Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod. A show about the past, rediscovered.

In February 1856, a three-mash ship called the John Rutledge set sail from Liverpool, England,

one of the many ships that frequently traverse the icy and dangerous North Atlantic.

On board were two dozen crew and more than 120 mostly Irish immigrants on their way to New York

and new lives in the United States.

It was the most dangerous trip they'd ever take.

During those years, shipwrecks were so common that they were barely mentioned in newspapers.

The only way to know a ship's fate was whether or not it ever arrived in port.

Without the transatlantic telegraph or radios, the arrivals brought with them the only

reliable news of the most harrowing part of the journey,

Ice Alley.

If a ship was going to sink, the most likely place was Ice Alley, a dangerous stretch of ocean off the coast of Newfoundland,

filled with icebergs and

burgy bits. When the John Rutledge departed, sketchy reports of heavy ice were just reaching

Liverpool. Some captains said they had never seen ice alley so filled with huge bergs and smaller

but menacing ice fragments. Still, the John

Rutledge headed out, the captain and crew gambling with everyone's lives. If the ship went down,

the chances of anyone surviving in the frigid water and cold whipping winds was slim to none.

On February 19th, the ship slipped into thick fog near the edge of the Grand Banks,

about 350 miles southeast of Newfoundland.

Suddenly, an unseen, sharp-edged berg gougedged a hole in the ship's hull.

Crews tried to plug the leak with cargo.

...