Despatch had departed from Derry in late May, carrying nearly 200 Irish immigrants (and 11 crew members) bound for Quebec City, but on July 10, a fierce storm wrecked the brig on the rocks near Isle aux Morts.
Ann and her father were fishing as usual one early July morning when she sighted a keg and a straw bed floating in the turbulent seas.
This rock, three miles from shore, was barely large enough to hold the remaining survivors of the thirty or more who had died from exhaustion or washed away and drowned.
When Captain Grant of HMS Tyne arrived about eight days later, after receiving word of the wreck, they found no bread, flour or tea left in the Harvey home, their winter provisions all gone.
Grant replenished the food stocks of the Harveys and removed the survivors to Halifax, where news of the heroism of Ann and her father travelled throughout the island.
From Government House, Governor Thomas Cochrane applied to the Royal Humane Society for recognition of the family and a special medal was struck.