Wreck of the Mexico (1837)

[3] Daniel Melancthon Tredwell recalled "seeing the drowned and the frozen being brought from the beach in sleds and being placed in rows in John Lott's barn for the identification of the friends and relatives.

After a most disagreeable and boisterous passage of 69 days, at the most inclement season of the year, the vessel arrived off Sandy Hook, on Saturday night, Dec. 31, about 11 o'clock, and lay to, on discovering the light upon the Highlands of New Jersey.

The voyage had thus far been unusually long and tedious; the passengers had generally exhausted their stores of provision, and had for some time been allowed, one biscuit a day each, from the ship, a quantity barely sufficient to sustain life.

On Monday, the captain again approached the Hook, and also signalled for a pilot, in which he was equally unsuccessful...On Tuesday morning, 5 o'clock, after the most terrible buffeting with the waves, the crew and passengers being nearly perished with the cold, the vessel having drifted toward shore, struck the beach at Hempstead south, within about ten miles of the wreck of the Bristol.

The main and mizen masts were immediately cut away; the rudder was torn off, by collision with the bottom; the water was rising in the hold , and the spray, which dashed incessantly over the vessel, was instantly converted into ice.

The wretched and despairing passengers, driven from below by the accumulation of water, and without any means whatever of shelter or protection from the cold, crowded together upon the forward deck, exposed every moment either to be washed over board or frozen to death, as every thing around them was encrusted in ice.