In Lynbrook, mass grave of Irish shipwreck victims gets landmark status

Starting in late 1836, two ships filled mostly with Irish emigrants seeking a better life sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to New York before tragic wrecks only months apart left 215 dead in icy waters off Long Island's coast.

The ships Bristol and Mexico capsized and were wrecked offshore within two months of each other after pilots who were supposed to guide ships into New York Harbor had gone off duty. 

Back then, Hempstead Town residents buried the men, women and children and erected a monument in their memory at what's known as mariners' burial ground.

Last month, town board members designated that mass grave and monument at Rockville Cemetery in Lynbrook where 139 of the victims were interred as a historic landmark. The designation will preserve the victims' final resting place and give it greater protection against development or changes to the site. 

The Bristol wrecked on Nov. 21, 1836, followed by the wreck of the Mexico on Jan. 2, 1837.

The Bristol ran aground off Rockaway Beach a quarter-mile from shore before a massive wave splintered the vessel while it was stuck, causing 100 passengers to drown and leaving 44 survivors.

The Mexico smashed into a sandbar during a storm while about 200 yards off the shore of Long Beach. The single-digit temperatures caused 115 passengers to freeze to death, with rescuers able to save only eight crew members.

“They could hear the screams of the people,” said Lynbrook Village Historian Art Mattson, who wrote a book on the twin maritime disasters.

“They could see the frozen bodies. They saw a couple that came to shore. They were frozen together in an embrace. They couldn’t pry them apart so they put them in one coffin," he said.

Town residents who were horrified by the mass deaths collected funds  — including money salvaged from the pockets of unclaimed victims — to pay for the burials and the monument.

Later, the tragedies caught the attention of poet Walt Whitman, who lived in Hempstead Village and wrote about the wrecks in “Leaves of Grass" in 1855. 

In 1953, a young scholar who would later rise to a judgeship and become U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, wrote about the monument for New York Folklore Quarterly while a student at Cornell University.

But after her article on the double tragedy, attention mostly faded, Mattson said. 

He rediscovered the forgotten history of the shipwrecks shortly after moving to Lynbrook in 1972. He wandered into Rockville Cemetery, where he found the monument and burial site tucked away.

Mattson's discovery happened while he was grappling with his own personal tragedy at sea: his sister Irene had died while sailing to the Mediterranean when another boat struck hers.

Mattson traveled to England, Ireland and Salt Lake City, Utah, to conduct research, which led to his 2009 book, “Water and Ice: The Tragic Wrecks of the Bristol and the Mexico on the South Shore of Long Island.” 

It was Mattson and other Long Island history advocates, including East Rockaway Village Historian Frank Torre and Nassau County Ancient Order of Hibernians President Jack O’Brien, who called on the town to declare the burial ground a landmark. Town board members approved the measure March 14, and officials also created a 10-minute documentary on the wrecks. 

“I think they’d be delighted that they finally have a piece of land in America that’s theirs, that’s landmarked for them,” O’Brien said of the victims.

With Laura Mann

By Brinley Hineman

brinley.hineman@newsday.com

Brinley Hineman covers the Town of Hempstead and the City of Long Beach for Newsday. She previously was a reporter in Nashville, Tennessee, and is a West Virginia native.