A horrific story about the plight of seven boys and young men who stowed away on a ship bound for Quebec, Canada.

With the ship going nowhere, 22-year-old Bernard Reilly - the eldest of the stowaways, who had dreams of making it to Nova Scotia to work on the railways - persuaded James Bryson that it might be worth trying to cross the ice to escape the misery on board the ship.

— The boys on the ice