arrived in Cohasset, Thoreau noted that the sea was "still breaking violently on the rocks." And Cohasset was still in a state of confusion. Thoreau would later write movingly about the sights and sounds he and Channing saw all around them. Hundreds of people had now come to Cohasset, a strange mixture of the victim's relatives, curious on-lookers, scavengers and, oddly, even "sports-men in their hunting jackets." All were drawn to the small town because of the St. John disaster.
Thoreau and Channing saw the first mate, Henry Comerford, Jr., who had survived the wreck along with the captain. Thoreau described Comerford as a "slim-looking youth" who "seemed a little excited". Later, the two Concordians spoke with another survivor and Thoreau asked him some questions about the wreck but, not surprisingly, the man "seemed unwilling to talk about" the disaster and wandered off. Thoreau and Channing stayed in Cohasset overnight, then continued their holiday down the Cape the next day. But the town of Cohasset would continue to live with the St. John disaster for some time. The few souls who survived the wreck were put into various homes in Cohasset to recuperate, including the Cohasset almshouse. A young Cohasset girl, Elizabeth Lothrop, had witnessed the wreck from start to finish, and some of the half-drowned survivors were put in her home. A week later a funeral service was held for some of the victims. It was conducted by Unitarian minister Joseph Osgood, and here the connection with Henry Thoreau continues. Osgood was married to Ellen Sewell, the woman that Thoreau had proposed to in 1840! Thoreau had remained close to Ellen, as well as her husband, but it is not known if he visited the Osgoods on this trip or not. A second funeral was held after Osgood's, this one a Catholic Mass for the Irish victims. In all, 45 emigrants were buried, all unidentified, in a mass grave in Cohasset's cemetery. Today that grave is marked by a 20 foot high Celtic cross, placed there in 1914 by the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Thoreau's recollections of the wreck were published a few years later under the title "The Shipwreck" in the June, 1855 issue of Putnam's Magazine. Three years after Thoreau's death in 1862, the piece would be re-printed as Chapter One in his book "Cape Cod." It is one of Thoreau's more captivating -- and horrific -- pieces. Yet he coldly wrote that the wreck and it's aftermath of death and destruction was "not so impressive a scene as [he] might have expected."
The people of Cohasset, however, did not feel the same. For some, the wreck of the St. John would affect them their entire lives; the young Elizabeth Lothrop was one of them. She would later write in her journal that she feared her life would never be as "happy and carefree" as she had been before she witnessed the tragedy. Even today, 155 years later, residents of Galway, Ireland continue to visit Cohasset and the mass grave marked by the Celtic Cross. Some of the visitors are descendents of the St. John victims. To them, as well as to the residents of Cohasset, the wreck of the St. John will never be forgotten.
The Cohasset
Historical Society  
 
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In all, 99 persons died when the St. John went down. There
were some survivors, including Captian Oliver, but these numbered
only about 20. Many of the victims were from the counties of Galway
and Clare and the loss of life affected many families. In fact,
whole families were wiped out; emigrant Patrick McSweeney was
drowned while trying to save his wife and nine children; none
survived. 
Thoreau noted the huge boxes that had been built to
accomodate the dozens of bodies that had washed up on shore. "Marble
feet and matted heads" were all around him, and he even spotted "one
livid, swollen, and mangled body of a drowned girl," an emigrant
who was, in all liklihood, coming to America to find work as a maid
or a cook. At this stage, only two days after the wreck, only 27 or 28
bodies had been recovered; there were many more to come in the days
ahead. Yet, Thoreau noticed "no signs of grief", only "a sober
despatch [sic] of business which was affecting."
This was not callouseness on Thoreau's part. A true
Transcendentalist, he believed that, while "their empty hulks" were
washed ashore, in reality they had gone to a better place, that they
had "emigrated to a newer world." So why mourn them dead when they
were better off then those who had survived? 