The Wayfaring Stranger: Chapter Three

Chapter 3: The Dead of Night

It was more than ironic that Joseph Moore, a young man trying to stay alive, was silently slipping into a graveyard after midnight. This was the first of two places he must go before daylight.
Even in the darkness, he easily found the grave. He had been here plenty of times. His prior nighttime visits had occurred when sleep would not come and raw sorrow filled his heart. On nights like that, he would walk the three miles to this cemetery.
The stone marker he knelt in front of tonight was crude, but was the common type of marker in the cemeteries of the Irish poor. He could barely read the etched inscription: Winnie Malloy Moore 1810–1846.
Putting his head against the stone, Joseph said, “Mother, I’ve come to see ye and tell ye that I may not be back. I love t’is land, but I have to leave. However, you’ll go with me in me heart.”
Standing up, seemingly with the weight of the world on his shoulders, he reached down and picked up a pebble beside the headstone. Then he stopped—he heard something on the wind—the words of an old Irish tune.
Its words made Joseph smile and grimace at the same time. The words were soft and gentle on his heart: I am just going over Jordan.
I am just going over home.
His mother had spoken those last words just before she died. In that darkened room of their cabin that sorrowful day two years ago, he had watched life seep out of his mother. Her words were so faint that he had to lean down to make out her words.
I am a poor wayfaring stranger,
traveling through this world of woe.
There is no sickness, toil, or danger,
in that bright land to which I go.

The words were spoken so weakly he was not sure anyone else heard them. Looking around, he could tell his sisters had also heard—the words of one of their mother’s favorite songs, “The Wayfaring Stranger.”
She had stopped then— Then finally, she quietly sang, seemingly as if she saw something the others in the room didn’t see:
I am just—just going over Jordan.
I am just going over home.

Then—she was gone!
Joseph, now at his mother’s grave in the darkness, knew the wind was playing tricks on his mind, but he seemed to hear the words of that song again:
I am a poor wayfaring stranger,
wandering through this world of woe.
Then all was quiet . . . and he knew he must be gone.
Joseph Moore, now a wayfaring stranger himself, put the small pebble in his pocket, and hurried off into the darkness toward the village of Westport. He must hurry if he was to reach his second destination before daylight.

As he stole into the village, he went by the imposing dark walls of the workhouse at the top of Quay Hill. This was the last resort of refuge for many of the famine victims. When all else had failed, many had come into its prison-like conditions to live, work, and usually die. Joseph had spent two weeks inside those workhouse walls and had vowed to die before returning there.
As he passed the nearby potter’s field called “The Rocky,” his pace quickened as well as his resolve. Through gritted teeth, he said, “I will escape from this place. I must escape County Mayo if I am to live. I will not be buried in The Rocky!”
Hurrying past the workhouse under the cover of darkness, he moved along the cobblestone streets of Westport toward the harbor. The port, located where the mouth of the Carrowbeg River flowed into the Atlantic Ocean, was a busy one receiving and dispatching ships across to America, as well as to English and European ports.
There were four or five smaller freighters docked at the port. In the darkness, still limping from his dog bite and aching where the pellets had peppered him, Joseph shuffled quietly along the streets. In his confused yet focused mind, he had developed a plan to escape Smith. However, it was not a plan just for tonight or tomorrow. He had made up his mind to get as far away from Westport as possible.
He eased down to the pier alongside a freighter and quietly called out, “Snyder. Are you there? Hey, it’s Moore—Joe Moore. I need your help.”
The coastal freighter was named the Murphy. Because the river depth was only twelve feet at Westport Harbor, the huge transatlantic clippers could not come in this far. They docked at the nearby deep water harbor on the island of Inishlyre.
Smaller ships like the Murphy were called “hooker ships” and did the important job of ferrying supplies between the harbor and the big boats. To escape the trouble awaiting him in Westport, he needed to get to the island where the larger ocean-going ships were.
He heard his friend Snyder sleepily call out. Joseph stepped onto the gangplank and then onto the boat. Telling Snyder of his plight, his friend agreed to hide him and get him to the island.
With daylight, the Murphy sailed out of the harbor going to pick up another load of Indian corn that had arrived from America for the famine. Hiding below deck was Joseph Moore.
He hid on the ship throughout the day as the loading of the corn progressed. When the Murphy turned back toward Westport, Joseph climbed down a ladder into the cold water of Clew Bay. He silently swam to the dock and found a quiet spot, awaiting darkness.
Joseph’s plan was both simple and desperate: He planned to climb aboard one of the large ships as a stowaway. If the ship stopped in another Irish port such as Clifden—or even Liverpool, the nearest English port, he could climb off the ship and then figure out what to do next.
However, he was terrified with one thought: What if the ship he boarded was headed across the ocean? If he boarded an outbound ship, it could be going across the Atlantic to any of dozens of American ports; that journey would be a point of no return. He would be at the mercy of fate as to his destination as well as his destiny. The idea of crossing the ocean on one of these ships gave him a chill and a real fear of the unknown gripped him strongly: The thought of leaving Ireland, the home of his ancestors for seven hundred years, sobered him. But to stay was not an option.
At the same time, this great unknown lying before him offered brightness and hope that he had not felt in a long time living with the desperation and distress that depicted western Ireland. He was reminded that what he saw behind him did not offer much in the way of hope. Four years of famine, death, and emigration had sucked the life out of his beloved County Mayo. The silhouette of the ships, creaking as they rocked on the water of the harbor, seemed to beckon and say that his real future lay on one of them.
But which of these ships should he board? As dusk fell, he watched a line of three darkened ships moored together along the dock. For some reason, which he would wonder about for the rest of his life, he passed up these three ships and saw a fourth anchored off the dock.

