Star of the Sea

Star of the Sea is a 2004 historical fiction novel by Joseph O’Connor. Set in the winter of 1847, it chronicles the transatlantic voyage of a ship of refugees striving to escape Ireland’s potato famine by migrating to the United States. It is narrated by an American journalist named G. Grantley Dixon, who investigates an unsolved murder committed on the ship. The novel is known is for its depth of historical accuracy; O’Connor utilizes primary and secondary accounts of the plight of the Irish people and their emigration to animate his character’s personalities, drives, and moral failures.

The novel begins just as the ship carrying hundreds of Irish refugees, the Star of the Sea, departs on course to New York City. The passengers are familiar with the United States’ reputation as a promised land, but no such idealism drives them now. Ireland has been starving for two years, with disease and death plaguing its people regardless of their status or location. The narrator, G. Grantley Dixon, briefly describes some of the ship’s passengers, including Pius Mulvey, who Dixon characterizes as a shady figure early on.

The immigrants aren’t picky about where they go next, hoping merely to regain basic provisions and opportunity. They represent a broad range of professions and individual attitudes about the future. Broken up by forays into the characters’ pasts, the narrative delves into how certain passengers were uniquely affected by the potato famine. These characters include David Merridith, a bankrupt member of the former Irish elite who is traveling with his wife, Laura, and their kids to forge a better life in the US. They bring along their maid, Mary Duane. The ship is captained by a well-respected man, Josias Lockwood.



Early on, Dixon reveals that he is writing about Merridith’s murder and his psychotic killer, Pius Mulvey, a failed starving artist and deeply unstable man. The ensuing events detail various lines of questioning that emerge, including the killer’s identity and motive, as well as any important context about the killer or victim.

Dixon’s investigation of Mulvey is particularly dark and imaginative. Mulvey finds joy in acts of cruelty; he seems pathologically unable to stop scheming. In the past, he lived with the cast of a freak show, which included bearded ladies and people with exotic deformities. Inspired by their ability to make successful careers out of traits other people perceive as signals of inferiority, Mulvey aspires to mimic their entrepreneurial spirit. On the ship, this plays out in several violent acts. After being detained for mischief, he kills a rapist guard

The maid Mary Duane reveals that Merridith also has a dark past, having abandoned most of his family in order to escape a world he does not want to be a part of. At the same time, Mary herself stands out as the most virtuous character, refusing to abandon Merridith’s wife or children because of his ill will. Along with Captain Lockwood, she refuses to compromise her morals or make escape from the past her main directive.



When the ship finally reaches New York, the hopeful Irish immigrants are met with a degree of coldness as the New Yorkers try to keep them out of the city for fear that they carry contagious diseases. Here, O’Connor indicts the American people for a real historical crime, as they refuse to honor the principles of openness and refuge that the nation’s founding fathers and Constitution espouse.

Ultimately, Dixon’s report of the solved murder is less central to the story than his chronicle of the ship’s various passengers, which humanizes their attitudes and values as they make a risky voyage to a land that may not even accept them. Taking its title, and the title of the ship, from the English translation of the Latin phrase for the Virgin Mary of Catholicism, Star of the Sea is an endorsement of faith and solidarity above epic conquest.