“O’Grady, Mary,” A stern voice called out, sounding as if the person it belonged to wanted to be anywhere but here. A young woman ran out of the crowd after hearing her name, rushing on board the small wooden ship with the words “Queen Victoria” painted on its side.

“O’Casey, Ardál,” the voice drawled out again, the English accent finding it hard to pronounce the Gaelic name. Out of the crowd there came a boring looking old man, with a wrinkled forehead and graying black hair. He took his time boarding the Queen Victoria, perhaps taking in one final look at the land where he, and his ancestors, grew up and where they had called home. His only belongings were the ancient, cracked leather suitcase that he gripped tightly in his hand and the clothes that he wore on his back. The clothes, mind you, seemed as though they were four sizes too large for the frail man. If you were to look at his frame you would only find skin stretched tightly over bone, not dissimilar to leather being stretched out to dry, with no fat or muscle to be seen.

Despite the aging man’s fragile looking physique, he walked with confidence, albeit slowly. Up the ramp he trudged, not hiding the fact that he was already out of breath. The only ruddy cheeked, filled out persons in County Galway were the English crews of the so called “coffin ships”.

As he neared the top of the ramp, he could see the backs of many heads peeking out from above deck, presumably belonging to the crew, with their uniform hats nearly blowing off of their heads with the force of the winds. Not an Irish emigrant was in sight, and he quickly realized why as he was hurriedly ushered into the cargo hold to live with the pigs and the scratchy bags of oats. Below deck were the hundreds of heads missing from above deck, each passenger looking for room to lie down, all of them packed together tightly like bundles of straw. Already, the wrinkled and famished elder could start to smell the telltale stench of feces and sick permeating the air.

No beds were to be assigned, the starving Irish citizens forced to lay on piles of scratchy straw, their own belongings, or on the cold hard floor. And so the elderly Ardál lay down for his first night of fitful sleep on the ship, his red leather suitcase as his pillow. And as the graying vagabond tried to find sleep, he watched countless grey lice as they skittered across the wooden boards he called his bed.

For one week the ship had been sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, steadily heading towards America but not even halfway through the journey. And for that one week the passengers aboard the Queen Victoria mulled about below deck, eating the morsels of bread and the spoonfuls of mushy soup they were given when the crew mates remembered to feed them. The air was truly starting to smell now, the telltale signs of disease spreading very slowly, yet very surely, throughout the malnourished and penniless crowd. 

It was the lice, of course, that spread the disease. Their small grey bodies crawling among the clothes and bodies of the Irish and living in the seams of cloth and fabric. And though many passengers knew that the bugs spread diseases such as typhus, there was nothing they could do about it. Many tried hard to scrub their clothes in the few chances and moments that they could steal away above deck, but there were too many people and too few, nay, zero, doctors aboard ship.

Ardál, when he could, would hide away above deck and look out at the ocean for a few minutes of quiet and fresh air. He thought about many things, perhaps his family that he had back in County Kildare, or perhaps he thought about his fate once he got to America. Maybe he thought about things that were in his control, small things like the lice he constantly squished between his fingers, or his open sores and scabs that he tried to treat the best he could. Yes, he thought about many things while he scratched at the lice biting away at his arms, as his stomach, once full and slightly round, now sunken inwards, growled hungrily.

Many times the frail old man was kicked off of the upper deck as he was roughly led, with the occasional barking cough, back into the hold, being herded like a shepherd would a sheep.

And as the second week wore on, Ardál observed with worry brimming  in his usually twinkling eyes as now twelve people had succumbed to the fever slowly spreading throughout the passengers. Coughs racked their weak and fragile bodies as they lay bed-ridden on the makeshift cots a kindly woman prepared for them. In one cot lay a young man, his pale flesh burning with fever, grey eyes cloudy and unfocused. Next to him his young partner kneeled, grabbing his hand between hers, holding onto him tightly as if she could squeeze the disease out of him.

“Stay with me, Thomas,” the young woman would whisper in his ear frequently. “Stay strong for me, please!” She would beg.

