On an otherwise unremarkable morning on the twelfth of July, 1795, the eleven o’clock ferry sets out from the boathouse on the southern shore for the Purgatory on Station Island in Donegal’s Lough Derg. A disaster unfolds that results in the mass drowning of pilgrims and boatmen within a few oar strokes of the shore as a crowd look on in horror. Its causes and memory reveal a socio-political entanglement of environment, politics, religion, and chance.
