In October 1836, the 179-ton, three-masted American barque Mexico left Liverpool, England, for New York carrying cargo and immigrants, most of them Irish. After a stormy 69-day crossing, the ship reached the entrance to New York Harbor and waited for a pilot to lead it into port, but on New Year's Eve the pilots were celebrating in a Manhattan tavern. A storm then arose, drove the ship back out to sea, and forced it onto a sandbar just 200 yards off Long Beach as the temperature fell to 3 degrees above zero. Captain Raynor Rock Smith of Freeport made the only rescue attempt, but the captain and crew of the Mexico jumped into Smith's boat, leaving 115 people behind to freeze to death overnight on the ship's deck. Almost half of the victims were women and children, and their unclaimed bodies are buried in a mass grave in Lynbrook. Walt Whitman later wrote about the wreck in his famous poem Leaves of Grass.