During the night of Jan. 12, 1850, in a blinding snowstorm, events played out on a New Jersey beach at a town called Squan – which sounds more like part of a Hollywood script then history, but it did happen. There weren’t any newspaper reporters present to dramatize the events, only a few witnesses who left accounts, so much of what happened must be left to the imagination.

The British ship Ayrshire, carrying a crew of about 50 with a cargo of roughly 150 immigrants, had grounded on the bar off…