The coffin ship memorial along Clew Bay near Westport, Ireland. (The coffin ships were the unseaworthy ships that many Irish immigrants left their homeland on. If you click on the picture, you'll see that skeletons/ghosts are swirling around the deck.)

It was about two hundred feet from the dock. Its three masts were fitted with sails and there was activity on the ship, evidenced by a number of glowing lanterns and the echoing of voices aboard ship. Joseph carefully watched the shadowy forms moving about on this vessel.
Growing up in a harbor town he knew that a ship anchored away from the dock with the sails set was ready to pull out soon. This was exactly what he needed for his escape.
It was quiet except for the gentle rocking of the ships against the dock and the clanging of a metal bracket hitting the wooden side of the farthest boat. He quietly dropped into the cold waters of Inishlyre Harbor and stealthily swam toward a rope ladder hanging down from the main deck.
A small canvas-covered rowboat was tied alongside the ship. Joseph quietly swam to the boat with his head low in the water.
Approaching the small boat, he grabbed hold of the side making sure not to rock it. A rope ladder hung down from the ship to rowboat.
A sailor above him on deck stood near the ladder. Joseph waited until he heard the silhouette’s steps walk away toward the stern of the ship. With cat-like quickness and quietness, he straddled the boat’s side with his arm and leg. He rolled into the bottom of the boat and lay for what seemed like minutes waiting for the opportune time to climb the ladder. Several times, he heard the sound of a man’s footfall as the sentry walked by.
Finally, having listened enough to the passing of the sentry to be able to time his rounds, he climbed the ladder after the sailor passed. Reaching the top, a climb of about fifteen feet, he cautiously peered over the ship’s edge to see a deck filled with barrels of all sizes. He hoisted himself over the ship’s railing, plopping down onto the main deck. He rolled over, found his feet, and quickly scrambled to the space between two rows of barrels.
Kneeling among the barrels, his heart pounded within his chest. The previous day and night had been full of terrible stress and anxiety. His head pounded and his stomach reminded him that he had not eaten since the day before, but none of that mattered now. He was locked into a survival mode and the adrenaline of being pursued had given him a determination to both survive and live beyond this crisis.
Looking back to ensure he hadn’t been seen, he crawled further in among the rows of wooden barrels lashed to the deck. Soon voices came toward him as two men conversed in a language he did not understand. Joseph had never taken time to glance at the ship’s flag or name. He only knew this was the ship that was going to take him away from trouble.
Settling in among the barrels for the long night ahead, he peered at the dark outline of nearby Westport, where a few remaining lights flickered. One by one the lights went out as the small village settled down for the night. Sitting hidden among the barrels, exhaustion soon overtook Joseph and he fell asleep.

The next morning, the jolt of the ship moving awakened Joseph with a start. He would later call it “His defining mark of coming to America.” Peering from his hiding place, he watched the ship moving slowly to sea. He had never actually been on the sea before, but in spite of the fear in the pit of his stomach, he breathed in the bay’s fresh air and watched as the island receded in size. On his left he watched Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s most beloved mountain, began to shrink steadily in size.
Croagh Patrick meant “Patrick’s Mountain” and was a landmark known by all. Joseph knew its story well: The mountain had played an historic role in the lore of Ireland. St. Patrick, sometime in the fifth century had spent forty days of Lent on the mountain. It was then that God had given him his mission to the Irish and the Saint had supposedly banished all snakes from the island.
He had climbed it alone on many occasions as well as been part of the yearly pilgrimages when barefooted pilgrims scaled and scrambled their way to the rocky summit.
Watching Croagh Patrick disappearing, this young stowaway, now on a pilgrimage of his own, wondered if he would ever see this mountain again. At that moment, he realized that he had literally never been out of the shadow of this mountain in his life. Looking one last time through the mist to see the mountain, Joseph Moore felt the most alone he’d ever felt in his seventeen years of life.
As if in a dream, he seemed to hear a song on the wind—it spoke to him as a reminder of what he now was:
A poor wayfaring stranger,
traveling through this world of woe.