In another ramshackle little cot there lay a young girl, her chest and arms red and swollen with rash. She, by far, had the worst case of typhus on the ship. Her eyes, puffy and wet, stared unseeing at the ceiling, while her hand hung limply off of the scratchy straw mattress, a sick bucket by her side. The only signs of life she held were the shallow, quick breaths she took, her chest shuddering with each one. Her mother sat next to her, reciting an old Irish tale to the sickly young child.

“And so, the young couple danced and celebrated at the feast, platters of gold and chalices of wine filling the long tables,” The mother said. She waited for a response from her little girl, quickly making sure the child was still breathing.

Ardál sat down shakily, watching the scenes in front of him unfold. The elderly man might be thinking that trying to go to America was a death wish. Perhaps he regretted not staying in Ireland. And as he was contemplating his decisions, he laid down. A sudden wave of fatigue had overcome him, and so he wanted nothing more than to sleep off the pain in his pounding temples and chest.

And just as the people around him saw him slump over, they recognized the signs for what they were. The poor elderly man who had tried his very best to cheer up the little ones on board, the same man who tried to help feed the sick, now had the very same disease he was trying to help treat.

On the third week of the grueling journey, three more people had fallen sick, including the frail and innocent old man named Ardál. This same aforementioned man’s health declined quickly, leaving no time to treat him properly. He sat shakily up against the wall on his makeshift cot, each breath a struggle. He wheezed with each labored rise and fall of his chest, his entire body burning with fever, aching pains swarming his body, attacking every inch of skin, crawling like lice would to a head of hair.

The weather was calm, barely any waves rising and falling. It would have been a wonderful day to spend outside, had the passengers not been cooped up below deck with the thick stench of sick and disease hanging heavily in the air, overpowering any other scent there may have been. The pallid, graying man coughed weakly, but the sound was quickly lost in the din of the passengers' conversations.

“Ardál,” the voluntary nurse on board, named Mary, whispered quietly, so as not to startle him. “Ardál, look at me,” she continued, trying not to let her worry show. “You need to eat,” she reprimanded. “You need to eat and keep your strength up.”

The decrepit elder looked up at the young woman with a rueful smile. “You know as well as I—“ a bout of coughing interrupted his sentence. “You know as well I, dear, that no matter how much I eat I’ll still not be long for this world,” he wheezed.

Even as he said the grim words, he still took the thin and watery soup with a sad smile. “I’ll eat, if only to ease your worries.” He concluded. Mary nodded sadly before standing up to tend to the other patients.

Our frail senior layer his head back down with a sigh, but not before promising himself one final thing. He would live to see America, even if he had to make himself stay alive through the pain.

The fourth week went by much the same, but now at least one fifth of the passengers had some form of illness. The ship was eerily, even unnaturally, quiet as the hours ticked by. Mary, bless her soul, was still trying to tend to as many patients as she could with the limited supplies she was able to procure.

The night of the third day of the week wore on, but many wouldn’t, or couldn’t sleep, instead watching their loved ones, making sure they made it through the night. The young man who first fell sick had died only two days prior, his partner inconsolable. The passengers could still hear her weeping, mourning the first of many deaths to come. Some people chose to stare at the ceiling, contemplating their choices. For some, this might be their last day on Earth, or their last chance to look at a loved one’s face. Others thought of nothing, instead folding in on themselves in self pity.

As the hours wore on, night turning to twilight, calm finally seemed to settle— until a horrible, grating, heart wrenching scream tore through the quiet of the ship. All eyes turned towards the creator of the shriek, staring sadly as they watched the sick little girl being held tightly by her mother.

“She’s gone!” She screamed. “My baby…my sweet darling girl..she’s dead!” The mother howled. “No! Come back! We were almost there…” the poor woman moaned. Silence laced the ship, all eyes on the mournful scene before them. Some stared in pity, holding their own little ones tighter, but many, oh so many, stared emotionlessly, seemingly immune to the sights around them, instead staring ahead, unblinking.

And thus, the second death occurred. Ardál, though his thoughts were hazy, managed to shed tears at the scene laying before him. The little girl dying in her mother’s arms was an all too familiar sight for him. For all of the passengers, especially in the past two years of the Famine. He lay his head back upon the leather suitcase he called his pillow, gazing at nothing in particular, lost in his own worrying thoughts.

The fifth week, the Week of Death, the passengers called it, crawled by all too slowly. The young child was dropped into the ocean, covered in a cloth canvas and weighed down by rocks. A burial at sea, for anyone who died before coming in sight of shore. Many more had occurred in a short amount of time. First one, then two, and suddenly twenty deaths had occurred, mostly in infants, but Death was not one to pass up the chance to grab it’s icy claws upon a sickly victim even if they were older.

The frail elder, who was still clinging to life by a thread, held fast to his promise of life, though he knew not for how much longer. His sickness had taken a turn for the worse, his thoughts becoming jumbled and mixed. Speaking full, coherent sentences was a struggle, his head pounding when concentrating too hard. His rash had spread from his chest to his legs, a bumpy, reddish-purple splotch. His lungs felt like they were full of water, even if he knew that wasn’t the case. His fever rose, barking coughs taking his energy quickly. Mary made frequent trips to his cot, having to spoon feed the now bedridden man his mushy yet watery soup and stale bread.

Meanwhile, the crew was saying that they weren’t far off from America now, and for some even that was still too long a wait. Many would take to watching from the sides of the ship and try to spot land first, others waiting patiently, hoping it was true.

“Maybe,” they all thought, “Just maybe I could get out of this alive.”

For many, they reasoned that a doctor would see them, hoping against all hope that maybe themselves or their friends and family would be saved. Some, though, were beyond saving.

It was during the middle of the week, one calm and peaceful night, that a large commotion was spurred.

“Someone has spotted land!” The phrase was passed around below deck repeatedly. Many rejoiced, clambering up the narrow stairway to see for themselves. Above the stuffy hold, people stared, squinting, at the small outline they could see, knowing it to be shore. One man pulled out a bottle of beer from his suitcase, waiting for this moment to use it. It was passed around, each person taking only a small sip to ensure their neighbors would also get some. Fathers lifted their little ones into the air, holding them up so they, too, could see what everyone had been imagining for weeks.

Ardál could not believe what he was hearing. 

Was it true? He thought. With the little strength the senile man had left, he slowly, oh so slowly, pushed himself off of the bed and up into a standing position, holding on to the wall for support. His legs buckled and he fell, breath hitching. He didn’t give up. With a groan, he sat back up, using his bed to pull himself back onto his legs. Some of the people still in the hold, mostly those unable to see land for themselves due to sickness, stared at him, silently urging him on.

The pale, confused man slowly put one foot in front of the other, stumbling, until he reached the stairs. Unable to walk, he decided on crawling up the obstacle. Stray splinters of wood lodged themselves into his skin, but he brushed it off, whether because he was in such a frenzy to see land or because he was so determined, nobody knew. After a long fifteen minutes, he had ascended the small number of steps and made it to the upper deck, where a young boy saw him. Unsure, the child looked towards his father, who wasn’t paying attention. Looking back at Ardál, he decided on an act of kindness. The boy grabbed the elder’s hand, gripping it tightly, and helped support him. Ardál gratefully accepted this token of kindness, giving the young boy a nod.

With a grunt, he continued his arduous journey to the side of the ship. There, he was jostled around, nearly falling multiple times, until finally, finally, he reached the railing. Taking a moment to catch his breath, he leaned against the railing and looked over the side of the Queen Victoria. Lo and behold, about a three days journey away, lay America. Ardál took a moment, rubbing his eyes to be sure it wasn’t a mirage. Yet the foggy shoreline still lay there. Ardál laughed, laughed like a mad man, broken up with gasping coughs, in disbelief that he had fulfilled his promise of seeing America.

And there, still smiling profusely in the cool night air, he gasped loudly, chest hitching, heart stuttering abnormally, and he collapsed. People yelled and backed up, away from the dying old man, and were pushed out of the way as Mary came running to his side. She laid her hand under his nose, feeling for air indicating he was breathing, and finding none, checked his pulse. And as she stood up with teary eyes, she brushed his eyelids closed, moving his arms to cross over his chest. While nobody would ever know why, the people still speculated. Had he waited to die, only waiting until shore could be seen, so that he wouldn’t be thrown overboard and instead given a proper burial? Was it so that he could say, in the afterlife, that he had fulfilled his promise and lived to see America? And yet, through all of the questions, one thing was for certain. Ardál had died as he had lived, laughing, and with a smile on his face, even in the still form of death.